In late 2013 Cowboy Ventures did an analysis of U.S.-based tech companies started in the last 10 years, now valued at $1 billion. They found 39 of these companies. They called them the “Unicorn Club.”

The article summarized 10 key learnings from the Unicorn club. Surprisingly, one of the “learnings” said that “the “big pivot” after starting with a different initial product is an outlier. Nearly 90 percent of companies are working on their original product vision. The four ‘pivots’ after a different initial product were all in consumer companies (Groupon, Instagram, Pinterest and Fab).”

The common thread that binds all wannabe’s, first timers and serial entrepreneurs, is belief in an audacious notion or idea, and the courage to make that idea a reality. The 10 decisions made below were extremely tough decisions, which could have ended terribly, but later resulted in some of the biggest payoffs in tech history.

1. Elon Musk bets on Tesla Motors

When Tesla ran out of money in 2008, Elon Musk put the money he made from the sale of PayPal into Tesla. If it had failed, he wouldn’t have had a cent left to his name. Good thing it didn’t.

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At one point or another in our lives, we all pause for a moment and analyze our life. Is it failing? Is it how we planned it? Did it go the same way we planned it? Why are we in so much debt? Why aren’t we progressing in our career? What causes us to be isolated in society? All these and many other questions are that hit the mind when a person tries to think about his or her life.

When all such questions start surfacing, it is time that a person should reconsider the path life is at right now and consider a change of route to arrive at a particular destination. It is time that you transform your life and makes it more like the way you want it to be. There are different ways of transforming your life. I’ll be sharing the gist of it all with you in five basic steps that you can take to get your life moving in the right direction.

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Not all data that’s valuable is internal and proprietary. New initiatives by governments as diverse as those of the United States, Mexico, and Singapore are opening the spigots of readily usable public data. Corporate information too is becoming more “liquid,” moving across the economy as companies begin sharing data with their business partners and, sometimes, consumers. Also surging is the richness of the information from data aggregators, which are assembling, rendering anonymous, and selling (to interested third parties) a wide range of data flows. Then add huge volumes of data from social-media interactions, available from providers of digital platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.1

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The Obama administration is asking colleges and universities for new ideas related to college affordability and technologies to advance student learning at all levels.

Experimental Sites As part of the Education Datapalooza event held today, the United States Department of Education expanded on its call for ideas to create "experimental sites" "to test alternative approaches for the administration of the federal student financial assistance programs...."

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Scott Sandell, who has had more than a few billion-dollar exits in his portfolio at New Enterprise Associates, doesn't think we are in a startup valuation bubble.

NEA's head of tech investing, who was ranked No. 8 on Forbes annual Midas List ranking of top VCs, believes that there is some volatility and that not all of the current record number of billion-dollar startups are likely to stay at that lofty valuation. But that doesn't add up to a bubble for Sandell.

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WE TALKED TO SEVERAL SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS TO FIND OUT THE PHILOSOPHIES THAT DICTATE THEIR APPROACH TO WORK AND LIFE.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma--which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.--Steve Jobs

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“The characteristic of great innovators and great companies is they see a space that others do not. They don’t just listen to what people tell them; they actually invent something new, something that you didn’t know you needed, but the moment you see it, you say, ‘I must have it.’”

These words by Google CEO Eric Schmidt emphasize that innovation is about turning a vision into new products or services. I think ultimately that is true. But I also think there is more to it. I think innovation also is the ability to re-imagine things that already are.

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China’s status as the global darling for foreign investment and trade is facing some competition these days from Southeast Asian nations that, while small, are forming an increasingly important economic bloc. Though the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, comprises a market of 610 million people — less than half the size of China’s — the bloc’s more affluent consumers are looking increasingly attractive, especially to Japanese companies wary of risks stemming from escalating territorial disputes with Beijing.

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A federal appeals court Tuesday sided with broadband access providers like Verizon and Comcast in striking down Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations on these providers pertaining to network neutrality – the idea that telecommunications companies should be required to treat all Internet traffic, whether a bandwidth-hogging video or a brief email message, the same.

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Nervous before a big interview? Or a major exam or speech? Well, whatever you do, don’t calm down. Because new research finds that people who try to relax away their performance anxiety actually mess up more than folks who just give in to the excitement. The study is in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. (Alison Wood Brooks, Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement)

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Asia's first American Innovation Center will be opening at Songshan Cultural and Creative Park today, Taiwan being chosen due to its developing cultural industries. Taiwan is the fifth country to be chosen as a base for an American Innovation Center, after Italy, Portugal, the Republic of Cyprus and Greece. The center is borne from the collaboration between the American Institute in Taipei and the Taiwan Design Center, and will be displaying the newest branches of technology from the United States for visitors and tourists to experiment with.

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Eric McDonald was 23 and fresh out of college when he started writing code for a software program to help health care providers better manage work flow in their clinics.

Fifteen years later, McDonald’s software is used in 700 urgent care centers across the country. What started in his basement is now one of Sioux Falls’ fastest-growing companies, employing about 170 people and planning to nearly double in size soon.

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Vine star and filmmaker Zach King may not perform magic in the traditional sense, but his expertly-edited six-second videos could put David Blaine to shame.

This Vine compilation from YouTube user FarlyTeem strings together some of King's most mind-bending videos.

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Doing more of the same old product improvements, extensions and modifications – product renovation – won’t deliver the sales and profit impact needed to grow the business. To the great majority of businesses, product development means line extensions, improvements and product modifications and only serves to maintain market share. Firms increasingly compete for a piece of a shrinking pie by introducing one insignificant new product after another. The launch of a truly differentiated new product in mature markets is rare these days.

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NEW YORK (MainStreet) — As we wrote in November, crowdfunding isn't just for doughnuts anymore.

Several states have opened the doors to mass crowdfunding for equity. "Accredited investors" can now buy equity through crowdfunding sites, and the rest of the crowdfunding universe is awaiting final Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approval of "Title III" crowdfunding rules, expected this spring, that will open equity crowdfunding up to the masses.

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As startup accelerators boom on a global scale, the Middle East is seeing a fair amount of the action. In 2013, several new accelerators launched in the region, inclduing Fast Forward in Palestine, Bedaya and JuiceLabs in Egypt, and In5, Turn8, and Afkar.me in the UAE. Others, like France's Safir Labs, have shown interest in startups from the region as well.

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The friendship paradox is the empirical observation that your friends have more friends than you do. Now network scientists say your friends are probably wealthier and happier, too.

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It’s rare for me to hear a panel discussion on digital health and not hear the same conversation repeated and reiterated over and over again. In a discussion between health IT company CEOs at the JP Morgan Healthcare conference, some of the most interesting points raised were the ones the healthcare industry is struggling with the most. Of course, there were a lot of sound bites too. Here are five of the most interesting digital health insights.

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Through a pessimistic lens, 2013 looked like the dystopian future we’ve been warned about. We learned the NSA can spy on our every word, right as Google shared a breakthrough product that could put a camera and microphone on everyone’s face. Amazon wanted to replace UPS with autonomous drones, but the humans who weren’t downsized would soon be driven door to door by an emasculating robot chauffeur. So what will 2014 bring? Frog design expects that this is the year of technological kickback, when privacy goes mainstream and we take the reins on our own quantified self, when artists tame 3-D printers and we learn to unplug. And yes...when drones, driverless cars, and the digital dragon that is China rise to change our economy, and our lives, forever.

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