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		<title>WSJ Running a Business</title>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Mar 2011 01:12:56 +0000</pubDate>
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<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304537904577279171433221632.html?mod=rss_Running_a_Business' title=''>Recommended Reading for Young Entrepreneurs </a> <span class="rss-date">May 18, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>There are tons of books that promise to help people become entrepreneurs—but most of them are targeted at adults. We asked experts on kids and business for their top picks to get youngsters started. </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577406432743682976.html?mod=rss_Running_a_Business' title=''>Can Tumblr Turn a Profit? </a> <span class="rss-date">May 16, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>Tumblr founder David Karp switches from building site to seeking ads and sponsors. </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204791104577108754167617774.html?mod=rss_Running_a_Business' title=''>Picture (Not) Perfect </a> <span class="rss-date">May 15, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>Without the resources to hire professional shutterbugs, many small companies tap employees to handle the pointing and clicking—with disastrous results. Here&#039;s how to do it right. </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304363104577392342603822440.html?mod=rss_Running_a_Business' title=''>Twitter Gambles on a Patent Plan </a> <span class="rss-date">May 10, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>In a bid to reduce patent litigation, Twitter has drafted a policy that will put control over how patents are enforced into the hands of its engineers and employees. </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303978104577362403804858504.html?mod=rss_Running_a_Business' title=''>Geofencing: Can Texting Save Stores? </a> <span class="rss-date">May 8, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>Dozens of companies are trying to get into the &quot;geofencing&quot; business—sending out mobile coupons to nearby shoppers. But so far the hype is bigger than the actual use. </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304451104577392092551482830.html?mod=rss_Running_a_Business' title=''>How to Turn Average Employees into Rock Stars  </a> <span class="rss-date">May 8, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>Say an assignment will be tough and your employees will struggle with it. But tell them it&#039;s easy and watch them excel, says columnist Mike Michalowicz. </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304451104577390543936443660.html?mod=rss_Running_a_Business' title=''>Survey: Oklahoma City Tops for Small Business </a> <span class="rss-date">May 7, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>Local small-business owners give San Francisco and New York failing grades for burdensome regulations on start-ups. </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304743704577379842745383450.html?mod=rss_Running_a_Business' title=''>Promotional Video: Making a Blockbuster on a Budget </a> <span class="rss-date">May 7, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>These days, making a video to promote a start-up doesn&#039;t require Hollywood skillfulness or a fat wallet. You can download video-editing programs and take advantage of free and widely viewed distribution channels like YouTube.com and Vimeo.com. </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303916904577376231318815576.html?mod=rss_Running_a_Business' title=''>Bayview Eatery Offers Taste of Coming Changes </a> <span class="rss-date">May 3, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>The recent opening of upscale restaurant Radio Africa and Kitchen is a symbol of the changes unfolding in the side-by-side Bayview and Hunter&#039;s Point neighborhoods, currently the poorest in San Francisco. </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304811304577366064075571378.html?mod=rss_Running_a_Business' title=''>Ranking: The 50 Fastest-Growing Women-Led Companies </a> <span class="rss-date">April 25, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>What do a flame-resistant apparel maker, gold-for-cash business and petroleum distributor have in common? They&#039;re among the 50 fastest-growing companies owned or led by women in North America last year, according to an annual ranking to be released Thursday.  </div></li>
