Category: Featured Stories (Page 12 of 43)

Don’t buy the ICO hype! An ICO is an initial coin offering that blockchain startups are using to fund their growth. The problem is that virtual coins are extremely risky investments. This year, ICOs have raised over $500 million in the US and more in China. Speculators can drive up prices by 1000x in a single month.

It’s sheer madness that anyone would buy these virtual tokens issued by unproven startups whose products may not even be successful. It’s a bubble waiting to burst. It’s worse than the 17th century tulip mania, where a single tulip could sell for more than a home.

You might as well go to Las Vegas and play roulette. The odds are better. Eventually, the government will step in and shut many of the startups down, rendering their currencies worthless. Until then, gamble at your own risk.

Founders Space alumni Equbot is the first use IBM Watson to help pick stocks.

“Each day, the Equbot Model ranks each company based on the probability of the company benefiting from current economic conditions, trends and world events and identifies approximately 30 to 70 companies with the greatest potential for appreciation and their corresponding weights, while maintaining volatility comparable to the broader U.S. equity market.”

CNBC: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/16/ai-assault-on-stock-market-ibms-watson-is-getting-into-etf-business.html?view=story&%24DEVICE%24=native-android-tablet Read More...

With the launch of INNOVATION EXPLOSION coming up, I’ve been under a lot of pressure to record episodes for my new podcast on HimalayaFM. The problem is that I have no time. I’ve been traveling and speaking nonstop. So today, I locked myself in my hotel room, turned off my phone, and began recording.

Nothing is more important than focus. Sometimes, you need to force yourself to withdraw to be creative. For me, I need uninterrupted blocks of time. I need to get into the flow. I can’t do it in short burst.

Today is that day! I’m hiding from the world with the curtains drawn, spewing my thoughts into a microphone, and I can only hope that it turns out well.

I had a dream last night about an entrepreneur who kept pitching the same startup at competitions over and over. He was once a successful lawyer, but now he spends all his time working on a startup called Moo Pet that never seems to go anywhere.

Despite being unable to make his startup succeed, he can’t imaging going back to his old life. So he is caught in a sort of purgatory. It’s like Dante’s Divine Comedy, where he’s trapped in Limbo between Heaven and Hell. I’m sure you know someone like this!

A friend of mine is struggling to chose her path through life. She doesn’t want money; she wants a purpose. She wants to do something meaningful.

I’ve struggled with this same thing throughout my life. What’s the most meaning thing I can do right now? How can I make a real impact on people’s lives? How important is money versus doing something to better in the world. Even today, I’m asking myself the same questions. Is there a better direction I can take?

What’s your purpose?

Our brains aren’t like computers. They don’t have any software. There’s no operating system. It’s 100% hardware. It’s like if you had a computer and everything was hardwired.

Fortunately, the design of our brains is nothing like a computer, otherwise, we’d be stuck. Our brains are an incredibly complex tangle of neurons, which are divided into regions. Each of these regions can communicate with 50% of the other regions.

In other words, we have a massively multitasking system, where everything is communicating with everything else at once, and out of this maelstrom of signals emerges thoughts and consciousness. That’s the amazing part, but it gets even more amazing. Read More...

More than any other people in the world, Americans believe in going from rags to riches. The American Dream is that anyone can rise up from poverty and make a fortune.

The irony is that the United States is actually one of the harder countries to make your fortune. In Canada and Denmark, people have practically twice the odds of rising up from the bottom 20% to the top 20%. However, if you live in certain cities, like San Francisco or Seattle, your odds are close to Canada, while if you live in places like Nashville or New Orleans, your odds are much, much lower.

So it’s not just who you are but where you live that determines your chances of success!

As the CEO of Founders Space, one of Silicon Valley’s top startup accelerators, I have been to Taiwan a number of times to give lectures and run startup programs. We also work closely with the Taiwanese government, NCTU and other partners helping Taiwanese startups come to Silicon Valley, make connections, raise capital and go to market. During this process, I’ve seen both the challenges startups face and the potential for success.

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Why do people need to sleep? Isn’t it a waste of time? If you live to be 75, you’ll spend 25 years sleeping. That’s a good chunk of your life.

“Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life.” – Virginia Woolf

“The only time I have problems is when I sleep.” – Tupac Shakur Read More...