This much is clear: healthcare is changing, and technology is helping lead the charge.

But there are big challenges everywhere you turn. And we heard about a lot of them—as well as a lot of opportunities for entrepreneurs and investors—at our “Healthcare in Transition” forum yesterday at the Microsoft NERD center in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA. Huge thanks to our hosts, sponsors, and attendees for making the event so successful.

The best theory we have for the evolution of aging says that bearing children should shorten your life span. The best theory is wrong.

Current Evolutionary Theory

Here’s the surprise from genetic research in the 1990s that changed the way evolutionary scientists think about aging: Aging takes place under control of an intricate regulatory system, ultimately governed by genes. What is more, some of these genes have been conserved over a huge range of life forms, dating back to the dawn of multi-cellular life. No one had anticipated this, but once it was established, there could be no more talk of aging as a passive process, the body “wearing out” like an old shoe or a rusty car.

In the mid-1980s I traveled to Portland, Maine, time and again, to visit two older women, Aggie Bennett and Louise Casey. They taught me just about everything important I've ever learned about what it means to live a purposeful life, one built around work that matters, especially in the years that used to be occupied by traditional retirement.

Aggie and Louise were unlikely paragons of purpose. They were physically unimposing — neither measured even five feet tall. They had little education, and had never lived outside of Maine. For most of their lives, neither aspired to find work that did much more than pay the bills and cover the rent. Aggie worked as a waitress in a local diner, and Louise was employed at a paper mill. However, when they hit 60 things changed, and dramatically. Rather than retire — they feared they would be bored — Aggie and Louise each joined something called Foster Grandparents, which paid a modest stipend in return for spending 20 hours a week on the pediatrics ward of Maine Medical Center, the city's major hospital. It is where they met each other, and where I met them.

2012 was quite a year for the crowdfunding industry. In April, President Obama signed the JOBS Act into law, which will open up equity-based crowdfunding for unaccredited investors. In May, the Pebble E-Paper Watch set a crowdfunding record and gained national media headlines, raising over $10 million on donation-based crowdfunding site Kickstarter. Research firm Massolution estimates the crowdfunding industry (equity + donation + lending +reward crowdfunding) will grow from $1.5 billion in 2011 to $2.8 billion in 2012.

So if 2012 was the year that put “crowdfunding” into America’s collective lexicon, what will 2013 hold for the nascent industry? Here are three predictions for crowdfunding in 2013:

What is the five-letter word sure to strike fear into the hearts of investors everywhere? Fraud.

But what I can't understand is why this particular f-word keeps being associated with equity crowdfunding. Sure, the involvement of large crowds statistically does increase the probability of a fraud in any industry. The National Retail Federation> for example, reports that 4.6 percent of holiday returns are fraudulent and cost retailers billions of dollars every year; an estimated $8.9 billion to return fraud will be lost by the retailers this year alone. Another example with rather limited number of people involved: a hedge fund industry with its non-transparent investment vehicles -- one of which happened to be managed by Bernie Madoff.

So you now have a meeting with a VC. How do you make sure you nail this opportunity? Show the market problem, your strategic solution, and that you have the better, faster and cheaper answer to the problem. Be prepared to discuss how you will scale your idea. Learn more via this useful video. Cleantech Open partnered with Chevron to develop a series of videos to provide guidance on the practical things entrepreneurs must do to transform their ideas into thriving businesses. Trond Unneland, vice president and managing executive of Chevron Technology Ventures, and other representatives from venture capital funds discuss how entrepreneurs should prepare and plan for a meeting with a venture capitalist.

It’s increasingly difficult for marketers to stand out in the crowd. There is so much competition, and people are bombarded from all directions by pleas for their attention. That’s no reason to give up, however. On the contrary, you’ve got to put in extra effort to ensure that you get noticed.

Once you’re noticed, you’ve got to grip on tightly to stay interesting, informative, and entertaining. If you loosen your grip, even for a moment, people will move along without hesitation.

As three’s the charm, the Heineken Ideas Brewery is launching its third initiative: The 60+ Challenge. The previous challenges invited the public to reinvent the draught beer experience, and participate in a live innovation event.

Now the Dutch brewer, at 140 years young, is asking creatives worldwide to share observations and insights by Feb. 28th on the lives of those 60+. Participants will compete for a chance to win a share of $10,000 and have their entries, film, photos, or prose, included in a documentary.

One of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs make in building their business is that they assume that some outside funding source will give them the cash to build their business. Statistically, the chances that an angel or venture capital investor will fund their business are about 1% to 4%. This is why it is critical to learn to bootstrap a business in its first year. This means that getting paying customers in the early stages in order to prove there is a viable business is critical.

I don’t believe the children are our future. I believe these children, today’s children, will make their own future. One completely different than the one we have envisioned for them… a better future. We may have been able to provide them with the technological advances they will need, but it is they who will actually solve the world’s problems.

