Let’s face some cold, hard facts.Banks still aren’t lending much money, and venture capital cash, while spread more liberally in 2011 than in previous years, is still largely hard to come by.The proof, as they say, is in the data:The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reports that business lending is down for five straight quarters, and [...]

The government is working on shoring up patent processing for 2012, a move that can only help Uncle Sam’s relationship with healthcare entrepreneurs.The U.S. government has stepped up its public relations effort for healthcare entrepreneurs, most likely to build support for the polarizing and controversial Health Care Reform Act, which is already in operation and [...]

New York City has long been home to the big, brawny business monolith. From Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs to huge media empires to CBS and Time-Warner, the Fortune 500 has regularly taken a big bite out of the Big Apple.But at the other end of the dial, small businesses — at least the [...]

Funding for the healthcare information technology sector saw robust growth in the third quarter of 2011.According to data culled by Mercom Capital Group, venture capital funding for healthcare IT firms grew by leaps and bounds for the third quarter of 2011. The research shows that $207 million in new inflows funneled into healthcare IT companies [...]

Now here’s a line that should draw the interest of cash-strapped healthcare small business CEOs.“What would the world be like if we invested 50 percent of our assets within 50 miles of where we live?”It’s the central theme — and the opening line of the last section — of the new book, Locavesting: The Revolution [...]

The U.S. Secret Service is the government organization (along with the Office of Homeland Security) tasked with the burgeoning problem of company security breaches.The Secret Service considers the issue of breaches– more colloquially known as “hacking”– a critical issue, and one that has the potential to ruin scores of small businesses.Now, a new study from [...]

Word was that Alexander the Great valued learning so much that he told his biographers that he was more indebted to Aristotle for providing him with knowledge than he was to his own father and mother for gifting him with life.Today’s startup business owners place a high value on learning, too.A new study from IMD, [...]

New business incubators are a sure-fire way to nurture great entrepreneurial ventures; the data bears that out.According to a new study from the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration, business incubators are a better source of regional business growth than any type of government-sponsored public works initiative.The EDA data reveals that incubators generate 20 [...]

As 2011 winds down, small business owners looking for new financing options would do well to take a slice of the holidays and use it to study the two most common startup funding options — angel investing versus venture capital.In this two-part series, we’ll do just that. And before the year ends, look for columns [...]

The debt crisis in Europe and the continued sluggish economy and protracted stalemate over deficit reduction in the United States are clouding the outlook for financing emerging biomedical research, according to a panel headed up by financier and FasterCures chairman Michael Milken.Milken and a panel of three other Wall Street financiers at the Partnering for [...]