This is the second part of a three-part primer on convertible note seed financings. Part 1, entitled “Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Convertible Note Seed Financings (But Were Afraid To Ask),” addressed certain basic questions, such as (i) what is a convertible note? (ii) why are convertible notes issued instead of shares of common or preferred stock? and (iii) what are the advantages of issuing convertible notes?

This part will address the economics of a convertible note seed financing and the three key economic terms: (i) the conversion discount, (ii) the conversion valuation cap and (iii) the interest rate.

In Sept. 2007, I was on a well-deserved holiday, having spent an excruciating 11 months with a startup where 80-hour weeks were normal. I was the Chief Technology Officer and in my short tenure, I had gained new clients, setup the company infrastructure and trained a few interns. On the morning I came back from holiday, my office was packed up, and the bosses were in it to hand my stuff to me. They kicked me out of the door without so much as a thank you.

I went through the various stages of depression, and then realized that I had to come up with an action plan quickly to pay for the massive mortgage and the new baby.

With nothing more than an idea in mind, my wife and I started CraftGossip.com, a niche blog network covering everything that your grandma would be proud of, sewing, knitting, crochet. We also covered some new age favorites like indie crafts, edible crafts and home and garden. We decided to cover news related to the craft world (I explain later why we decided to start this site and not something else).

In developing a comprehensive methodology to measure the impact of digitization, international strategy consulting firm Booz and Company found greater benefits linked to the growing usage of digital technologies and applications, rather than access alone.

The benefits are not just economic, but encompass social and political spheres as well. Digitization offers incremental economic growth: countries at the most advanced stage of digitization derive 20% more in economic benefits than those at the initial stage. It also has a proven impact on reducing unemployment, improving quality of life, and boosting citizens' access to public services. Additionally, digitization allows governments to operate with greater transparency and efficiency.

The broadcasting of problems addressed during the second edition of Quebec Seeks Solutions has started. Your expertise and creativity could be the keys to resolving one of these problems! Therefore come and participate to this unique problem solving conference that will take place next 15 & 16 of May 2012 in Quebec City.

To help you prepare for the event, please take a look at the problems selected for the 2012 edition.

We are extremely pleased and honored to announce the Global Innovation Summit!

This invitation-only event is a gathering of hundreds of “thoughtful, iconoclastic doers” from around the world who share a common interest in practical solutions for sustainable development through global innovation. We will focus exclusively on one of the biggest development challenges of our time: how do we create innovation ecosystems worldwide? Our vision is ambitious, which is nothing less than to reshape the entire way we think about economic development and growth. The event will take place in the heart of Silicon Valley on July 16-18. You can read more at www.innosummit.com.

The Global Innovation Summit will be the first major event in Silicon Valley produced in collaboration with the world’s leading development institutions. Our partners include the World Bank, the OECD, the African Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and many other organizations. We expect several hundred people from emerging markets to participate, including ministers, entrepreneurs, scientists, and other innovators. Additionally, the event will feature leading companies, venture capital firms, academic institutions, NGOs, and startups from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the OECD.

Two bipartisan letters asking for an increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health over the currently allotted amount in the federal budget, which stays flat for the next 2 years, is gaining a number of signatures in Congress, reported Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News. One letter states that “NIH must be fully funded if we want to discover the next medical breakthroughs in America and not import them from China or India.” That letter, circulated in the House, asks for a 4 percent increase over 2012 funding levels to $32 billion, and has gotten 153 signatures from House representatives.  The other one, which is being passed around the Senate, has also gotten strong support, receiving a “record high”  47 signatures, reported GEN, but does not ask mention a specific increase, simply pleading for a “strong commitment to funding” the agency.

While work on the 2013 budget is scheduled to begin it the next few weeks,  final decision is unlikely to be reached until after the November elections.

Tracking performance in the for-profit world is simple; you have, well, profits. Plus tons of metrics and measurers and lists--from the Fortune 500 to the Forbes Rich list to further enshrine top performers. Without looking, you can probably name most of the top 10% of either of those lists. But which are the top social-good organizations? Who are the most influential leaders? What organizations have the most significant impact?

Where do you even start? Lives saved? Diseases treated? Laptops distributed? Trees not cut down? Parts-per-million reductions in pollution? It’s easy to measure effort expended, but much more complex to track impact directly attributed to your efforts. Even in situations where measurement and evaluation are core to a project, they remain that task you do after you’ve completed the project to fulfill the grant contract, not inherently valuable.

Five prestigious US universities will create free online courses for students worldwide through a new, interactive education platform dubbed Coursera, the founders announced.

The two founders, both professors of computer science at Stanford University, also announced that they had received $16 million in financing from two Silicon Valley venture capital firms.

Coursera will offer more than three dozen college courses in the coming year through its website at coursera.org, on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to neurology, from calculus to contemporary American poetry. The classes are designed and taught by professors at Stanford, Princeton, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan.

I am regularly reminded of the amazing innovation coming out of the Nordic region. Countries like Sweden, Finland and even tiny Denmark regularly punch above their weight, producing global companies like Spotify, Rovio, Tradeshift and Everbread. But there remains one country which seems bizarrely content not to engage nearly as much with the global tech scene, and that’s Norway.

There’s a huge irony here. The web browser Opera started out in 1994 as a research project within Telenor, Norway’s main telco. If they’d played it right we would be continuing to talk about Opera, rather than Chrome, Safari or Explorer these days. And there remains a few bright sparks on the horizon like the innovative Bipper, founded by Silje Vallestad. But take a look at the stats and they are disappointing.

