Want to get way more value from every meeting? Google's mantra: always be capturing.

Always be capturing.

That's Google Ventures' maxim for making the absolute most of meetings, according to the ultra-insightful writeup of Joshua Porter, HubSpot's director of UX, who recently worked on a product design sprint--yes, that is a thing, and it is awesome--with Google Ventures Design Studio. While the post doesn't go into the results of the meeting--that would spoil the fun--it more importantly shares the process of how to make conversation a little less ephemeral.

Sanofi (SAN), France’s biggest drugmaker, is seeking more deals with venture-capital funds like its partnership with biotechnology company Warp Drive Bio, Chief Executive Officer Chris Viehbacher said.

Sanofi teamed with venture-capital firms Third Rock Ventures and Greylock Partners last year to finance Warp Drive Bio, which is using genomic technology to develop new treatments. The Paris-based drugmaker has recruited someone to look at venture-capital projects, though Viehbacher declined to identify the person.

“The Warp Drive model where we are doing in-kind contributions for equity, where our researchers are directly involved in the project, that’s to me more where we want to go,” Viehbacher said in an interview in Lyon, France. “I don’t want to have a portfolio of assets over here and then research and development projects over there.”

You won't find hoards of tourists at these secluded beaches -- just unspoiled sand and surf.

-- Laura Ratliff, Condé Nast Traveler

High-speed Internet for all - including on mobile phones - and lower consumer prices are the main highlights of the European Commission's digital agenda, a five-year plan to ensure higher connectivity for EU citizens and business.

The Digital Agenda aims to deliver benefits to consumers and businesses based on ultra-fast Internet connections and interoperable applications.

The European Commission's blueprint, unveiled in May 2010, aims to provide broadband Internet access for all citizens by 2013, with access to much higher Internet speeds (30 Mbps or above) for all by 2020. By that time, the Commission hopes at least half of European households will subscribe to Internet connections above 100 Mbps.

Universities should teach undergraduates how to start up companies, the prime minister’s enterprise advisor has said.

Lord Young of Graffham told a conference that higher education had to “instil the very concept of enterprise” into young people.

“Every undergraduate during the course of their degree - and I know exactly how little people do during their undergraduate degree…should have a short course on setting up (their) own company,” he told the Student and Graduate Entrepreneurship in Colleges and Universities conference in London on 20 March.

500 Startups, the Silicon Valley accelerator with a penchant for emerging markets, has opened fundraising for its Fund II through AngelList, the social network of sorts for startups. Back in December 2012, AngelList launched a partnership with Secondmarket, the private market place for buying and selling alternative assets, to allow smaller accredited investors to invest in startups. The minimum investment amount was set at US$1 000 and the service reportedly went on to raise US$12 million within 30 days of going live.

Frustration often leads to innovation. For Miami-based entrepreneurs Nabyl Charania and German Montoya, slow product launches proved to be their inspiration.

The problem stems from investors and developers speaking different languages, says Charania, a mathematician who founded software developer Decipher Labs, and Montoya, a former McKinsey consultant, economist and founder of mobile marketing strategy firm Rokk3r Mobile. Too often, investors misunderstand the technology required to generate revenue, while developers misjudge the cost and time of scaling up. As a result, promising products miss their market due to capital, technology or talent gaps.

Is angel capital an attractive asset class? Is the crowd capable of being good investors, willing to spend 20-40 hours doing due diligence per investment? These are critical questions to help determine just how big equity crowdfunding will become, right? I say no.

Successful startup investing is way too hard, and the wisdom of the crowd is way too useless if not destructive (in this case at least). For equity crowdfunding to become a mainstream activity, these questions don’t need to be answered, they need to be removed from the equation.

ATLANTA -- From his office sandwiched between the Ocmulgee River and Interstate 75, Robert Betzel is watching a bill in the state Legislature that he thinks will show the nation that Georgia -- including Macon -- is ready for the next blockbuster tech company.

“These start-ups, like WebMD in Atlanta, that’s what we want in Macon,” Betzel said.

Over the last year the Knight Enterprise Fund, a $10M fund that is part of the Knight Foundation, has invested in more than a dozen early-stage, for-profit companies. They include crowd-sourced news networks such as PolicyMic, revenue tools for existing publishers such as OwnLocal and Umbel, and open government services such as PublicStuff and Captricity. Collectively, these companies help hundreds of cities, thousands of publishers, and millions of people to create, share, and consume information.

The Enterprise Fund is separate from Knight Foundation’s grantmaking budget. It is carved out from Knight Foundation’s $2.2 billion endowment, a venture fund that seeks to directly drive social impact while generating a financial return. Though it is too soon to tell whether the fund will succeed in both goals, we’d like to share some lessons that highlight what we’ve learned to date, at a time when the field of impact investing is generally struggling with a dearth of early-stage funding.

AngelHack has always been a little different from your average hackathon — rather than taking place in one spot over one weekend, it has become a global event that takes place in multiple stages. As a result, the projects are usually pretty polished, though not yet at the level of full-fledged startups. Now it’s taking another step in that direction with the launch of its very own accelerator.

The program will admit 40 teams into a 14-week program – 12 weeks of local mentoring, then two weeks in San Francisco pitch training, investor meetings, and events. In that sense, it follows the broader AngelHack model, where there are local hackathons which feed into a big competition among the finalists in Silicon Valley. In exchange for the mentorship (and tickets to this fall’s TechCrunch Disrupt), AngelHack takes 2 percent equity.

