What's it like to plummet to Earth when your starting point is 24 miles above its surface? What's it like to free fall at 833.9 mph — 140 mph faster than the speed of sound?

Most entrepreneurs tend to avoid this area of the business, and as a result are badly surprised by cost realities, and investor expectations. They seem to think that financial projections are simply invented numbers for investors, and not useful. In reality, it’s like jumping in your car for a long hard drive with no destination in mind. Chances are, you won’t enjoy success from the trip.

What is a business financial model, really? In most cases, it is merely a Microsoft Excel spread sheet loaded with your cost and revenue projections for your startup, starting now in time and extending at five years into the future. For more value, a few variables can be added, like product volume growth rate, and number of salesmen, for “what if” analyses.

Few would dispute the enormous impact that cloud computing has had on the technology and business landscape during the past decade. In 2001, the approach to hosting business applications on the emerging web wasn’t even remotely proven and, in fact, had failed because the first generation of web-hosted application service providers (ASPs) got it all wrong.

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Successful startups seem to follow similar paths to greatness, and unfortunately all too often that path leads them back down the hill much faster than they went up. Big company powerhouses, like IBM and Xerox, took fifty years to make the cycle, but new companies today, in the age of the Internet, often make the cycle in five to ten years, or even less. Consider MySpace and Webvan.

Thus it behooves every entrepreneur to start watching these things more carefully from the very start. By definition, most startups begin as a result of some innovation in product, process, or service. The problem is that innovations in most business areas are coming so fast these days that yours can be overrun while still be scaled across geographies and other products.

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The single biggest mistake most product teams make is building technology for what they believe the user would want rather than what the actual end-user needs.

From the experience in my earliest days of designing products for Windows and OS2 machines in the early 1990′s I developed a product philosophy, “Design for the novice, configure for the pro.”

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The New Orleans BioInnovation Center incubator for biosciences companies has opened registrations for an entrepreneurship conference taking place November 18-20 and an accompanying pitch contest called the BioChallenge with a prize of $25,000 in cash and services for the winning idea.

The deadline for biotechnology start-ups to enter the challenge is Tuesday. Application information is on the center's Internet site at www.neworleansbio.com/biochallenge.

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When Congress passed the Jumpstart Our Business Start-ups Act ("JOBS Act") last year, the rationale sounded right: some "good ideas" don't come to market because entrepreneurs often lack the necessary connections to privately raise significant amounts of capital. If they could get such funding, the argument went, jobs would be created. And that's a good thing.

So part of the JOBS Act now permits private firms, including start-ups, to seek equity investments without registering shares for sale, though only from accredited investors. But if implemented, other provisions of the law would allow entrepreneurs and others to use crowd sourcing or social media to troll for money from virtually any would-be private investor. And that's not such a good thing.

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Each year, more and more women set out on the journey to become successful founders and CEOs of their own companies. While these business-savvy ladies are inspirational to women with dreams of launching a startup, entrepreneurship remains a traditionally male-dominated territory, and there are still some significant obstacles that many female business owners have to face. Here are five of the biggest challenges of women entrepreneurs today, and how to overcome them.

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The early stages of a startup can seem like the exact wrong time to invest in hardware of any kind. But certain technology is worth the upfront cash. (And quite a few of the items on this list can probably come right out of your pizza budget.)

I was curious about what equipment passes muster even when budgets are tight, so I asked nine successful entrepreneurs from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) what their first major hardware investments were and why. Their answers are below.

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As you get older, it’s funny to look back on grade school and think about the life lessons that were casually ingrained into the curriculum. One experience that sticks out for me is the “reading buddy.” The reading buddy was typically an older student who was assigned to a younger student to help develop reading skills and confidence. This buddy served as a role model to the younger student.

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The health care industry has survived economically by cross-subsidizing margin shortfalls in one activity with the revenues generated from others. But the very existence of these cross-subsidies is symptomatic of deep flaws in the health care reimbursement system. As we move forward we need to be mindful of two principles that must be at the heart of any fundamental health care reform:  “no margin, no mission” and “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” As the era of health care cross-subsidization ends, these principles must guide our actions.

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Last week, an executive who was on the verge of being promoted to head his large global publicly traded company asked for my advice on how to be effective as a brand new CEO.  I gave him a list and he was so appreciative that I was motivated to write a blog about it.   There were five recommendations on my list:

1)    Grow the Pie

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Vanderbilt University has more than quadrupled earnings from its technology commercialization efforts in the past three years to more than $24.5 million in the 2013 fiscal year, according to university officials.

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If you’re running a small business blog, you probably treasure comments from readers. Comments on your blog are like the Internet version of gold stars. They mean your blog is effective, engaging and able to generate interest and discussion. Comments say, “You’re doing a good job… keep it up!” But many bloggers are so hardwired to the positive aspects of comments—any comments—that they don’t see the need for a comment policy.

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UBM's Future Cities has published a new report today, entitled Future Cities 100: The Top 100 City Innovators Worldwide. The report names the 100 most innovative city influencers across a range of industries and categories, including Built Environment, Civic Engagement, Energy & the Environment, Government, IT & Technology, Public Spaces, Security, Transportation, Urban Policy, and Most Overrated.

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While the number of programs aimed at encouraging more entrepreneurship has increased rapidly, research has not kept pace. A new effort announced last Friday by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry aims to help fill that void. The Global Entrepreneurship Research Network (GERN) was founded by the Kauffman Foundation, World Bank and Endeavor Insight to standardize data and work to gain a better understanding of policy barriers and what the right policies are for fostering entrepreneurship. 

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We founded Tag Digital, a digital agency two years ago and ever since have regularly received messages from eager students, graduates, designers, developers and other agency folk looking for work.

It’s not that long ago that I was in that same position so I always try to offer some constructive advice if we don’t have an opening at that time.

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Life can hit you hard sometimes you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, use the hard lessons learned and move on.  Over the years I’ve had my own share of struggles, challenges, disappointments and failures and while I could’ve easily given in or given up I didn’t and it’s because of these lessons that I’ve been able to attain so much success in such a short period of time.

Today I want to share with you 20 lessons I’ve learned as I look back over the last 25 years of my life.  I’m sure many of you can relate, and resonate with some or many of these.  When times get tough come back to this list and remember temporary pain creates long term pleasure.

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It seems as though everyone these days is gunning for change when it comes to “women entrepreneurs” or “women in tech.” Certainly, the data around female participation in startups and/or technology suggests change is needed: women comprise just 24% of the Canadian tech sector workforce.

In January of last year, an eye-opening blog post by Whitney Hess looked at the “other side of the table,”—that is, where the money is coming from. Her blog post explored the gender gap within United States–based venture capital firms, using data scraped from the websites of firms that had a focus on early-stage funding, had funded at least five brand-name startups and had funds of at least $100 million.

As customers gain  more access to general company information via the Internet, they also develop a  greater demand for details about a business’s founder. That’s why you need to  take the time to craft your reputation in order to create a personal  brand parallel to your company’s brand.

Your personal brand will help you plan for the future. Even if you own your  own firm outright, in an uncertain economy, businesses can and do take major  hits when economic, political and world security shifts occur. Having a strong  brand as founder of the company helps ensure your options and positions you for  possibilities, should you need them in the future.

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