Research Commercialization Academy (BETA 0.01)

Author: Jessica Jackley

Source: The Atlantic

Interest: The JOBS Act, which President Obama signed into law in April, will ease regulations on securities in the United States, enabling small businesses to raise funding from non-traditional sources. This legislation, along with Kickstarter and others' accelerating growth, has opened the crowdfunding floodgates. According to a recent report, more than 400 crowdfunding platforms were operating at the beginning of 2012, and several hundreds more are expected to seek accreditation.

Link: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/the-power-and-the-peril-of-our-crowdfunded-future/259304/#

Author: The Squeeze

Source: The Squeeze

Interest: Nearly $1.5 billion was raised for over a million different campaigns around the world last year by 452 different crowdfunding sites, according to a recent industry report from research firm Massolution. That number is expected to grow exponentially once US regulators approve a recently-passed law that allows regular people to buy stock in a startup company using crowdfunding. This kind of equity-based funding is currently restricted to accredited investors, such as venture capitalists.

Link: http://www.thesqueeze.net/All-Categories/Lifestyle/Style-Tech/Crowdfunding-brings-venture-capitalism-to-the-masses

Author: Julie Sickel

Source: IndyStar.com

Interest: Crowdfunding allows the average inventor, entrepreneur or creative type to pitch projects on specialized Web sites and persuade total strangers to donate money to the cause. For now, it is mostly limited to small projects that have progressed slightly beyond the hobby stage. But a new law passed in April soon will remove regulatory barriers and allow larger ventures to sell ownership interest to investors through crowdfunding Web sites.

Link: http://www.indystar.com/article/20120701/BUSINESS/207010323/Crowdfunding-about-expand-past-its-small-startup-roots

Author: Foundation Venture Capital Group, LLC

Source: Foundation Venture Capital Group, LLC

Interest: GeneAssess, Inc., a New Jersey-based biotechnology company, has received a commitment of up to $500,000 from Foundation Venture Capital Group (FVCG), Inc., to validate FRY, a cancer molecular signature gene discovered by GeneAssess scientists that could provide a more accurate diagnostic biomarker for cancer staging.

Link: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/06/29/4599159/foundation-venture-capital-group.html

Author: Carrie Ghose

Source: Columbus Business First

Interest: Ohio State University’s commercialization office is forging ahead with a project it proposed as a joint venture with TechColumbus to train entrepreneurs to lead university spinoffs – instead of waiting up to six months for Third Frontier funding the partners had sought. The Ohio Third Frontier Commission indefinitely delayed a June 22 vote on $43 million in grants over two years that would double its largest single fund, the Entrepreneurial Signature Program.

Link: http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/print-edition/2012/06/29/osu-wont-wait-to-launch-startup-aid.html

Author: News Sentinel staff

Source: Knoxville News Sentinel Co.

Interest: Four student-owned businesses have received a total of $20,000 from a University of Tennessee administered venture fund. The companies are SummerSett Foods, a snack dip company; Grassroots Uganda in North America, an import distribution business; PowerUp Fitness LLC, a children's fitness initiative; and Greek Connect LLC, an information portal for fraternities and sororities.

Link: http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/jun/28/ut-venture-fund-awards-20k-to-four-student/

Author: Kara Swisher

Source: http://allthingsd.com

Interest: Accel Partners, Breyer Capital and Polaris Venture Partners became the newest partners in the seed-stage venture fund aimed at entrepreneurs in the Boston area.

Link: http://allthingsd.com/20120626/accel-breyer-capital-and-polaris-join-harvard-area-experiment-fund/

Author: Jerry Moran, U.S. House of Representatives

Source: The Emporia Gazette

Interest: Whether you are looking for a job, have the next “big idea,” or already own a business and are looking to grow, Startup Act 2.0 can help. Given that attracting investors and gaining access to sufficient capital is a significant challenge for new businesses, Startup Act 2.0 makes common sense changes to the tax code that will help facilitate investment in startups

Link: http://www.emporiagazette.com/news/2012/jun/21/jobs-cant-wait/

Author: Chad Brooks, BusinessNewsDaily Contributor

Source: BusinessNewsDaily

Interest: While many people thought the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act would increase the chances that business owners would raise capital through an IPO, a survey from Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management found that just 1 percent said it had increased their likelihood of doing so or accelerated plans they already had in place.

Link: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2733-jobs-act-ipo.html

Author: Jessica Hall

Source: Kennebec Journal

Interest: Maine officials recently issued an advisory warning investors to approach crowdfunding investment opportunities with caution, but for several local entrepreneurs such alternative funding has been a lifeline. "Crowdfunding" describes what happens when businesses solicit small amounts of financing from nontraditional lenders. It's frequently done by smaller businesses appealing to a loyal fan base, or if the business can't get traditional financing from a bank or investment firm.