The buzz surrounding equity-based crowdfunding has died down since the JOBS Act entered the purgatory of SEC rulemaking last April. That hasn’t stopped a flock of startups looking to capitalize on the new law, but it does mean they’ll be twiddling their thumbs and wasting investor money indefinitely until the SEC acts.

In a video interview at the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Steve Case, the AOL cofounder and Startup America chairman who advocated for the bill’s passage, says he’s hopeful the agency will finish rulemaking and begin to implement the law by the end of this year. Given that the SEC currently doesn’t have a permanent chairperson and still hasn’t finished fleshing out the Dodd-Frank reforms passed nearly three year ago, this seems a bit optimistic. But I hope he’s correct.

Fundraising by getting small donations of money from a large group of people, what’s called crowdfunding, is a very different animal than getting access to capital at a bank: your story matters more than your credit score. To be successful in a crowdfund, remember who your audience is and cater to it.

Basic financial needs, like paying off debt, may be critical for your business, but “they just don’t excite a potential investor,” says Natalia Oberti Noguera, the founder of the Pipeline Fellowship, a New York City-based training program for teaching women philanthropists about angel investing. To get resources for your business, whether money or mentorship, tailor your request to the skills and interests of the person you are asking, says Oberti Noguera, who spoke at the conference.

You and I woke up one morning not so long ago to realize the earth wasn’t as distant or quite as unfamiliar as it was before. The brightly lit windows of our computers and mobile phones showed us the whole world and everyone in it. With a sense a wonder we reached out and connected. With delight we saw the world reach back through those open panes and with digital hands now joined, we united.

Young and old, we have all been deeply affected by the Internet Revolution. Almost every aspect of our lives from the social to the economic has been, and continues to be altered by the powerful forces of technological innovation. Market spaces collapse, new sectors arise to replace them, and the breathtaking speed of change continues onwards without pause. We’re all surfing the technological tidal wave in one form or another. However, I believe none have embraced the ride so close to their hearts like brave entrepreneurs and small business owners, agile startups, and the driven freelancers. They are the technological pioneers, surfing the crest of the wave as it sweeps up from the digital underground into our everyday lives and the unknown beyond it.

If you do, maybe it’s a little dusty in this age of PDFs. Or maybe it’s been missing for a while, after someone borrowed it and never brought it back. Or maybe you’ve affixed your name to your stapler with a piece of clear tape, so your co-workers know: you take this stapler, you die.

Even as data moves to computers and the cloud, staplers continue to help people keep it together. On the computer, we can file copies in folders and send messages to mailboxes. We can cut, copy and paste text and files. But which computer activity is similar to stapling? Sure, there’s the paper-clip icon that attaches documents to e-mail. But nothing, really, comes close to the satisfying ka-chunk of a stapler: it’s a sound that means work is getting done.

Probably every one of you who has a business and a website have been approached through email or personal contact, and asked to spend money on paid search results (appear on the first page of search results, right hand column, despite low SEO rank). What most people don’t realize is that, according to new research, 90% of search engine users rarely look at the paid results.

Paid search engine ranking (PPC) is buying advertising for your business from Google or another search engine company. Their computers then cleverly merge your ads with search results when users search words imply an interest in your products. If you sell widgets, and a user is searching for widgets, your ad will appear on the first page of search results for widgets.

Many entrepreneurs think that adapting to the new technologies, like smart phones and Internet commerce, are the key to attracting new customers. In fact, businesses need to adapt just as completely to the changes in the buying and social behavior of consumers. High-technology product startups, without customers, don’t make a business.

Today’s customer buying dynamics are all about “user experience,” according to Brian Solis, in his new book “What’s the Future of Business?.” This thought leader in new media asserts that every business needs to understand social psychology and rethink their business models, approach, and relationships in order to create unique and memorable experiences for both customers and employees.

With hopes of giving a boost to Illinois’ struggling economy, Gov. Pat Quinn rolled out a new initiative this week focused on investing in the arts and strengthening the state’s cultural offerings.

Illinois’ nonprofit arts organizations contribute $2.75 billion to the local economy through direct spending and revenue generation, according to a report by Arts Alliance Illinois and Americans For The Arts.

More than 78,000 full-time jobs are supported through art nonprofits throughout the state, as detailed in “Arts & Economic Prosperity IV.”

Canadian finance minister Jim Flaherty yesterday released the country's 2013 budget, calling it “a plan for jobs, growth and long-term prosperity”, words that will please some of the budget's main beneficiaries: those working in applied research. But for those who argue that investments in basic research are necessary for innovation and prosperity, “this is a really bad budget”, says James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers in Ottawa, Ontario.

“There is a consistent pattern of steering money away from basic research,” says Turk. “More and more of it is being directed to company needs.”

A new report shows that the number of companies receiving angel investor state tax credits went up from 2011 to 2012, an indication that an increasing number of wealthy individuals are playing a role in helping develop Louisiana businesses.

The number of companies that received the tax credits went from 13 in 2010 to 21 in 2012, according to the Louisiana Venture and Angel Capital Report released Friday by Graffagnini + Associates, a New Orleans law firm.