I just listened to a a Radiolab interview with Henry Heimlich.

It was quaint to hear Heimlich describe the invention of the Heimlich maneuver, testing it on an anesthetized dog using a chunk of meat tied to a string, jammed down the dogs throat. And his earlier invention, the Heimlich valve, developed for the battlefield to stop chest injuries from collapsing lungs.

Less quaint was Heimlich's advocacy of using his maneuver to treat asthma, cardiac arrest and drownings. And horrifying was his theory that infecting AIDS patients with malaria could cure them of AIDS. OK, the theory wasn't so horrifying, but his repeated human trials in Mexico and Africa certainly were.

Who said college was a time for sitting in class?  Go start a company instead!

It’s odd that so many people think college students can’t start kickass companies: they can and they have!

What even cooler is this:

Universities are now starting to actively promote and encourage entrepreneurship in its students!

If you’re a college student, the number of free resources available to you is second to none.  Maybe you don’t know about them because you listen to your professors talk all day long about brushing up your resume to get some stupid corporate job…

Today, in a letter to the membership of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), President Mark Heesen announced his decision to retire after successfully leading the Association for the past 22 years. Earlier this year, Mr. Heesen informed the Board of Directors and the staff of his intention to complete his tenure as President and support the transition to new leadership in whatever way possible. In his letter, Mr. Heesen thanked the venture community for the opportunity to represent them, also acknowledging the work and travel required in his long-time role, saying:

“Words cannot express what a privilege it has been to lead and advocate for the venture capital industry for the past 22 years. It has been an incredible ride, one that has seen tremendous progress and change in our industry and in Washington D.C. And personally, I have deposited well over a million frequent flyer points in my account, a milestone that has me looking forward to more time at home with my wife Stacy and my daughters Claudia and Amelia.”

When the interviewer asks if you have any questions for them, it's your opportunity to show them how much insight, moxie, and knowledge you have stored up. Here's your playbook.

"When a potential employer asks if you have any questions, they don’t want inquiries about parking validation," writes Kelly Gregorio for Brazen Careerist, "they want to see if you’re prepared, educated, and inquisitive."

It’s not surprising that people in Hawaii are super happy. But the other states whose residents feel the best might surprise you.

For a more global view, see the 10 happiest cities in the world. Live in Hawaii, Colorado, or Minnesota? Chances are, you’re happier than your brethren in Mississippi, Kentucky, and West Virginia. That’s according to the 2012 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. The yearly report surveys 1,000 people each day for 350 days out of the year, asking them questions about work environment, physical health, emotional health, lifestyle behaviors like exercise and smoking, access to things like health care and food, and overall life satisfaction.

I once attended a business-training meeting in Honolulu with a CEO from out of town. After the training concluded, my wife and I were invited to accompany this man, his family, and a small group of friends on a chartered boat the following day. I was honored by the invitation and, admittedly, I was also excited for the wonderful opportunity it would be to get to know this man on a personal level.

We lived about an hour from the harbor, but we planned to leave our home especially early to ensure that we would arrive on time. The following morning, however, I got caught up in other things, and our departure time kept getting pushed later and later as I rushed to complete these “important” tasks. Ironically, I can’t even remember what it was I was working on at the time, but what I do remember, what I will never forget, is standing on the dock with my wife, watching the boat coast around the point and out of view.

Does your company need a boost? Incubators and accelerators can be a great option for any young company or even idea to get off the ground. These programs offer everything from funding, connections with top investors and mentors and collaborative work environments that can last for a few months to a whole year.

Y-Combinator

Y Combinator runs two three-month funding cycles a year, one from January through March and one from June through August. We ask the founders of each startup we fund to move to the Bay Area for the duration of their cycle, during which we work intensively with them to get the company into the best shape possible. Each cycle culminates in an event called Demo Day, at which the startups present to an audience that now includes most of the world’s top startup investors.

Delegating is a great way to ensure that more tasks get done in less time, and it also builds team capacity. Unfortunately, a lot of managers don’t pay enough attention to the delegation process, and thus fail to reap the benefits. Are you a successful delegator?

There are six steps to successfully delegating tasks. The problem is that most managers only do one or two of them, and then, when a task isn’t completed to their satisfaction, complain that their employees aren’t good enough to get the job done.

AUTM Announces Large Grant from Coulter Foundation

During its annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, AUTM announced that it received a $750,000 grant from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation. The foundation honors the legacy of Wallace H. Coulter by implementing industry best practices in academic institutions to accelerate the translation of promising technologies to improve patient care. The foundation also works with universities and professional associations that Wallace Coulter was associated with during his lifetime.

As we firmly take our place in the year 2013, it’s interesting to take a step back and review the progress that the investment world has made. Seeing how the investment process used to be run makes the present and future that much more exciting. Looking forward, the trajectory points straight to the online world, and a much more automated process than the one we currently operate in.

