See It, Believe It, Do it

"What does every self-help book teach? Think it, believe it, do it. See video by Stevie Rae, a Wizard of Ads partner who reiterates this message with passion. I've come to realize that everyone, even great leaders, have self-depreciating thoughts. It seems the great leaders choose to remove those thoughts when they appear. Don't tolerate negative thoughts about yourself or others. And if that doesn't work, then as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, 'Do the act, and the attitude follows.'"

From Decker Marketing.

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online database of business case studies

"CasePlace.org is an online database of business case studies and supplementary materials for faculty seeking to integrate discussion of social and environmental issues into the MBA curriculum. CasePlace.org is also a free online service for business school faculty, students and businesses. They can help you find some of the best cases, references, and commentary published by and for business educators and business executives. For business materials that incorporate social impact management, corporate social responsibility, and business ethics, you've come to the right place.

CasePlace.org is a service of the The Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program (BSP). Aspen BSP staff’s extensive and ongoing searches of teaching materials, with guidance from discipline experts produce the material. They also rely on you to provide new content, to react to ideas, and to send ideas.

Via Marcus P. Zillman.

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Best of E M E R G I C on Entrepreneurship

"Rajesh Jain, one of India's better known blogging entrepreneurs, has summarised some of his best entrepreneurship articles from 2004. My three favourites are -

- From Employee to Entrepreneur (Aug 2004)
- An Entrepreneur's Growth Challenge (Sep 2004)
- My Life as an Entrepreneur (Nov 2004)

There are so many nuggets of wisdom in those three articles alone that no aspiring entrepreneur should deny themselves the time to read them."

Visit EirePreneur for links to the articles.

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Prayer for Those Affected by the Tsunami Disaster

Father/Mother Creator,

Please heal those who have been affected by this quake and tidal wave. Let those who have died now be in peace and in happiness.

Please comfort the peoples affected by this disaster. Bring their communities together in love, in prayer, and help them care well for each other.

Let the world community pray and assist the people who were affected by this disaster with much compassion and show their caring in practical and abundant ways.

Let those affected by this earthquake and tidal wave rebuild better than before. Let them be strong. May good come out of this time of sorrow.

Bless the earth. Bring peace and harmony to the lands, to the sky, to the waters... If there be a need for the earth to release its tensions in the future, let it do so in a way that is gentle and harms no one. Let the waters return to their natural ebb and flow. Let the earth be calm.

Peace, Peace, Peace... Be calm. Be still. Let the healing begin...

From Beliefnet member WhiteHeron

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Bizz Bang Buzz Blawger Bowl Best

In a close matchup, Bizz Bang Buzz overcame a last minute switch to the Houston defense who scored 24 fantasy points, and went on to defeat the Tech Law Advisor in the inaugural Blawger Bowl fantasy football Championship game.

For the coal miner's son from Scranton, PA, it was That Championship Season all over again.

In the runner up bowl, the Invent Blog, who had dominated the regular season, triumphed over CRC's Inducers.

Other blawgers who participated in the league and made it a swell experience for all concerned, despite, the infamous "Waivergate Affair" (as it has come to be known) were (in no particular order):

actualmalice
Promote the Progress
The Importance of...
ErnieAttorney
Libertarians
Loosely Coupled
UnbillableHours
Patently Obvious

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Ways to Organize a Business

"Based on their needs and intended business activities, entrepreneurs may choose from a variety of legal structures. The general, or 'C,' corporation continues to be the most common entity type, as it allows for an unlimited number of shareholders and usually limits a stockholder's liability to the extent of their investment in the company.

The limited liability company (LLC), which combines the corporate advantage of limited personal liability with the pass-through taxation advantage of a partnership, is also gaining popularity."

But if a general corporation or LLC is not suited to your business needs, there are other options.

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Rust Belt Arts Mecca

A hatted passerby is dwarfed by
sculptor James Simon's
'Liberty Avenue Musicians'in
the Pittsburgh Cultural District
Originally uploaded by TigerTigerTiger.

"Pittsburgh reaps the benefits of its 20-year investment in a downtown cultural district - and in the vitality of its young people.