Q1 was tough for the venture capital community in the US. Although there was the occasional bright spot, deal flow and capital raised were generally down, and consumer internet was hit particularly hard. Here’s what you need to know:

1. A drop in capital raised: in the US, $6.3 bn in venture capital was raised in Q1 across 717 deals – a decline of 18 percent YOY in capital and 9 percent in deal volume. One sector didn’t bear the brunt of it, though. Rather, ‘The declines were pretty evenly spread across industries so there weren’t any big winners or losers in the quarter,’ says Jessica Canning, global research director for Dow Jones VentureSource. However, she adds,’There were some surprises.’ Consumer internet venture investment fell, following ‘two exceptional investment years.’

Let's talk about accelerating the creative economy in Detroit and Southeast Michigan.  The Detroit Creative Corridor Center launched the Creative Ventures business acceleration program 1 year ago with support from the New Economy Initiative for Southeast Michigan.  Now heading into its second year, the program seeks a fresh round of early stage creative sector businesses to engage, challenge and support.

Whether you are trying to create a new product, solve problems more effectively, become the most successful company in your industry, or find creative ways to meet your customers' needs, innovation is likely one of your most critical objectives at work. But a factor often overlooked may get in the way of your expressing and implementing your excellent ideas: You are an introvert.

About 50% of U.S. residents are introverts, according to a study by psychologists Stephan Dilchert and Deniz Ones. What are the signs that you are one of them? Introverts have a tendency to be drained by social encounters and energized by solitary activities. They are generally inward looking and less concerned with the outside world. They enjoy reflecting on their own thoughts and feelings, and they often prefer to avoid social situations.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's largest information technology firm and part of the US$84 billion Tata Group, is the latest in a line of Indian IT companies to come under the scrutiny of the U.S. legal system. A court in California recently granted class action status to a lawsuit filed against the Mumbai-headquartered US$8 billion-plus firm. The case against TCS was filed by two employees in 2006 and relates to tax refunds and payment of full wages. TCS has been accused of breaching employment contracts and violation of the California Labor Code. Indian employees of TCS who were working in California from 2002 to 2005 are eligible to join the lawsuit.

The number of European citizens aged 65 and over is set to double over the next 50 years; while data on life expectancy (LE) for this ageing European population can help us make predictions for the future, they still only tell us half the story. The next piece of the puzzle is working out how many of those years will be healthy years, and new data has just been published for each EU Member State showing how long people can expect to live without a disability.

These 'Healthy Life Years' (HLY) figures were presented at the first annual meeting of the European Joint Action on Healthy Life Years (EHLEIS) which was held in Paris on 19 April, and hosted by EHLEIS coordinator Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM).

Boston has thrived during the economic recovery of the past 18 months and gained substantial recognition globally as a center for innovation. A recent study published by The Economist ranked Boston as the 10th most competitive city in the world, out of 120 major cities examined. The Economist defined competitiveness, for the purposes of the study, as “the demonstrated ability to attract capital, businesses, talent and visitors.” Similarly, the Index of the Massachusetts Innovation Economy — a key benchmark for measuring our knowledge economy performance, published annually by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative — shows that we have one of the most intensive R&D economies in the world, making up 7% of our GDP.

You've always dreamed about starting your own business. So you've read the books, listened to the cautionary tales, and worked through some checklists. You've done your homework.

You feel sure that owning your own business is right for you.

Not so fast.

If any of the following applies, think twice before taking the entrepreneurial plunge:

Your workday must include a chunk of "me" time.

This document provides the working definitions employed by the AAAI in the conduct of its operations and the pursuit of its mission.

A clear set of commonly understood terms, a jargon, is an essential tool in formulating, disseminating and promoting effective communications about a specialised body of knowledge and activities.

In providing the definitions and descriptions in this document the AAAI is seeking to frame the wider discussions about Angel investors and their investing activities in such a way as to make the discussions accessible and meaningful to all parties in Australia and internationally.

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Australia is a highly successful and prosperous nation. However, it has ridden its luck, especially when it comes to the natural resources it has previously relied on. in the twenty-first century, being lucky is just not enough; we have to work on nurturing our talent and inventiveness – which, in short, is our creativity.

Creativity: An Endangered Species?

Futurists ryan Matthews and Watts Wacker recently stated: “Creativity has become the most universally endangered species of the twenty-first century. never has the need for creativity been so compelling and never has genuine creativity been in such short supply. We have a broadband culture but not the content to fill it.” Even though we may pride ourselves on our innovation and creativity, we need to have a closer look at how we really measure up:

• The GE Global Innovation Barometer has ranked Australia’s status as an innovation leader 16th out of 30 countries. Only two per cent of 2800 senior executives surveyed worldwide mentioned Australia as an innovation champion...

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Venture capitalists invested $5.8 billion in 758 deals in the first quarter of 2012, according to the MoneyTreeTM Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), based on data provided by Thomson Reuters. Quarterly venture capital (VC) investment activity fell 19 percent in terms of dollars and 15 percent in the number of deals compared to the fourth quarter of 2011 when $7.1 billion was invested in 889 deals.

The Life Sciences (biotechnology and medical device industries combined) and Clean Technology sectors saw marked decreases in both dollars and number of deals in the first quarter. However, there were double-digit percentage increases in dollars invested in the Consumer Products and Services, Medical Device, and Telecommunications industries. Additionally, investments into companies in the Later stage of development experienced an increase, rising 11 percent and accounting for 40 percent of total dollars invested during the first quarter of 2012.

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High-profile research institutions, many of which are members of Association of American Universities, provide many benefits for undergraduates on the fast-track to professional or graduate school programs.  In part, this is because of the level of funding these schools receive from the federal government as well as from industry and nonprofit organizations. And despite an anemic economy, it appears that big money continues to flow to big name national research universities.

According to a study recently published by the National Science Foundation, university spending on research and development in all fields increased 6.9 percent between FY 2009 and FY 2010 to $61.2 billion.