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<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304723304577370431589231276.html?mod=outsidein' title='By Angus Loten Want to buy a restaurant franchise? It helps to own a bunch of them already.Many chains, including Burger King, McDonald&#039;s and Applebee&#039;s, are awarding more outlets to big owners who already own multiple units. Not only are the chains targeting big players in their regular franchise-marketing efforts, they&#039;re also selling the large players scores of longtime company-owned locations.Big owners, who sometimes run dozens, if not hundreds, of restaurants, are appealing for a number of reasons, say franchise consultants. They often have readier access to capital and can prop up underperforming restaurants with stronger sales elsewhere in the chain. They&#039;re also seen as less risky by franchisers, because they have a track record with a brand.But some critics say the push for large owners is edging out traditional single-location owners and handing too much control of a chain to a few big players. Some also argue that small franchisees have a greater stake in a single location, giving a small-business feel to restaurants in a giant corporate chain.&quot;You get to know everybody, and they see you as the face of the restaurant,&quot; says James Gimbel, who owns and operates a single Capriotti&#039;s Sandwich Shop in Davenport, Iowa. Capriotti&#039;s 75 locations are owned by a mix of single and multiunit operators.Of the roughly 60,000 franchisees across all food and restaurant chains in the U.S., 36% are multiunit owners, according to industry research firm FRANdata. Together, the big players own and operate more than 75% of all the U.S. locations for these brands. Darrell Johnson, chief executive of FRANdata, says the rise of multiunit ownership goes back over a decade, but has accelerated sharply since the recession. &quot;Banks were basically not lending,&quot; he says. &quot;So franchisers focused first on the proven operators with strong cash flows.&quot;Now multiunit owners are snapping up newly available locations at a breakneck pace, as many chains shed company-owned outlets to streamline operations amid weaker sales.In April, Burger King Holdings Inc., a Miami-based firm that took part in a 2010 buyout of the fast-food chain, announced plans to sell 278 company-owned outlets to a single franchisee, Carrols Restaurant Group Inc. The $15.8 million deal gives the Syracuse, N.Y., company ownership of a total of 575 Burger King outlets across the country, making it the system&#039;s largest single owner.About 90% of Burger King&#039;s 7,488 units in the U.S. and Canada are franchised. There are a total of 12,534 Burger King restaurants world-wide, 11,249 of which are franchised. The chain is planning to sell most of its remaining company-owned restaurants by the end of the year.Also in April, Guillermo Perales of Dallas completed a deal to buy 96 company-owned Burger King outlets in Orlando, Fla., bringing the total number of units he owns to 172. &quot;It&#039;s very hard to be profitable these days with a single restaurant,&quot; says the 49-year-old, who declines to say what he paid. &quot;You shouldn&#039;t put all your eggs in one basket.&quot;McDonald&#039;s Corp. has also reduced its share of company-run restaurants—to 19% from 23% in 2007—and multiunit owners have snapped up many of them.&quot;There are more restaurants per franchisee than ever before,&quot; says Richard Adams, a former McDonald&#039;s executive who runs Franchise Equity Group, a San Diego-based consultancy for the chain&#039;s franchisees. The average McDonald&#039;s franchisee today owns more than six locations, up from three 15 years ago, he says.McDonald&#039;s uses a different methodology to calculate that number, and says by its count, the average franchisee owns five outlets. As for smaller operators, McDonald&#039;s spokesperson Becca Hary says, &quot;We will always have operators that own one and two restaurants. They are a very important part of our business. We always strive to grow our existing owner/operators into larger organizations.&quot;Still, most chains say they&#039;re actively seeking big players. McDonald&#039;s franchising-information Web page, for instance, says the chain is &quot;seeking individuals who are capable of operating multiple locations.