Law firm Dommisse Attorneys is a small team of attorneys with a big interest in startups. Speaking to BizCommunity, the firm’s founder and senior partner Adrian Dommisse asserts the firm’s interest in guiding startups through the legal aspects of securing funding — both local and international — as well as lending a hand in acquisitions. Dommisse says that whether you’re seeking venture capital from an international fund or courting potential shareholders, your startup will benefit from laying a basic legal groundwork early on. Complication and clutter can alarm investors, keep things simple. The less complex your capital structure and financial statements, the more reassured they can be that they know exactly what they’re getting themselves into.

Li Jiaxiang, a former military leader who steered Air China Ltd to membership of the largest global airline network, the Star Alliance, has been identified as China’s best-performing corporate leader in a new INSEAD ranking.

By applying skills he learned heading an army to the corporate world, Li (aged 62) increased industry-adjusted shareholder returns during his tenure (2004-2008) by 1,022 percent and added US$36.7 billion to the company’s market capitalisation.

Potential startup founders are always looking for ideas to implement, when they should be looking for problems to solve. Customers pay for solutions, but there is no market for ideas. I’m often approached by people with a “million dollar idea,” but I haven’t seen anyone pay that for one yet.

Equally often, I see startups who are on the road to implementing an idea, but haven’t figured out what problem it solves – the business plan waxes on eloquently for 20 pages about how great this product and technology is, but never gets around to defining the problem (investors call this the “solution looking for a problem” syndrome).

ON the subject of the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare, to reclaim the name critics have made into a slur — a number of fallacies seem to be congealing into accepted wisdom. Much of this is the result of unrelenting Republican propaganda and right-wing punditry, but it has gone largely unchallenged by gun-shy Democrats. The result is that voters are confronted with slogans and side issues — “It’s a tax!” “No, it’s a penalty!” — rather than a reality-based discussion. Let’s unpack a few of the most persistent myths.

OBAMACARE IS A JOB-KILLER. The House Republican majority was at it again last week, staging the 33rd theatrical vote to roll back the Affordable Care Act. And once again the cliché of the day was “job-killer.” After years of trying out various alarmist falsehoods the Republicans have found one that seems, judging from the polls, to have connected with the fears of voters.

It is seemingly a fact of life that every new generation of computing gadget will be significantly more powerful than the one before, but a looming technical roadblock threatens to undermine that.

That's why the world's largest chip maker, Intel, announced on Monday that it has invested $4 billion in Dutch company ASML, which makes equipment for manufacturing computer chips.

The two companies are trying to instigate a collaboration involving the world's largest computing companies—in a kind of silicon moon shot—to ensure that chips keep getting faster by perfecting the tools needed to make smaller features on silicon chips.

One of the defining narratives of modern China has been the migration of young workers—often girls in their late teenage years—from the countryside into sprawling cities for jobs in factories. Many found work at Foxconn, which employs nearly one million low-wage workers to hand-assemble electronic gadgets for Apple, Nintendo, Intel, Dell, Nokia, Microsoft, Samsung, and Sony.

So it was a surprise when Terry Guo, the hard-charging, 61-year-old billionaire CEO of Foxconn, said last July that the Taiwan-based manufacturing giant would add up to one million industrial robots to its assembly lines inside of three years.

A recent email from an entrepreneur and complete stranger read: “We need to raise money. Who can you introduce us to?” I quickly encouraged him to submit his startup to AngelList but a few days later he returned with, “I messaged the AngelList founder and he didn’t respond. Can you give me some tips?” This post is for you buddy.

Approaching a well known Silicon Valley angel investor cold with the expectation that they’ll fund you, is like walking up to a beautiful stranger and expecting you’ll be planning a wedding by the end of the conversation. For the masses, if you want top tier funding, there is a process or roadmap in most cases you can follow (ignore the geniuses and exceptions). Attempting to bypass it shows a lack of consideration and basic intelligence of how the funding process works.

Creativity, the ability to see things differently and come up with new breakthroughs, isn't some God-given gift to be enjoyed by the lucky few. It's a natural part of human behavior. Unfortunately, sometimes creativity gets blocked and we lose confidence in our own ability to create.

Albert Bandura is one of the great psychologists: Only Freud, Skinner and Piaget have been cited more. Bandura is 86 now and he still works at Stanford.

One day we met on campus and got to talking about this methodology he'd developed to cure phobias, called "guided mastery." I mean, Bandura's methodology didn't just cure people with a lifelong fear of snakes; it affected other parts of their lives.

