The misconceptions of entrepreneurship

对于创业的误解

Richard Branson | Founder at Virgin Group

While reading The Economist’s excellent Schumpeter column about the confusion around the purpose of entrepreneurship, as well as the motives behind what makes entrepreneurs tick, Richard Branson also believes “entrepreneurs are contrarian value creators. They see economic value where others see heaps of nothing. And they see business opportunities where others see only dead ends.”

However, he completely disagrees with the view that “the main motivator for entrepreneurs is the chance of making big money”. He thinks if you get into entrepreneurship driven by profit, you are a lot more likely to fail. The entrepreneurs who succeed usually want to make a difference to people’s lives, not just their own bank balances. The desire to change things for the better is the motivation for taking risks and pursuing seemingly impossible business ideas.

Information received from Wong Ping. To read more, please visit: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130812151125-204068115-the-misconceptions-of-entrepreneurship

Government's role in innovation

创新领域里的政府角色

Elon Musk - Philanthropic Entrepreneurs

William H Janeway wrote an interesting article in the Observer newspaper today raising the issue of government funding or intervention in the development of innovation.

He has written a book on the innovation economy and its history. Essentially he says that whilst the billionaire entrepreneurs of the digital economy continue to recycle their wealth in new technologies it will not be enough for the commercialisation of new materials and applications coming from these technological changes. This will require large companies, not start ups. Scale matters.

However he notes that "Silicon" is the exception. Yet even here success was driven initially by the US defence department's generous budget.

From 1953 to 1978 federal funding accounted for more than half of all R&D in the US equivalent to 1% of GDP. That would amount to $150 bln today!

Social impact investing will be the new Venture Capital

社会影响力投资成为风险投资新方向

Social impact investing | new Venture Capital

During the past century, governments and charitable organizations have mounted massive efforts to address social problems such as poverty, lack of education, and disease. Governments around the world are straining to fund their commitments to solve these problems and are limited by old ways of doing things. Social entrepreneurs are stultified by traditional forms of financing. Donations and grants don't allow them to innovate and grow. They have virtually no access to capital markets and little flexibility to experiment at various stages of growth. The biggest obstacle to scale for the social sector is this lack of effective funding models.

We believe we are on the threshold of a major change not unlike the early days of the modern venture capital industry. In the mid-1960s and early 1970s, a new type of investment vehicle was created: the professionally managed venture capital partnership. This organizational innovation drew investment capital from institutional players like pension funds and endowments and allowed for appropriate time horizons. Soon venture capital became a core part of many economies and those bold moves changed everything. Entrepreneurship has never been the same.

Just as the formation of the venture capital industry ushered a new approach and mindset toward funding innovation within the private sector, impact investment has started to bring opportunities to harness entrepreneurship and capital markets to drive social improvement. This in time will bring much needed change to the social sector.

To read more at Harvard Business Review.

Yale Entrepreneurial Institute launches new VC Advisors Program

耶鲁创业学院新开风险投资顾问课程

New VC Advisors Program in YEI

This fall, the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute is launching a new program for graduate and professional school students interested in financing and evaluating student startups. The program is called VC Advisors—short for Venture Creation Advisors—but the VC works in the more traditional sense, too. Selected students will get hands on experience in reviewing the market viability of student ventures, simulating a VC experience. They will help select and fund a portfolio of student ventures in YEI’s Venture Creation Program and support these early stage venture teams by guiding them toward more resources and funding opportunities within YEI.

YEI has been developing and expanding its Venture Creation Program since it launched this past year. Student venture teams in the program have an initial concept and are given up to $2,500 to further research and develop their idea. Now, working one-on-one with established venture capitalists, VC Advisors will help direct these funds and guide the startups’ development. VCP teams come from schools across Yale, and can represent any industry from software to clean energy to healthcare and consumer goods.

For more information, please see the website.

TAU ranked among top producers of Startups

培育初创公司 特拉维夫大学名列前茅

TAU ranked among top producers of Startups

TAU graduates among the most successful in the world at securing American funding for new companies, according to new data.

Tel Aviv University ranks among a handful of elite universities that turn out entrepreneurs capable of attracting big American funding, a new study publicly available on the Internet shows. And it's the only non-American university in the top tier.

In a list of the 16 universities that produce the most startups founded with American venture capital, TAU is 15th, just below Princeton University and tied with Duke University. Stanford University tops the list with 193 startups to its name, while Harvard University is a distant second with 120.

TAU President Prof. Joseph Klafter welcomed the findings, saying, "They are a testament to the innovation and entrepreneurship that permeates TAU culture."

The numbers come from CrunchBase, the online database behind the popular TechCrunch technology business websites. They were analyzed and published by blogger Max Woolf of Minimaxir, who covers startups, technology and blogging with a statistical bent. 

For further info, please visit http://english.tau.ac.il/impact/techcrunch.