Last year we wrote about the youngest VC in the world, 20-year-old Ernestine Fu.

Fu was a student hired by Aslop Louie in Silicon Valley and she graced the cover of Forbes.

Fu has helped hire a new person at the firm who's even younger than she is, 19-year-old Alex Banayan.

Banayan recently joined the firm after meeting Fu for lunch. "I'm terrible at talking to girls and I can't throw a football--but I do have a knack for finding people's email addresses online," Banayan writes of reaching out to Fu.

We disagree on whether college is necessary. First we debated whether too many kids go to college last October, and we just duked it out on CBS 60 Minutes. Judging by the feedback, America is deeply divided on this issue. Most people agree with you that college has become too expensive and that the trillion-dollar student debt is a serious problem. So do I.

But the solution isn’t to skip college. According to the U.S. census, 30.4 % of U.S. adults 25 and older hold a bachelor’s degree. You may think this is high and point out that the number is increasing, but to me this is shockingly low. I believe that every young man and woman should have the same opportunity of going to college. It’s not only education; young people also gain valuable social skills from college. They learn how to interact and work with others, how to compromise, and how to deal with rejection and failure; they learn how to learn.

Most technology-based economic development (TBED) practitioners want to know the same thing: What approaches to TBED are being taken in other states and regions, and how are they succeeding?

SSTI’s Excellence in TBED Awards program was created to help answer these questions and highlight on a national level programs that are improving the nation’s competitiveness.

SSTI is now accepting applications for the 2012 Excellence in TBED Awards. Winners of this award receive complementary registration (a $595 value) to SSTI’s Annual Conference and are provided a national platform to showcase their achievement. Awards are presented in the following six categories:

• Expanding the Research Capacity
• Commercializing ResearchBuilding Entrepreneurial Capacity
• Increasing Access to Capital
• Improving Competitiveness of Existing Industries
• Most Promising TBED Initiative

The deadline to apply is July 17. More information is available at: www.sstiawards.org.

At a Community College Workforce Alliance meeting today here in Richmond, Virginia, there were clear signs of heightened interest in the role that community colleges can play in advancing entrepreneurship as a means of getting Americans back to work. Following support from President Barack Obama and Startup America, plus a recent announcement of a $1 million grant from the Kauffman Foundation to scale one model to more schools around the country, a new generation of educators appear intent on maximizing the potential of their communities to produce more new innovative firms.

Community colleges have always been considered a key player in providing the workforce with the education and skills necessary to find sustainable employment. However, more and more community college leaders have recognized the need to also prepare students that look to create jobs too. Thanks to the efforts of many visionary community college leaders, these institutions of higher education are becoming more important actors in America’s entrepreneurial ecosystems.

We are all familiar with and understand the phrase “Less is more”. It’s the very notion that simplicity and clarity lead to good form. The thought first appeared in print via a mid 19th Century poet Robert Browning and the phrase has been used to describe the stylings of architect and furniture designer Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe. If you’re drawn to the simplistic and clean designs IKEA is now famous for, you can thank Van Der Rohe. Even the Wu-Tang Clan had their way of expressing this classic sentiment during the song “As High as Wu-Tang Get” when they uttered, “Make it brief son, half short and twice strong”. It’s a truism and something we innately feel to be correct. Yet when it comes to Open Innovation, the space as a whole struggles to very concisely explain the processes, the why behind, and the benefits that can be realized.

Rich Bendis and Dr. Mark Rohrbaugh will discuss a new Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) program financed by BioHealth Innovation (BHI) which places a full-time, experienced, serial entrepreneur inside the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of Technology Transfer. This EIR is designed to be an active partner with research institutions to source, fund, and grow high-potential, early-stage products through project-focused companies. The entrepreneurs in the program support the formation of new companies based upon innovative discoveries in the areas of drugs, vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and medical devices from the intramural research programs at the NIH and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as well as from universities and businesses. The EIR will find, evaluate, and support the development of new start-up companies based upon technology license agreements from technology transfer offices or equivalent units within the research institutions.

BHI, a new regional private-public partnership focusing on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Central Maryland, announced on March 26, 2012 its selection of Todd Chappell as the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) for BHI at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Technology Transfer (OTT). Mr. Chappell, a venture capital-backed entrepreneurial leader and inventor with more than ten years of experience in molecular biology research, drug development and life sciences business strategy, will help support the development of new start-up companies based upon OTT technology license agreements. As the first EIR, Mr. Chappell – who will have dual responsibility to both BHI and NIH – will assist OTT in the evaluation of existing technologies, provide an entrepreneurial perspective to OTT in its evaluation of new licensing proposals from start-up companies, advise OTT on opportunities for new ventures based on NIH/Food & Drug Administration (FDA) technologies, assist with developmental strategies, and mentor scientists to help ensure their research becomes commercially valuable.

At TechCrunch Disrupt New York, the White House’s chief geeks — CTO Todd Park and CIO Steve Van Roekel — rang the bell for Silicon Valley to step up and help recode the federal government with their Digital Government Strategy. They hammered home the need for developers to leverage the mountains of open data coming out of the government to create new services and products for consumers.

But you shouldn’t do this just for fun, or even out of a sense of civic duty: you should do it because there’s money there — lots of it.

Healthcare entrepreneurs take note. Health insurer Independence Blue Cross has launched an innovation challenge to develop health IT, devices and education programs to encourage healthy behavior, according to a company statement.