&quot; The pages for other chains, such as Burger King and Yum Brands Inc., parent of Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell, carry similar messages.Critics say the focus on big owners is misguided. For one thing, they argue, bulk deals give large owners too much power. Joe Caruso, a franchise consultant in Havre de Grace, Md., points out that Burger King&#039;s deal with Carrols gives the big owner the right of first refusal on sales of restaurants by existing franchisees in 20 states. That could make it tougher for small players to buy into the system, or for existing small owners to expand, he argues.Mr. Caruso also suspects the deal will give Carrols more say in companywide initiatives. Franchisees with 10 units or less &quot;could be drowned out,&quot; he says. Steve Wiborg, president for Burger King&#039;s North America operations, says Carrols&#039;s right of first refusal on sales of some restaurants won&#039;t damp competition among franchisees in those markets. &quot;We&#039;ll continue to make sure Burger King grows in the right way,&quot; he says.Meanwhile, some industry experts and franchisees dispute the idea that multiunit owners have a bigger say than small owners. Jeff Ritson, president of Bistro Group, a Cincinnati franchisee that operates 30 TGI Friday&#039;s outlets, says large operators don&#039;t have much pull in a chain, since key aspects of the restaurant are controlled by corporate headquarters.But critics say focusing on big owners may also hurt the overall franchises. Mr. Adams, who helps retiring McDonald&#039;s franchisees downsize, says chains risk a decline in the quality of operations as the number of locations per franchisee grows. &quot;Having that one franchisee keeping an eye on things yields happier customers and a more motivated staff. Sales always increase,&quot; he says.Mr. Gimbel, the Capriotti&#039;s owner, says that as a single-unit operator, &quot;We can wow customers with our hands-on service.&quot;  But he hasn&#039;t ruled out expanding. &quot;It&#039;s been great building up and growing this location. I&#039;m excited about doing that again somewhere else,&quot; he says. Mr. Loten is a small-business reporter in The Wall Street Journal&#039;s New York bureau. He can be reached at angus.loten@wsj.com. Sarah E. Needleman, the Journal&#039;s small-business assistant editor, contributed to this article. ...'>Big Food Franchises Get Bigger</a> <span class="rss-date">May 18, 2012</span></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304537904577279171433221632.html?mod=outsidein' title='By Emily Glazer There are tons of books that promise to help people become entrepreneurs—but most of them are targeted at adults. What about the many kids and teenagers itching to start a business? We asked some experts on kids and business for their top picks to get youngsters started. Steve Mariotti, founder of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, a group that&#039;s dedicated to getting low-income kids interested in business, recommends &quot;Teen Business Blasts Off!&quot; by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Amy Rosen. The book, a companion to a documentary film, focuses on how a group of teens started their ventures and handled things like business plans and presentations. The stories show kids that their peers have done it and so can they, Mr. Mariotti says. (He adds that the movie is worth watching, too.)Mr. Mariotti also likes &quot;The Student Success Manifesto&quot; by Michael Simmons, which talks about the entrepreneurial mind-set and the broader vision of life that it brings. He suggests it for a slightly older audience—those between 15 and 21—because it addresses experiences and obstacles in a more mature fashion. Among the book&#039;s lessons, says Mr. Mariotti: &quot;What happens to you is important: Write down what you do, write down all the obstacles and one by one work against the obstacles to make your dreams come true.&quot; Jack Kosakowski, president and chief executive of Junior Achievement USA, a nonprofit in Colorado Springs, Colo., that educates students about the economy, recommends &quot;Kidpreneurs: Young Entrepreneurs with Big Ideas!&quot; by Adam Toren. The book, he says, teaches kids ages five to 13 the principles and rewards of entrepreneurship, using easily digestible charts, diagrams and activities. &quot;We often hear from young people that they have a good idea for a business but don&#039;t know how to get started,&quot; says Mr. Kosakowski. &quot;This book boils it down in an age-appropriate way.&quot;A useful book for kids 8 to 15, he says, is &quot;Growing Money: A Complete Investing Guide for Kids&quot; by Gail Karlitz and Debbie Honig, which breaks down ideas like saving, investing, spending and credit. &quot;Having that foundation, financial literacy, is important,&quot; he says.Finally, Mr. Kosakowski likes Donna Fenn&#039;s &quot;Upstarts: How Gen Y Entrepreneurs Are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit From Their Success,&quot; which discusses how the younger generation is building disruptive technology using the Web and other digital tools.  