I am a co-founder of Securly, a cloud-based service that keeps kids, schools and families safe online. This post is about our wonderful experience with the FOUNDER.org program so far – about half way into the yearlong program for founders chasing big ideas.

We got introduced to FOUNDER.org via Wharton while I was finishing up my Executive MBA at Wharton San Francisco. We applied to the FOUNDER.org $100K Competition, and were among the 10 startups that were selected (from a pool of over 500 who applied) for the first cohort. FOUNDER.org started by Michael Baum (WG ’89), the CEO and founder of the highly successful enterprise company and darling of many IT admins, Splunk. I still remember our face-to-face Skype presentation to FOUNDER.org. My co-founder and I had boot-strapped Securly and were debugging a server crash when we jumped on a call with Michael. It was perhaps the least prepared presentation I have ever given simply given how long it had been since I had pitched the company. At the end of the essentially improvised pitch, Michael said something to the effect of, “your presentation could be better, but I believe in the problem and really love your solution.” It was a refreshing change from having pitched to investors who ask a company with two first-time entrepreneurs, with no sales background, but a $250K+ recurring revenue in six months to “try making your product viral first.”

There’s an email in my inbox from a magazine I’ve never heard of, a digital publication from a start-up media group, seeking an editorial intern. Not required, but a plus, are previous editorial experience, copyediting skills and a familiarity with Photoshop. The position must be taken for credit and is unpaid, but the closing line of the email assures: “On our team, we guarantee adventure!”

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As a leadership coach, I’ve developed a bit of a crush on Pope Francis. And I’m not alone.

As Time magazine’s “Person of The Year,” the pontiff is considered “everyone’s pope.” Leading a behemoth organization rife with scandal and politics, and as societally relevant as my grandmother’s silver tea service, he has nonetheless captured the attention and admiration of believers and non-believers alike. 

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OTTAWA, Jan. 20, 2014 /CNW/ - On behalf of the Honourable Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance, the Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario and Member of Parliament for Cambridge, will announce a key milestone of the Government of Canada's Venture Capital Action Plan, on Tuesday, January 21, 2014.

The announcement will take place at 10:30 a.m. at The Tannery Event Centre (adjacent to the Communitech Hub), 151 Charles Street West, in Kitchener, Ontario.

SOURCE Finance Canada

When it comes to finding women leaders in business, Canaan Partners are making it look like a piece of cake. Currently, 30% of the firm’s portfolio is female-led, one of the most accurate depictions of the US business world where about 29% of businesses are owned by women.

Even as the number of women-led businesses is on the rise, female entrepreneurs still struggle to gain access to venture capital. According to recent research by PitchBook, companies led by women represented just 13% of VC deals in the first six months of 2013 – that's a record high. In 2009, the number of venture deals going to women was 6%.

Image: Maha Ibrahim, right, at the Cuyana showroom opening in Union Square. Photograph: Courtesy of Canaan Partners 

An alliance of Michigan's three largest universities leads others in the number of degrees it awards but lags in transferring technology out of the classroom and into commercial ventures.

A report released Tuesday finds the University Research Corridor tops the list of seven other major university networks nationwide for the number of degrees, particularly in high technology. But the alliance consisting of University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University places next to last in technology transfer.

There’s a new kid in the startup community sandbox known as a “growth hacker.” According to Andrew Chen, a growth hacker is a hybrid of a marketer and a developer, someone who looks at the traditional question “How do I get customers for my product?” and answers it with A/B testing, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability and more.

There are a couple of key differences between a traditional digital marketer in a tech startup and a growth hacker. Mainly, before a startup has product/market fit (that is, when people know they want your product and are happy with your offering), virality must be built into the core of your product. Why? With the advent of superplatforms, startups can now access over 100 million consumer markets.

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The race for the $1,000 genome has been won.

Biotech firm Illumina sent shockwaves through the biotech industry this week by unveiling a new machine that can sequence a full human genome for $1,000. Until Illumina came along, genome sequencing cost approximately $5,000, which is out of range for many patients.

Illumina’s supercomputing machine, which is a combination of ten machines working together called the “HiSeq X Ten,” is available to purchase at a starting price of $10 million. This is too expensive for most labs, but three of these machines have been acquired by Macrogen, The Harvard-MIT Broad Institute in Cambridge, and the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia.

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When we started our first restaurant in 2004, our goal was to create a place where people wanted to not just eat but also to work. Just like Southwest Airlines or Starbucks, we recognized that a happy staff means happy customers and a more productive, profitable business. But what would this employee-centric vision look like in practice?