Let me tell you why I say this. Last week, I had the honor of attending The BizWorld Foundation’s annual Education “Riskmaster” Luncheon, a fundraising event highlighting the need for business and entrepreneurship education in the classroom. Each year, they award a “Riskmaster” for entrepreneurialism and innovative spirit. This year, I was honored to be the recipient and join the list of friends and fellow recipients whom I greatly respect, including Tom Siebel, Ron Conway, Eric Schmidt and Elon Musk.

Sales of small businesses rose in 2012, and business brokers expect more sales next year, according to recent survey data released by online business marketplace BizBuySell. The increased number of sales this year has reportedly been driven by concerns over the looming fiscal cliff and the cost implications of a returning Obama administration.

The bad news? It typically takes six to nine months to sell a business, so if yours isn't already on the market, there is little chance it will sell before the end of the year.

Kauffman FastTrac® in conjunction with Propero/Healthcare Accelerator (Propero/HCA) announces the launch of FastTrac® LifeSciences™, a 10-week professional business course designed specifically for aspiring entrepreneurs who either have an idea for a science business or have already started a business and need a plan to successfully grow.

Instructed by Laurence "Larry" Chaityn, founder of Propero/HCA and Global Head Healthcare Investment Banking at Kaminski Partners, the FastTrac LifeSciences course will provide participants a forum to:

Over my 30 years in Silicon Valley, I’ve had the good fortune to meet thousands of entrepreneurs, and a few dozen great ones. People often ask me: What separates the exceptional entrepreneurs from the rest of the pack?

What follows is my attempt to answer that question. I retired from the venture capital business in 2005 to teach at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. In both of those jobs, I thought about exceptional entrepreneurship a lot. A few years later, at a time in my life when starting a company was the furthest thing from my mind, I became an entrepreneur myself, when I established a software-based financial advisor, Wealthfront. So I have three different perspectives on this issue.

THE inexorable rise in health care spending, as all of us know, is a problem. But what’s truly infuriating, as we watch America’s medical bill soar, is that our conversation has focused almost exclusively on how to pay for that care, not on reducing our need for it. In the endless debate about “health care reform,” few have zeroed in on the practical actions we should be taking now to make Americans healthier.

An exception is Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, who is setting new standards that we would do well to adopt as a nation. In the last several years, he’s changed the city’s health code to mandate restrictions on sodas and trans fats — products that, when consumed over the long term, harm people. These new rules will undoubtedly improve New Yorkers’ health in years to come.

Q: We are a Delaware C Corp registered as a Foreign Entity in Colorado our home state and we need to figure out the answers to the following questions with regards to stock certificates.

1. Who gets stock certificates issued and when?  My assumptions are that cash investments DO get certificates, warrants DO NOT.   Founders and Employees with vesting schedules DO NOT get certificates, until a portion of stock is vested.

2. Do the buy and print your own certificates follow the normal process?

3. Do private C Corps file capitalization stables with the SOS?

In the tech space, one year is a long time -- companies emerge, others get acquired, some pivot, a few close shop. New gadgets are released to replace yesterday's cutting-edge devices, and startups dream up gizmos and apps we never knew we wanted or needed til we laid our hands on them.

At Mashable, we're embedded in the digital and tech sphere all day, every day. So we thought it appropriate to step back and admire some of the best innovations of the past year. We created Mashable's Innovation Index to celebrate recent tech, digital and social innovations that have redefined your world.

When you look beyond the current “fiscal cliff” brinksmanship, the long-term budget deficit will depend in large part on two key trendlines: health care costs and economic growth.  I’d like to explain how pharmaceutical innovation can be a key positive factor in both areas – if it isn’t choked off by short-sighted efforts to close the budget gap.

The first trendline: health care costs.

Back in 2009, then-budget director Peter Orszag wrote, “Over the long run, the deficit impact of every other fiscal policy variable is swamped by the impact of health-care costs.”  That hasn’t changed. One big reason: 10,000 Americans will reach retirement age every day for the next 19 years.  Medicare is the fastest-growing major entitlement, growing 68 percent since 2002, according to the Heritage Foundation. And these folks, as a whole, can be expected to live longer than those who started receiving benefits when Medicare was enacted in the 1960s.

TEDx Women DC 2012, produced by The Paley Center for Media and its CEO Pat Mitchell and held at the U.S. Institute for Peace, was an inspiring and thought-provoking conference filled with remarkable women (and a few men) doing TEDTalks and musical or dance performances around the theme of "the space between." Their stories and insights provide tips for driving innovation as well.

1. "Watch who you are becoming and how you're behaving." -- Former Ogilvy CEO Charlotte Beers cut to the chase when she said this. Success is three things, Beers continued: (1) personal clarity -- attitude, beliefs, what bubbles up inside; (2) memorability -- communication, "it's what they hear, not what you say" so focus on their response and share power; and (3) persuasiveness -- If you have passion and they believe you mean it, they will believe you.

This year’s been big for Twitter. As the social network continues to grow it’s increasingly becoming the place where go to share, debate and understand issues in the world around us. In celebration of the year that was, the social network has launched a portal putting 2012 into perspective. The site allows you to explore. the biggest tweets of the year, the most high-profile people to join, the year’s biggest trends as well as your own year on Twitter among other things.