Gift or reward-based crowdfunding has been revolutionary over the past two years and has proved to be an incredible tool. Anyone could raise money for a specific goal, project, or cause, from an artist trying to put on a gallery show, to an at home inventor producing his latest invention. Instead of the old handout option, “Mom, Dad, I know this will be huge one day,” these creatives now had a credible medium to collect funds and generate excitement.

In light of the recent ban on working from home imposed by Yahoo’s newest CEO, Marissa Mayer, it’s got the debate up and running once again: is it better to work from home or at the office?

When thinking about startups, I’d like to add my two cents and argue that running a young company remotely is a very real and attractive option for many an entrepreneur. Not only because the technological tools exist to share and collaborate on documents, communicate in real time (even face-to-face) and meet those all important deadlines, but also because there are practical advantages to running a startup remotely.

Accelerators are great. They provide a network, guidance, funding, and perhaps even allow founders to cross that psychological boundary of being a "real company."  However, with the number of accelerators that have popped up in the past few years, it's worth noting that not all are created equal and even the good ones don't guarantee success.

Your goal shouldn't be to gain admission in to an accelerator program. It should be building a value creating business.

Blue-chip venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers expressed frustration with poor fund performance and promised to do better at gatherings for investors last month, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The firm, which has lost some of its shine recently due in part to hefty bets on green energy technology and a lack of home-run Internet investments, said it would be more careful with capital and redouble its efforts to boost performance. Several investors who received invitations to the meetings said it was unusual for Kleiner Perkins to hold such gatherings when it was not raising new funds.

These days there is a lot of talk about innovation and entrepreneurship driving the “new economy,” and I believe that in order to unlock this innovation in the private sector, we must foster a renewed partnership between legislative leaders and business entrepreneurs. Together, we need to pave the way for the entrepreneurs of tomorrow through an improved educational pathway – because as we all know, education is where innovation is born. Believe it or not, our environmental, social and economic futures depend on the education, support and development of tomorrow’s Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs.

We define innovation ecosystems as complex structures formed by the interaction of the participating community within an environment. A healthy ecosystem is one, which participants can thrive and grow, it self-regulates and adapts as the market needs evolve.

The community consists of industry participants, start-ups, collaboration institutions, technical and business services. The environment is core markets where the community coexist and the adjacent markets from which know-how is shared.  The structures are the linkages within communities and environments.

This week I received a nerdy delivery: The ChargeCard, a blue-and-brown plastic iPhone charger the dimensions of a chubby credit card that I and over 5,400 others backed on Kickstarter some months ago.

I’ve backed several Kickstarter projects, but this was the first tech-related one, and only the second involving a physical reward. I supported it because I’m always searching for an iPhone charger, and it made sense to have one I could just stow in my wallet. It felt really good to open up that envelope and get my hands on the result of the creators’ efforts and financial pledges of so many anonymous strangers, including me.

Back when Josh Kopelman was a 20-something entrepreneur, he was handling $50 million deals but he wasn’t old enough to rent a car. That’s just one of the anecodotes the First Round Capital managing partner told at an event hosted by Alpha Kappa Psi, Penn’s business fraternity. Below, event organizer Chadwick Prichard‘s takeaways from the event. Read about another recent Alpha Kappa Psi event featuring Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson here.

I just spent the last two days at a great conference convened by M.I.T. and Harvard on “Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education” — a k a “How can colleges charge $50,000 a year if my kid can learn it all free from massive open online courses?”

You may think this MOOCs revolution is hyped, but my driver in Boston disagrees. You see, I was picked up at Logan Airport by my old friend Michael Sandel, who teaches the famous Socratic, 1,000-student “Justice” course at Harvard, which is launching March 12 as the first humanities offering on the M.I.T.-Harvard edX online learning platform. When he met me at the airport I saw he was wearing some very colorful sneakers.

In a second, with Google, I can find a phone number that was assigned to you ten years ago, but it takes me an hour to find your phone number on that business card you gave me last week. That’s just wrong. We need instant access to the most important of all resources, current contact info.

Too many of us have piles of business cards scattered around the office and home, as well as additional contacts on your smart phone, iPad, Outlook, LinkedIn, and Facebook. The result is we can’t find key names and phone numbers quickly when we really need them, and the data is outdated for the ones we do find.

Jerry Yang shares at least one thing in common with Marissa Mayer besides briefly holding the title of Yahoo CEO: Both Yang and Mayer are keeping a close eye on startups in the mobile space. But while Mayer is searching for mobile startups to acquire in order to bring engineering talent to Yahoo, Yang is looking for promising mobile startups to advise as part of his post-Yahoo life as a startup investor.

Yang most recently participated in a $1.2 million funding round for Polar, an iPhone app that helps users quickly poll the community about everything from what outfit to wear to whether actors attending the Oscars should shave or not. Polar's mobile-first design helped it boost engagement early on — more than 1.5 million votes were cast in just the first month after it launched in November — and attract big-name investors like Yang.