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These days, it’s difficult to watch the evening headlines or scroll through a news website without seeing a politician, celebrity, athlete or business leader in the spotlight for saying something stupid. Sure, you might laugh -- or wince -- at these gaffes and wonder aloud why anyone would ever think saying that was a good idea. Secretly, a part of you may sympathize with the clueless celebrity or the foot-in-mouth politician, because you’ve seen similar things happen in your own conversations: Jim in accounting shares a little too much about his weekend during a lunch conversation, your boss says something completely loony about a client, or your co-worker Sarah lays a nutty conspiracy theory on you during an informal chat in the hallway.

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This morning I didn’t feel like doing anything. It’s a combination of overtiredness from a few days of hard work, and a lack of sleep last night.

I couldn’t motivate myself to do anything important this morning, which is a rare thing for me. And I just felt bad in general. I started to doubt myself, and wonder whether anything I do is worthwhile.

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Plan any event and chances are one in five of the people you invite will be late.

A study done at San Francisco State University found that about 20% of the U.S. population is chronically late--but it’s not because they don't value others' time. It’s more complicated than that, says lead researcher Diana DeLonzor.

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A college's reputation shapes its short-term enrollment fortunes in measurable ways, according to a new study.

Where a selective college stands in annual rankings compiled by Princeton Review and U.S. News & World Report affects the number of applications it receives as well as the competitiveness and geographic diversity of its freshman class. That's one finding in a report published this month in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a journal of the American Educational Research Association.

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There won't be many poor countries in 2035, according to Bill Gates, co-chairman of the Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, who gave that viewpoint in his annual letter. The Microsoft Corp. co-chairman also said that foreign aid to poor countries isn't a waste of money, and that saving the lives of children in poor countries doesn't contribute to the world's overpopulation.

Image: Bill Gates, co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation of Seattle, speaks in his annual letter. 

About three-quarters-of-a-million open heart surgeries take place annually in the U.S., according to the American Heart Association. Applying sutures or staples during these procedures costs precious seconds and can cause damage. Researchers have sought adhesives that could quickly seal tissue. But currently available substances don’t work in the presence of liquid, or can’t withstand all that forceful pumping, or are toxic.

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From Andreessen Horowitz to Felicis Ventures, venture firms reveal a web of co-investment relationships through their syndicate patterns including which firms are closer than others (Spark Capital & Union Square Ventures, for example) and which firms count overlapping investment strategies or geographic focus areas. More importantly, investment syndicates highlight whose networks are truly stronger as better networked VCs have better fund performance.

So given the importance of networks in VC performance, we wanted to highlight the top investment syndicate partners in 2013 of every venture capital firm who invested in 20 or more unique private tech companies last year. We start with a look at the most active tech venture capital firms of 2013 (there are 59 firms but some have the same rank based on activity). Probably not surprising to see a host of stage-agnostic mega venture funds among the top 10 most active in tech VC including Accel, New Enterprise Associates and Sequoia.

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Starting a new business is not for the faint of heart.  Sure, thinking of a clever name and designing a logo is fun and exciting, but many of the other necessary steps are not such a barrel of laughs.

Writing a mission statement and choosing cool desks will be a big waste of time if you don’t lay the proper legal and financial groundwork to make your business function properly.

Whether your new startup is creative, retail or technological, you should use the following steps as a checklist and a roadmap as you inch your way toward actually starting up.

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Society, as a whole, places a much higher importance on college education than they did in the past.  While some experts blame the recession for the current employment crisis, it could be said that college degrees are partially at fault.

How College Hurts Employment Opportunities

In the past, simply possessing a college degree put young adults ahead of the pack.  They were qualified for better paying jobs in lucrative fields.

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A mysterious new technology emerges, seemingly out of nowhere, but actually the result of two decades of intense research and development by nearly anonymous researchers.

Political idealists project visions of liberation and revolution onto it; establishment elites heap contempt and scorn on it.

On the other hand, technologists – nerds – are transfixed by it. They see within it enormous potential and spend their nights and weekends tinkering with it.

The data is in, and there is no question that 2013 was the most active year for biotechnology initial public offerings since 2000. During the 12 months ended in December, 38 biotech companies debuted on Wall Street, all but two of which were listed on the Nasdaq exchange, according to FactSet, a Norwalk, Conn.-based provider of financial analytics. The performance of the biotech class of 2013 was rather impressive: As a group, the shares of the newly public companies rose 43% through the end of the year.

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