Link: http://www.kjonline.com/news/officials-cast-wary-eye-on-crowdfunding_2012-06-24.html

Author: Kent Bernhard, Jr., Money & Finance Editor

Source: UpStart Business Journal

Interest: The SEC is preparing rules to allow companies to raise up to $1 million a year from just about anyone in return for equity. Crowdfunding, as the new system is named, could prove to be fertile ground for entrepreneurs. But even the smartest observers of the entrepreneurial ecosystem can’t be sure just how the crowdfunding experiment will play out.

Link: http://upstart.bizjournals.com/money/strapped/2012/06/22/startups-crowd-crowdfunding-starting.html?ana=e_ubj

Author: Maurice Lopes and Stephen Temes - Co-founders, EarlyShares.com

Source: Huffington Post

Interest: One of the biggest challenges that prospective entrepreneurs face is generating enough money to get their business off the ground. While bringing on investors has always been an option, another financial backing opportunity know as crowdfunding was technically against the law for small businesses. Crowdfunding is a subsidizing method whereby a large group of individuals combines financial resources with relatively small amounts of money, to help raise capital for a new business venture.

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maurice-lopes-and-stephen-temes/equity-crowdfunding-for-dummies_b_1612284.html

Author: Ryan Mac

Source: Forbes.com

Interest: After seeing Facebook through its initial public offering and concluding his teaching of an undergraduate class at Stanford University this spring, Peter Thiel announced the closure of a funding round on a new investment vehicle. “Mithril is a brand new growth capital firm,”says Managing General Partner Royan, who previously served as a managing director at Clarium Capital Management,Thiel’s hedge fund."Our focus is on that inflection point dealing with companies that are beyond a startup stage

Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2012/06/20/peter-thiel-launches-new-venture-firm-with-400-million-under-management/

Author: Anthony Clark

Source: http://www.gainesville.com

Interest: FloridaWorks received a $11.95 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to duplicate its entrepreneurship training program in seven other Florida workforce regions. The regional board for Alachua and Bradford counties was one of 26 recipients for grants of $1 million to $12 million and totaling nearly $147 million for projects to teach skills needed to return to work.

Link: http://www.gainesville.com/article/20120618/ARTICLES/120619593/1002/news?Title=FloridaWorks-to-clone-training-program-with-grant-

Author: Carnegie Mellon University

Source: Carnegie Mellon University

Interest: Carnegie Mellon University's Open Field Entrepreneurs Fund (OFEF) has awarded $500,000 to 10 startup companies from across the U.S. to assist them in growing their business ventures. Announced last year, the fund was established by CMU alumnus and Flip Video Camera creator Jonathan Kaplan and his wife, Marci Glazer, to provide early-stage business financing and support to alumni who have graduated from CMU in the last five years. Source: PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1f3SW)

Link: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/carnegie-mellons-open-field-entrepreneurs-fund-awards-grants-to-10-greenlighting-startups-companies-across-the-us-159560635.html

Author: Mary Moore

Source: Boston Business Journal

Interest: The University of Massachusetts has awarded $750,000 in grants to faculty members working on six research projects, from testing robotics systems to new skin cancer imaging technologies, UMass reported Monday. Projects include big data, robotics, bioinformatics and behavioral sensing.

Link: http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2012/06/18/umass-awards-750k-for-faculty-research.html

Author: Jon Kimmich

Source: Geek Wire

Interest: Crowdfunding isn’t going away. It’s going to increase as companies become more proficient with marketing their products, and as consumers become more acclimated to paying a little to secure hot new product, from hot new companies, before they’re released (and in some cases before the first line of dialog is spoken) or the first line of code written.

Link: http://www.geekwire.com/2012/seattle-companies-leading-crowdfunding/

Author: Robert X. Cringely

Source: Beta News

Interest: Crowdfunding done right will have a huge positive impact on any economy it touches. But by done right I mean done in a manner that maximizes impact and minimizes both corruption and unnecessary complexity. This is not something that must be accomplished specifically through strict regulation, either. I’m not opposed to regulation, just suspicious of it. I’m suspicious of any government policy that purports to be so elegant as to accomplish economic wonders at little or no cost.

Link: http://betanews.com/2012/06/15/we-cant-expect-regulators-to-become-our-crowdfunding-coaches/

Author: Sarah Hanks

Source: Reuters

Interest: Two months ago, President Barack Obama signed the JOBS Act into law, making equity-based crowdfunding legal for businesses that want to raise capital in smaller amounts than traditional venture capitalists or accredited investors supply.

Link: http://www.newsday.com/business/steps-for-sec-to-regulate-crowdfunding-1.3782858

Author: Katie Fehrenbacher

Source: GigaOm

Interest: If just one percent of retail investments in savings accounts, money markets and U.S Treasuries was put into crowdfunding of solar projects — that can provide a 5 to 9 percent return to the investor — then that would deliver more than $90 billion for the creation of clean energy projects, according to a new white paper from Bloomberg.

Link: http://gigaom.com/cleantech/how-crowdfunding-could-revolutionize-solar/