Being inspired and committed to an entrepreneurial dream are two key attributes of every successful business owner, and there was no place this was more evident than at the NFTE Dare to Dream Gala April 18th.

It was on this night that 33 young entrepreneurs from 10 different countries were recognized by NFTE as this year's "Global Young Entrepreneurs of the Year." With businesses ranging from fire-resistant vests for chefs to the business of tea culture and products, each business was more intriguing than the next and behind them all were the conceptions, dreams, and hard work of those who pursued their entrepreneurial goal.

An excellent course based on the instructor's 27 years of real-life experience in the biotechnology industry as an entrepreneur and co-founder of THREE biotechnology companies, one of which was taken public through an IPO. He also authored the book "The Business of Bioscience: What Goes Into Making a Biotechnology Product", available at Amazon.com

Instructor: Craig D. Shimasaki, PhD, MBA (FULL BIO) CEO, BioSource Consulting Group CEO, Moleculera Labs, Inc. http://biosourceconsulting.com

What does true entrepreneurial success look like? Is it by number of books sold, number of columns secured, number of press hits, number of blog subscribers, or revenue?

I asked ten rock star entrepreneurs: How have you defined your success as an entrepreneur so far? And what is your advice to others for defining their own success as an entrepreneur? Here’s what they shared with me.

With a $100 billion IPO pending, it’s with confident defiance that Facebook has thumbed its nose at traditional web advertising models. On Facebook, despite their $5 billion 2012 forecasted ad revenue, you’ll see no prerolls, no rich media ads, no “punch the monkeys,” and no interruption. Facebook is leading the charge for a new generation of media companies who are building their businesses on “native” advertising models, a fundamental shift away from the traditional interruptive ad models that users have learned to ignore. Facebook’s commitment to native monetization signals significant change to come.

One of the most frequent questions I get asked goes something like this: “I have a really great idea, but (name of big company or university) has a patent on that. What do I do?” With over 8,000,000 patents issued to date and thousands of new patents issued weekly, chances are good that patents have been issued that are relevant to your business or idea. Knowingly infringing an active patent can lead to disastrous consequences for your business. So what do you do?

Well, those people who have asked a patent attorney have already taken the right first step. Patents are legal documents and can be incredibly difficult to understand for those who are not well versed in the language of “Patentese.” Talking to a patent attorney is invaluable when dealing with a patent issue. So what follows is a discussion of a few things that should be considered to help give a better understanding of the process and to show that it is not necessarily a hopeless situation.

Q. What were some important leadership lessons you’ve learned?

A. I found early on as a manager that it was hard to learn how to delegate. I think that most people in their early leadership positions either tend to delegate too little or too much. And I delegated too little at first. I felt I needed to know everything that was going on, so I ended up doing a lot of the work myself that the people who reported to me should have been doing. I found myself working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I stepped back and said, “This is not going to work.”

So I sat down and talked to the people who worked for me, and we agreed on various goals. But then I delegated too much. When they came back at the end of the quarter and I saw what they did, I realized that approach didn’t work well, either. So I learned the importance of weekly check-ins, and then I think I got the balance right.

Talk of venture capital deals, the latest acquisitions, and young startups raising millions in their latest funding round seem to dominate the headlines as of late.

Does every startup need VC funding – no. But depending on your end goal, it’s a viable path. “Just look at Twitter … And look at all the other micro-blogging companies out there. No offense to Twitter, but what’s the difference between Twitter and all these other micro-blogs? About $20 million in venture capital.”

So if you’re thinking of securing start-up venture capital funding for your seed stage, early stage or growth company it’s important to start with the basics. Here are 15 venture capital terms every entrepreneur (interested in raising capital) should know.

If social entrepreneurs have learned anything over the past several years, it’s that collaboration is the key to advancing social change. Success in the field will only come through partnerships between the social sector and the business world, Bill Drayton, CEO of Ashoka, told a crowd of leaders gathered in Miami this week.

The three-day Ashoka Support Network’s Global Summit, funded by Knight Foundation, is part of a larger discussion on how to best move social entrepreneurship forward, both locally in South Florida and also globally.

ADA, Ohio — Kelsey Griffith graduates on Sunday from Ohio Northern University. To start paying off her $120,000 in student debt, she is already working two restaurant jobs and will soon give up her apartment here to live with her parents. Her mother, who co-signed on the loans, is taking out a life insurance policy on her daughter. 

“If anything ever happened, God forbid, that is my debt also,” said Ms. Griffith’s mother, Marlene Griffith.

Ms. Griffith, 23, wouldn’t seem a perfect financial fit for a college that costs nearly $50,000 a year. Her father, a paramedic, and mother, a preschool teacher, have modest incomes, and she has four sisters. But when she visited Ohio Northern, she was won over by faculty and admissions staff members who urge students to pursue their dreams rather than obsess on the sticker price.