It made the announcement at the kickoff of the country’s first StartUp Weekend Friday in Philadelphia at the offices of Venture F0rth, the event’s organizer. Among the issues it wants to tackle are promoting fitness, preventive medicine, healthy eating, childhood obesity, medication adherence and healthcare access for elderly. Among the criteria for entries are feasibility, sustainability and scalability.

WorldTrade Executive (WTE), part of the Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters, has released its "Venture Equity Latin America 2011 Year-end Report" with detailed analyses for readers to track regional trends with year-to-year comparison data.

The twice-monthly publication delivers comprehensive information on venture capital and private equity deal flow, new fundraising endeavors, exit activity, restructuring and bankruptcy proceedings impacting existing investments, and regulatory developments.

If your job requires you to lead meetings, brainstorming sessions, or problem solving gatherings of any kind, chances are good that most of the people you come in contact with are left-brain dominant: analytical, logical, linear folks with a passion for results and a huge fear that the meeting you are about to lead will end with a rousing chorus of kumbaya.

Not exactly the kind of mindset conducive to breakthrough thinking.

Serial innovators are not looking for opportunities. They look for concrete problems that cause potential customers significant pain--problems with solutions for which customers would be willing to pay. Serial innovators know they have an interesting problem when it meets three criteria:

• Solving the problem has the potential for significant financial impact. 
• A solution likely can be found. 
• The problem and its solution are acceptable to both customers and management (it solves problems and fits strategy).

Twice a year, every tech website seems to devote lavish coverage to just what startups made it into Y Combinator’s latest class. It’s the tech world’s version of covering the presidential primaries: Plenty of these companies aren’t going to exist in a few years (or perhaps even in a few months), but some may go on to do great things.

For those of us actually bent on founding our own startups, the coverage creates mixed feelings. It’s great to see people actually making it. But all the press also reinforces the feeling that every startup needs to go through an incubator in order to succeed. That can be incredibly frustrating for startup entrepreneurs. Not only do we need to come up with a great idea, we have to make sure that it’s something that works for an incubator.

The ability to stay positive in the face of tough situations is truly a life skill worth expending endless effort in mastering. Mastering a positive attitude when surrounded by people who are spouting negative words and thoughts can be difficult.

Being an entrepreneur means that you’re going to be faced with plenty of difficulties along the road to success. While you’ll undoubtedly fall into a few dark moments here and there (completely normal), learning to minimize the negativity of those around you is an invaluable skill. Here are 8 ways to boost your functionality in a negative environment.

Invented by the British chemist Humphry Davy in the early 1800s, it spent nearly 80 years being passed from one initially hopeful researcher to another, like some not-quite-housebroken puppy. In 1879, Thomas Edison finally figured out how to make an incandescent light bulb that people would buy. But that didn’t mean the technology immediately became successful. It took another 40 years, into the 1920s, for electric utilities to become stable, profitable businesses. And even then, success happened only because the utilities created other reasons to consume electricity. They invented the electric toaster and the electric curling iron and found lots of uses for electric motors. They built Coney Island. They installed electric streetcar lines in any place large enough to call itself a town. All of this, these frivolous gadgets and pleasurable diversions, gave us the light bulb.

Growing up, I didn’t even know what an entrepreneur was. My parents both worked hard at their respective jobs, and held them for decades. But for my son, who’s seven now, the picture is drastically different. He’s got two parents who run their own companies – from home. His understanding of the workforce is unlike mine at his age. But he’s part of a generation that takes entrepreneurship as a given possibility, simply because he sees it every day.

I often wonder if he will become an entrepreneur too. Nothing would make me prouder.

Even though the presidential election won’t take place for another six months, it’s still “top of mind” for many of us. Every day there are hundreds of news stories about what the next four years may look like, depending on which candidate is elected in November.

A flurry of campaign visits are being made across the country by both parties, especially to states that have been hit hard by the economic recession. Midwest states seem to garner a large amount of attention, with Iowa and Minnesota being the most recent examples. My home state of Ohio has become well-known as a ‘battleground’ state and a ‘must win’ for any candidate to secure the White House. But how can states like Ohio leverage their status as a political bellwether to inform both parties on real economic challenges and successes? What can be done to ensure these issues and suggestions are not forgotten and have a voice beyond the election cycle?  

New entrepreneurs often seem to confuse viability with fundability. Certainly a non-viable business should be not fundable, but many viable businesses are also not fundable. Thus when an investor declines your funding request, you need to curb your anger and understand the real reason for this outcome.

In my experience, here are the most common issues that cause funding requests for potentially viable businesses to be rejected, in priority order:

My company has gone through three rounds of financing, with our latest Series A closing in the fall of 2011. We did the Series A fundraising without a pitch deck, also known as your sales pitch.

It’s true that the deck is often considered the main piece of fundraising collateral. But I would argue that the main marketing collateral while fundraising is you: the founder. Below are the lessons we learned from raising a series A round without a pitch deck.

Some industry leaders seem to accept, almost as an article of faith, that Asian companies can only copy — they don’t create. This perception is simply wrong. Look no further than the fact that four of the great inventions that changed the world: gunpowder, the compass, papermaking and printing, all originated from China. However, it might be that the best way for Asian companies to innovate would be to jettison some of the ideas about innovation that have become conventional wisdom elsewhere in the world. Asian companies and the subsidiaries of multinationals operating in Asia have the opportunity to re-think innovation in ways that create new types of competitive advantage.