Cultural districts are popular ways for cities to reinvent themselves, especially older cities past their heyday as centers of industry. Nowhere has this been truer than in Pittsburgh, home of Big Steel. Now, the city is seeing impressive results from its 20-year experiment in designing such a district.

Unlike some cities that had to start from scratch, Pittsburgh already had a core of national-caliber institutions, and a philanthropic base laid by the Heinz and Carnegie families, among others. The 14-block Cultural District was spearheaded by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust in 1984. By buying up derelict historic properties, the trust's first steps were to make the area viable. Now the goal is to nurture future audiences and young artists, and to do that, the trust will have to overcome some residents' resistance to the new.

'We're the town of Mr. Rogers and Andy Warhol, which speaks of what we are and what we're becoming,' says Bill Peduto, a city councilman."

Read the full article at Christian Science Mmonitor. PHOTO BY ANDY NELSON - STAFF

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Delaware Court Holds Directors With Specialized Expertise to a Higher Standard

"A recent decision by the Delaware Court of Chancery found a director who was a former investment banker with experience in a particular industry held to a higher standard than non-expert directors in the context of mergers and acquisitions."

From McDermott Will & Emery via Mondaq.

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Top 5 tips for closing a Series A financing

This post by Andy Sack offers the following tips.

As you might expect, I am not sure I agree with number two. If you have a good attorney, he or she is your collaborator, not someone who needs to be managed. Otherwise, a good set of tips.

1) Get everyone to agree to a timeline, especially the venture partner and investor council. Send an email around and manage everyone to that timeline

2) Don't let the attorneys run the deal. There's a healthy balance that you need to strike in managing your attorney as well as investor counsel. On the one hand, you want to keep your eye on the closing of the financing and keep everyone moving forward expediently. On the other hand, you don't want to annoy or offend the attorneys -- they can make your life tough.

3) Stay in close communication with the lead vc partner -- in this case, I tried to talk with John Ludwig every day just to make sure he wasn't getting frustrated with the process.

4) Know when to give and when to hold-- in every deal I've done, you inevitably have to give on points that seem important but in retrospect aren't. If there's an easy point to give on -- do so. It'll build credibility and flexibility (hopefully)

5) Get it done -- the most important thing to remember is the deal isn't done till the money is in the bank.

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Networking and Alliances Key to Success

"Two of the fundamental principles of business are: Relationships trump credentials in buying (and many other business decisions), and It's not what you know, it's who you know that counts. These truisms show just how important business networking is, especially in an enterprise that doesn't have a lot of people or spare time to invest in relationship-building...

Networking is the process of building and nurturing business relationships. Alliances are contractual arrangements between two or more businesses to achieve shared objectives, usually with a limited life.

There are many good business reasons to network:

Improve knowledge about customer needs

Increase customer trust, and hence sales and penetration

Find new customers

Increase knowledge about markets and good business practices

Get answers to questions and business problems inexpensively

Market test or virally market new product or service ideas

Get your best customers to spread the word about your credentials and expertise (much more effective than self-promotion)

Find new suppliers, contractors, employees, advisors, or coaches

Conduct informal surveys to tap into the Wisdom of Crowds

Collaborate informally on open-source or other projects..."

From How to Save the World.

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"Slammed by Tidal Wave, But I'm OK"

When natural disasters occur in places that are far from home, it is often hard to truly appreciate the devastation and loss. It just doesn't seem real, unless it is happening in our own back yards.

This post by Evelyn Rodriguez who was vacationing in Thailand when the tidal wave hit, brings the story home to all of us.

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Pure Entrepreneurs

This morning's Boston Globe has an article by Scott Kirsner on "pure entrepreneurship".

Pure entrepreneurs are loopy and obsessed. They have a vision of the future, and while others are casting their lines into the water to see what will bite, pure entrepreneurs are jumping over the gunwales and swimming after the white whale.

Via Scott Loftesness.

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WWW Reference Guide Available for Download

"The Jamuary 2005 Zillman Column is now available and is titled World Wide Web Reference. This January 2005 Zillman Column is a comprehensive list of world wide web references resources and sites available over the Internet. Download this excellent 16 page free .pdf (345KB) column today and begin using the many reference resources about the World Wide Web!"