Could the U.S. Small Business Administration be the answer to our country’s economic problems? The U.S. economy is immense, extraordinarily fluid, and yet despite an almost desperate need for financing mechanisms to fuel the small businesses that represent 99.7% of firms in the country, still faces headwinds with respect to the credit crunch that has plagued the economy since the financial crisis began in 2008.

The Banking Crisis Over 400 banks have been closed and sold since the beginning of 2008, most of which were small, and thus particularly vulnerable to the quadruple hit of falling real estate values, rising unemployment, suffocating regulatory mandates, and drastically reduced economic activity. Faced with personal and/or business cash flows slashed between 20-50% (or, in the case of the construction industry, upwards of 100%), many borrowers went bankrupt or otherwise stopped making their payments, forcing the banks to write down the loans and, as necessary, repossess or foreclose collateral that was simulaneously plunging in value. With the economic graveyard spiral continuing for years, mounting losses eventually ate away the lender’s reserves, and the banks unable to raise sufficient new capital to recover from those losses were forced out of business. As a result, significant outlets of small business financing went with them.

A recent trend in the tech-startup scene is to join an incubator or startup accelerator. These incubators promise to mentor, guide, and position early stage startups for success, and in return, they receive 4% – 7% equity in the company.

But a recent article on RWW tells the story of how the majority of incubator graduates go nowhere.

If you’re an early-stage entrepreneur, is it worth it to join an incubator that is NOT Y Combinator or Tech Stars?

I recently met a graduate from a startup incubator located in New York. The girl I met (Karen) is smart, motivated, and ready to do what it takes to get her startup off the ground. Unfortunately, I learned that the incubator she joined gave her very poor advice and offered no connections to raise an Angel or Series-A round of capital after graduating.

Whether he knew it or not, President Obama created a brand new industry when he signed the JOBS act into law on April 5th. Up until now, it’s been illegal for private businesses to offer equity to anyone other than accredited investors in exchange for funding. As a result, crowdfunding sites (like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo) and the investment seekers that use them have been restricted to giving gimmicky thank you gifts and pre-selling new products in exchange for donations. Although this method of fundraising has proven successful for many artists, charities, and startups, the payback for the people who are giving away their money has been limited to cheap schwag and a few new toys.

The passing of the JOBS Act is about to change all of that. Once the rules are in place early next year, private businesses and startups will be able to use crowdfunding to give equity to investors who will get an actual monetary return instead of a sticker or T-shirt. This shift is expected to attract a huge influx of capital from regular Joes looking for better ways to invest than what is currently being offered by the stock market or the meager 0.5 percent interest from savings accounts.

Founded in 2011 by Sandbox Industries - the exclusive fund manager of Blue Cross Blue Shield Venture Funds, Healthbox is Europe's first business accelerator focused exclusively on supporting innovation and entrepreneurship in the health sector.  

Healthbox will find, nurture and invest in great entrepreneurs and high-impact business ideas that have the potential to scale and impact the future of health care delivery. These may be newly formed businesses, SMEs, government-led initiatives or creative solutions that need support and investment to formalise a business model. Through its intensive three-month programme, Healthbox will help early-stage health care technology and technology-enabled startups refine their product offering, gain market traction and attract customers and investment.

You are an executive responsible for unearthing the next new market opportunity for your company and — like your competitors — you're looking at maps of rapidly-growing economies in the emerging world. How would you react to the names Surat, Foshan, and Porto Alegre? With a mystified stare, perhaps? Yet, these three cities each have a population of four million people. Surat is in western India and accounts for about two-fifths of India's textile production. Foshan is China's seventh-largest city in terms of GDP. Porto Alegre is the capital of Rio Grande do Sul, the fourth-largest state in Brazil.

The fact is that medium-sized cities — many of them unknown outside their own countries — are going to be where the next wave of growth is coming from, as discussed in the McKinsey Global Institute report on cities and the rise of the consuming class (pdf). The urban opportunity is truly enormous. The global consuming classes will grow from around 1.2 billion in 1990 to 4.2 billion in 2025 — and 1.2 billion of them will live in only about 440 mostly mid-sized cities in emerging markets. (We define the consuming classes as individuals with more than $10 a day disposable income at purchasing power parity — sufficient incomes to become significant buyers of discretionary good and services.)