Jeff Cornwall, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., says &quot;Business Model Generation&quot; by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur is a good tool to help teens understand all of the aspects of a business, like operations, marketing and revenue, with straightforward writing and lots of graphics. &quot;This helps them do a much better job of getting something started and getting it started correctly,&quot; he says. &quot;It gets them looking for opportunities in the marketplace and trying to produce those.&quot;  Thom Ruhe, vice president of entrepreneurship at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, recommends looking beyond books, too. For instance, he suggests lemonadeday.org, which teaches kids how to operate a classic first business—the lemonade stand—by focusing on things like creating a budget, serving customers and repaying investors. Another worthwhile site: allterrainbrain.org, which features cartoons that teach kids how to build a company, sell a product and more.Mr. Ruhe also recommends the Kids&#039; Pages at the United States Patent and Trademark Office site (uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ahrpa/opa/kids). Among other things, the pages explain how to establish an invention notebook to regularly document your ideas and progress. &quot;You can find value in mining your own ideas, but you have to start with a little bit of discipline,&quot; Mr. Ruhe says.Junior Achievement, meanwhile, has worked with the Small Business Administration to create &quot;Mind Your Own Biz,&quot; a site that walks kids ages 11 to 18 through creating a business plan. (You can find the site at studentcenter.ja.org/business.) Mr. Kosakowski also points budding business brains to youngentrepreneur.com, a social-networking site where users can post questions in categories like &quot;Women Entrepreneurs,&quot; &quot;Buying or Selling a Business&quot; and &quot;Inventors/Inventions.&quot; Ms. Glazer is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal&#039;s New York bureau. She can be reached at emily.glazer@wsj.com. ...'>Recommended Reading for Young Entrepreneurs</a> <span class="rss-date">May 18, 2012</span></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577406751747002494.html?mod=outsidein' title='By Sarah E. Needleman And Emily Maltby  Google Inc. recently tweaked the way its search engine ranks websites, seeking to downplay sites it suspects of artificially boosting their rankings. Now some small businesses say they are scrambling to avoid being relegated to the Internet&#039;s junk bin.Among them is Andrew Strauss, the 47-year-old co-owner of San Francisco-based Oh My Dog Supplies LLC. In the past, about 70% of his customers found his company from the results of Google searches, often for terms such as &quot;dog beds&quot; or &quot;dog clothes.&quot; Ever since Google&#039;s algorithm change at the end of last month, he says his website isn&#039;t showing up in Google rankings—at least not where most people would see it. Traffic through Google has plunged by 96%, he says. Mr. Strauss expects his six-year-old business to generate sales of $25,000 this month, down from $68,000 in March, the month before the changes. &quot;We&#039;re completely crippled now,&quot; he says.Mr. Strauss thinks it&#039;s possible his site&#039;s rankings nosedived because he had paid for hundreds of inbound links in response to a traffic drop of more than 50% following one of Google&#039;s 2011 algorithm changes. He says he abandoned that strategy because it didn&#039;t work. His business also contributes posts about dog-related topics to websites like EzineArticles.com and Squidoo.com, with links to his site in each. Still, he doesn&#039;t believe his site should be punished for that. &quot;It&#039;s just a regular marketing activity,&quot; Mr. Strauss says.Google declines to divulge specifics of its search-ranking algorithm, but it discourages paid links and low-quality website links. According to Google, the recent shifts in its algorithm, known as &quot;Penguin,&quot; will enhance the user experience and don&#039;t punish businesses that follow its guidelines.&quot;The Penguin algorithm update was designed to reduce Web spam, which is when websites try to get a higher search ranking than they deserve by deceiving or manipulating search engines,&quot; says Matt Cutts, a Google engineer. &quot;In many cases, the affected sites had been spamming for a long time,&quot; Mr. Cutts adds.Among the tactics Google dislikes are &quot;keyword stuffing,&quot; or overloading Web pages with keywords, and paying for inbound links as a way to artificially boost search rankings. Google makes about 500 changes to its algorithm annually. Penguin, the most recent update, affects only 3.1% of U.S.