The traditional mode of starting a company is to plan a serial process, where you complete only once all the steps, leading to the “big bang” launch of the company. I strongly recommend a dramatic departure from this model, called “planned iteration,” where you assume you won’t get it right the first time.

This idea was well articulated by Paul Graham in an old essay, called “Startups in 13 Sentences” in which he talked about “making a few people really happy rather than making a lot of people semi-happy.” One of his key points is that “launching teaches you what you should have been building,” and I agree.

Over the past year, I’ve been systematically trying to change the way the board meetings work for the companies that I’m on the boards of. I’ve done a bunch of experiments and continue to learn what works and what doesn’t work.

Ever since I started investing in the mid-1990′s I’ve been exposed to a concept called “board observer rights.” When we did investments at Mobius Venture Capital, in addition to a board seat, we always got board observer rights. This was a way for us to bring another person to the board meeting other than the board member (usually an associate or a principal but sometimes another partner), or have someone sit in for the board member if the board member wasn’t available.

The media treats with reverence the geniuses who invested early in tech giants such as Google, Facebook, and other big Internet names. If you're a super wealthy person, and you obtained your wealth by luck, inheritance, or financial manipulation, you're probably eager to prove you have something useful to offer the world. You want to be associated with a sexy new startup to demonstrate your brilliance and establish some family honor. You want to do the modern equivalent of buying yourself a title. Instead of becoming Lord of Devonshire, you can be an early investor in a startup that might become a household name. You want to be like Sean Parker, who will forever be introduced as co-founder of Napster and founding president of Facebook. Internet companies are the new royal titles.

Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, or Groupon (Nasdaq: GRPN) (well, the pre-IPO Groupon, anyway), watching the hot investment stories today suggests that the only people making money are those who get in early.

And if you want to beat the crowd, there are only to ways to go: Start your own company or invest in one through venture capital funds.

However, for most investors, venture capital funds are off limits due to high minimum investments and other legal requirements.

Don’t fret it, though, because it turns out that you should actually be thankful you can’t put money into VC funds. At least not if you don’t like throwing your money away.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has published a report arguing that the venture capital model is broken. And it lays blame not at the feet of general partners, but rather of limited partners who have continued to invest in venture capital without insisting on structural changes.

This comes, of course, just days after I revisited the whole "VC model is broken" discussion from several years back, in the wake of Sevin Rosen basically returning its entire eighth fund (on paper) from the successful Splunk IPO. So a lot of you asked for me to chime in on the Kauffman study. Or, in the words of one reader, "admit that you don't know what you're talking about."

Ahoy there, startups of Silicon Valley and beyond! Unreasonable at Sea wants you to sail around the world on a fancy boat while expanding your business to international shores.

Unreasonable at Sea mixes startups, Semester at Sea students, venture capitalists, and seasoned entrepreneur mentors to create a floating incubator. But instead of floating in one location off the coast of California like Blueseed, this voyage will sail startup entrepreneurs to 14 international ports to help them expand businesses that have previously operated in only one market.

Starting a business just out of school? Take notes, as there are a few things you should know about entrepreneurship that college simply won't prepare you for. Here are 10 things your university won't teach you:

1. "Hope you liked living like a college student." Now that you’re out of school, you’re ready to get your own place, maybe buy a car and stop eating Ramen noodles. But, when you’re working for yourself, personal overhead can kill your business before it starts. The more money you spend on yourself and your lifestyle, the less you'll have to invest in your business.

The efforts of the EU to turn Europe into an "innovation union" are largely unknown to business leaders, according to a survey released on May 8th by Ernst & Young.

The survey has shown that no more than 27% of those polled "are aware of the European Commission's efforts to promote innovation". This result could be explained by the lack of outreach of EU policies to some categories of stakeholders, for instance SMEs. The study has also shown that 82% of the respondents believe that the EU innovation funding is slow and complex and that EU policy is too fragmented. Only 20% knew about the existence of the European Institute of Innovation Technology (EIT).

Investor and philanthropist David Rubenstein is giving $15 million to his alma mater, Duke University, following a series of high-profile gifts to projects including repairing the Washington Monument.

The billionaire businessman said Friday the money will fund courses, mentoring and an incubator for students and faculty to develop new startup ventures through Duke's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative.

Rubenstein, of Bethesda, Md., is co-founder of the Washington-based private equity firm The Carlyle Group, which recently went public on the Nasdaq exchange.

Did you know that there's no synonym in the thesaurus for "thesaurus"?

And while the eskimoes may have 52 words for "snow," the rest of us are left howling in the wind when it comes time to expressing what we really mean by "love."

That being said, here goes -- what it feels like, to me, whenever I get to listen to the person who inspires me the most in this world, Prem Rawat, talk about his message of peace.

1. Coming home

2. Being rebooted

3. Going back to Square One, only to discover there is no square -- only wide-open space.

4. The answer to every Zen koan ever asked

5. A spa for the soul