IN BUSINESS, SURPRISES SIGNAL UNCERTAINTY--A PHENOMENON TO BE AVOIDED AND FEARED. BUT THOSE UNEXPECTED EVENTS CAN ALSO POINT THE WAY TOWARD AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH YOU DIDN’T CONSIDER BEFORE.

5 NOTES 89 TWEETS 22 LIKES When Canon USA President and CEO Yoroku “Joe” Adachi recently launched the EOS 5D Mark II camera geared toward general photo enthusiasts, something unexpected happened. Accolades poured in from professional videographers across Hollywood. With video quality that matched that of more specialized cameras used for television commercials, this less expensive point-and-shoot camera delivered a pleasant surprise to professionals. To Adachi’s own surprise, the Mark II had unintentionally begun disrupting the high-end professional video market. Canon is now developing cameras specifically designed for this profitable niche--and leapfrogging the competition in the process.

You have a great business concept. But you don’t have enough funds to make it succeed, so you need others to invest in your business. How can you get them to make the commitment? Here are some of the key points that you will need to make in order to get them to “yes.”

The Business Concept — Be able to clearly articulate your business concept in language that fits your audience. This “elevator speech” should take three minutes or less for the initial “pitch,” and should provide a basis for you to expand and provide details in subsequent presentations. This also means that if your audience is well-versed in your industry, you should use the appropriate technical terms or “jargon.” However, if they are not, you must be able to explain your business concept in layman’s terms.

Summer is here, so there’s a bit of a lull on the average biotech pro’s schedule. If there’s ever an opportunity to take a breather from the relentless scientific, medical, and investor meetings that dominate the industry calendar, this is it. Time to catch up on reading a few good books.

The good news is there’s no shortage of people writing thought-provoking things today about biology, healthcare, the global economy, and other topics that are bound to appeal to creative folks in the biotech industry. Here are a few books that I’ve heard recommended recently on my travels in biotech. Thanks to Jim Sabry of Genentech, Carol Gallagher of AnaptysBio, David Shaywitz of Theravance, consultant Stewart Lyman, and biotech entrepreneur Katrine Bosley for their thoughts.

You look at your to-do at the end of the day and--gulp--only the inconsequential tasks are crossed off. That's mismanaging priorities. Here's how to get them in order.

To be successful, businesses must prioritize their focus. Any growing business has resource constraints: limited people, time, and capital. It is critical that the entrepreneur spend his or her time on the most important areas that can drive success.

These priorities, however, may vary with the type of business or the phase of growth. What is important is for each entrepreneur to think concretely about setting priorities and reexamine them frequently.

Perhaps the greatest challenge an entrepreneur faces is funding an operation once a business is up and running. I focus my analytical efforts on the discovery space, predominantly the junior mining sector – an entrepreneurial space if there ever was one (You can subscribe to our free weekly newsletter here: www.discoveryinvesting.com). We’re big believers in the idea that a high quality discovery leads to long-term wealth creation – both for the entrepreneur and the downstream investor alike.

The overwhelming majority of these early-stage public companies generate no cash flow, revenue, or earnings. They exist solely at the whim of friends and family and the financial markets willingness to fund a potential “world class” discovery (a high grade gold deposit, for example). This style is akin to playing the lottery where all you need is “a dollar and a dream.” Though the failure rate of most of these entrepreneurial efforts is high, the success stories can be legendary.

Today’s youth, both here and abroad, have been screwed by their parents’ fiscal profligacy and economic mismanagement. Neil Howe, a leading generational theorist, cites the “greed, shortsightedness, and blind partisanship” of the boomers, of whom he is one, for having “brought the global economy to its knees.”

How has this generation been screwed? Let’s count the ways, starting with the economy. No generation has suffered more from the Great Recession than the young. Median net worth of people under 35, according to the U.S. Census, fell 37 percent between 2005 and 2010; those over 65 took only a 13 percent hit.

Point: Exponential trends in technology make the future more –  not less — predictable.

Story: At the World Innovation Forum in June, Ray Kurzweil, inventor of the first CCD scanner and author of The Singularity is Near, talked about the ease of predicting the future by spotting and extrapolating exponential trends.  Although Gordon Moore uttered his famous Law around 1970, Kurzweil found that the exponential trends in computation and data transmission predate Moore’s Law by many decades.  Moore spoke of the rate of evolution of semiconductor chips, but the trend started in earlier generations of computing and communications technologies including mechanical relays, vacuum tubes, and the first transistorized devices.  Even wars and depressions failed to halt the exponential progress in performance.  Trends in miniaturization and mass production meant information technologies improved at a steady pace across the decades.