-based Google search queries, Mr. Cutts says. Ralph Slate, 43, of Springfield, Mass., also says he&#039;s getting pushed way down in the rankings as a result of the recent changes.In the past, his database of hockey players often appeared in the first page of rankings when users searched for hockey players such as Evander Kane, or Jonathan Toews, for instance. But now, HockeyDB.com appears several pages deep into the ranking—an area where Mr. Slate worries few Google users would bother to go. Traffic to HockeyDB.com is down by roughly 30% from the 50,000 daily visitors it was averaging prior to Google&#039;s update, he says.Mr. Slate suspects the reason is that thousands of other websites, including hockey forums, link to his HockeyDB.com. He doesn&#039;t know which of those other websites Google might view favorably or unfavorably. &quot;I have never paid for a link, and I don&#039;t do link-sharing sites,&quot; says Mr. Slate. &quot;I don&#039;t do keyword stuffing. That&#039;s why this is so frustrating.&quot;Google provides free tools, exposure and advice for webmasters and small businesses around the world, Google&#039;s Mr. Cutts says. &quot;We&#039;re trying to level the playing field for those focused on building useful sites with compelling content for their users,&quot; he says.Because Google makes so many changes to its algorithm, it&#039;s often difficult for small-business owners with limited resources to stay on top of all of its tweaks, says Barry Schwartz, a search-engine analyst in New York. ‪ Still, those whose business models rely mainly on Google to draw customers to their websites should plan to follow Google&#039;s guidelines, advises Lee Odden, a search-engine marketer in Minneapolis. &quot;You want to make sure that income doesn&#039;t go away,&quot; he says.‪ Some entrepreneurs say that as a result of Google&#039;s recent adjustments, their websites are getting boosts.The Austin, Texas, company SpareFoot Inc. has seen traffic to its website double in the past few weeks, according to Tony Emerson, who handles search-engine optimization for the 41-person firm. &quot;It was vindication,&quot; he says, because he believes that some of his competitors engaged in unfair practices to get their sites to rank higher than his. &quot;It&#039;s been frustrating. We&#039;d been doing the right thing for so long.&quot; SpareFoot, a database of storage companies, gets paid each time a customer who is moving—or simply needs extra closet space—uses one of the self-storage facilities listed on the site. Mr. Emerson projects the heightened traffic will yield a proportional increase in sales.&quot;We should fare well,&quot; adds Jim Hale, a marketing manager for the Mayo Clinic. The Rochester, Minn.-based medical nonprofit saw its traffic increase 63% last year, compared with 12% in years prior. Mr. Hale credits Google&#039;s earlier rounds of algorithm changes as the biggest factor for its traffic increases.But Michael Eisenwasser, president of SongLyrics.com, a subsidiary of SoundMedia Inc. in Chicago, says his website is suffering. Traffic to the website, which relies mainly on advertising to generate income, has declined 20% from Google since Google&#039;s update last month.Mr. Eisenwasser says he doesn&#039;t believe he&#039;s guilty of violating Google&#039;s guidelines. But he suspects his site&#039;s rankings suffered because low-quality sites point to his. &quot;We&#039;re being punished because other sites are linking to us, sites we&#039;ve never talked to,&quot; Mr. Eisenwasser says. He&#039;s now trying to contact the sites to ask them to remove the unwanted links in hopes of restoring his site&#039;s previous ranking on Google, he adds.Stained-glass artist Pam Hansen, 57, of Savannah, Ga., thought she was helping her Internet business by reciprocating links with other websites and signing up to get her site on link exchanges, such as LinkPartners.com and LinkMarket.com.Now, she&#039;s racing to remove the links because her site, AGlassMenagerie.net, is ranking much lower for certain search terms, such as &quot;stained-glass windows&quot;—one of her top products.&quot;I&#039;d rather focus on doing the glass but I&#039;m spending all my time trying to redo the website,&quot; says the entrepreneur, who launched the business in 1996. She has no formal computer training, she adds.Ms. Hansen says she knew there was a problem the day Penguin launched. Her Web traffic, usually hovering between 500 and 600 visitors a day, plummeted to less than 200.She used to get several customer inquiries and one or two orders each week—but no more. Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com and Emily Maltby at emily.maltby@wsj.com ...'