From Marcus P. Zillman.

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Online Business 101

Online business is not so different from any other sort of start-up venture; the same principles apply. Think about what makes an "offline" business successful, and then analyze your Web business in the same way. To get you started, this article from About.com some of the essential steps you�ll need to take.

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Document Your Open Source License Position

"Legal teams doing their due diligence start with checklists. Typically, the acquiring party's legal team will start off by going down their checklists and following up with any responses that diligent reviews seem to indicate. In the area of intellectual property, that usually begins with checking to see if key employees have signed invention agreements, and if the company's patent applications hold water.

In 2005, expect to see all legal due diligence checklists add a section covering open source, checking for both inbound and outbound open-source licenses. So now, if you get in position for an acquisition (or a major investment), the process will go quicker if your open-source licenses are documented, along with employment agreements, patent filings and any other documents typically asked for by a due diligence team."

From Linux News.

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Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

FatherChristmas
Originally uploaded by TigerTigerTiger.

I am 8 years old.
Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
Papa says "If you see it in The Sun it's so."
Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

VIRGINIA O'HANLON
New York, N.Y.

Note: Virginia O'Hanlon wrote this to the editor of the New York Sun in September 1897.

Mr. Church's response was printed as a column in the New York Sun Sept. 21, 1897.

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe unless they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith, then, and no poetry, no romance, to make tolerable this existence. We would have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

FRANCIS P. CHURCH
Editorialist
New York Sun
New York, N.Y.

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Images of Historic Pittsburgh

lyonshorb
Originally uploaded by TigerTigerTiger.

"Historic Pittsburgh is a digital collection that provides an opportunity to explore and research the history of Pittsburgh and the surrounding Western Pennsylvania area on the Internet.

This website enables access to historic material held by the University of Pittsburgh's University Library System, the Library & Archives of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania at the History Center, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. The project represents a model of cooperation between libraries and museums in providing online access to their respective materials."

In addition to digital images, according to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette:

"With new material added over time, the site now also comprises 521 books from the 19th and early 20th centuries, 26 volumes of plat maps from 1872 to 1939, census records from 1850 to 1880 and a timeline of city history from 1717 to 2003."

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Top Seven Capital-Raising Mistakes

#7. Vastly underestimate time commitment necessary for fund-raising
#6. Poor Presentation Skills
#5. Non-Detailed “Use of Funds” Statements
#4. Poor Understanding of Cash Flow
#3. Targeting the Wrong Investor Audience
#2. Accepting Too Much Feedback
#1. Going It Alone

From larta.org

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When Does a Copyright Expire?

"This question is aimed at the duration of copyright. People often want to use a photo or some other copyrighted work, and wonder how they can be sure the copyright has expired. When a copyright expires, material can be lawfully copied.

The current law is that copyright lasts the life of the author plus 70 years. But a copyrighted is subject to the law that is in effect at the time it was created, and the laws have changed over the years."

Here is a chart from Patent Pending that summarizes the duration of copyright for various works based on their dates of creation.

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More Tech Mergers on the Horizon

"The rules of economics don't apply to the high-technology sector - or so it might appear to anyone who has been waiting for a high-tech shakeout. Growth has slowed, profits have shrunk, and investors are eager for the billions of dollars in potential value to be had from mergers, acquisitions, downsizings, and liquidations. All signs point to an imminent restructuring, yet so far not much has happened.

There are certainly formidable barriers to the consolidation of high tech, but the same was true of defense, banking, automobiles, petroleum, and indeed every sector that has restructured. Fundamental economic forces ultimately prevailed, however. In high tech too, the barriers are starting to erode.1 While they might delay change a little longer, restructuring is inevitable - and likely to happen sooner rather than later.

It's time for technology executives to gain a better understanding of what restructuring means for them and to move forward with plans to thrive as it gathers steam. To do so, these executives will have to understand how the unique dynamics of their individual industries shape what companies can achieve in the imminent restructuring. "

From The McKinsey Quarterly.

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