>Google Tweaks Search, Hurting Firms</a> <span class="rss-date">May 17, 2012</span></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304356604577339922473724842.html?mod=outsidein' title='By Javier Espinoza Small businesses are about to get a powerful new tool for raising capital—crowd funding.Under the recently passed Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, small firms will be allowed to sell equity stakes online to large numbers of investors, just as some companies now solicit funds on platforms like Kickstarter.com. And businesses won&#039;t face the usual rules and red tape that come with larger equity offerings. (Read the text of the act at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr3606enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr3606enr.pdf.)Even though the process will be simpler, there are a lot of nuances and potential pitfalls companies will need to keep in mind. We asked experts for their best advice and biggest caveats.The easiest way to offer stock online will be to use an existing platform like Kickstarter, experts say. A few sites have even handled crowd-based equity sales using different methods, such as permitting only sophisticated investors to buy shares.But after the JOBS Act takes effect later this year or in 2013, many new sites will likely enter the market. How can you tell what&#039;s the best choice? David Millard of law firm Barnes &amp; Thornburg LLP in Indianapolis recommends carrying out extreme diligence on any site you might use. &quot;You want to make sure that the platforms are not fly by night, they satisfy the legal obligations&quot; imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, he explains.Of course, he says, just because a site has a good pedigree doesn&#039;t mean it will take hold as the industry standard: &quot;In the tech world, the tried, true and established can become irrelevant and passé overnight.&quot;Under the new rules, businesses will be able raise up to $1 million annually, and most small investors can give up to $2,000 total. But how do you decide what your company is worth? And how big of a stake should you sell?A common mistake that small-business owners make, experts say, is to give away too much of their equity when they are at their initial stages of raising capital. &quot;You started your business to keep as much equity as you could, so you should work hard to do that,&quot; says Dave Lavinsky, president of Growthink Inc, a business-planning firm and investment bank. Michael Bush, a small-business adviser in San Francisco, recommends offering less than 10% of equity. As for valuation, he offers a rule of thumb: Figure out how much annual revenue you expect your company to bring in two years after raising the capital. Then value the business at one to two times that number.One of the biggest changes in the new rules is removing limits on who can invest. Unlike regular stock offerings, crowd offerings are open to people of any wealth level, and companies can reach out to them directly through social networks and other venues. But that doesn&#039;t remove a very basic hurdle: Lots of people won&#039;t want to be the first on board. &quot;Anyone who considers funding you knows exactly how much you raised already,&quot; says Mr. Lavinsky. If investors &quot;go to the site, and you have zero dollars raised, [they] are going to be skeptical.&quot;One solution is to tap your existing customer base. &quot;Nurture your customer base and have loyal customers,&quot; Mr. Lavinsky says. &quot;When it comes to crowd funding, you will already have an existing relationship with those people.&quot;Companies might also consider turning to suppliers as potential stockholders. Still, some experts recommend caution, since investors will have access to the financial statement a company files with the SEC.&quot;Business owners should think about whether or not they want their suppliers and vendors to have access to sensitive information like margins and earnings,&quot; says John M. Torrens, a professor of entrepreneurial practice at Syracuse University&#039;s Martin J. Whitman School of Management.Under the new rules, small businesses don&#039;t have many reporting obligations. Before they sell stock, they must file financial statements with the SEC and disclose any risks related to the offering, says Mr. Lavinsky. They also need to make available to potential investors their income-tax returns for the most recent year, as well as certified financial statements. Aside from some other rules aimed at very large investors, that&#039;s essentially it.Still, experts advise that it&#039;s a good idea to go beyond those basics. For one thing, says Mr. Bush, small companies should be specific about how they plan to use the funds that they raise from investors. &quot;If someone asks you how you&#039;re going to use the money, you should be able to be very specific and provide a lot of details,&quot; Mr. Bush says. &quot;You don&#039;t want to say general things like, &#039;to buy new equipment.&#039; &quot;Experts also think that it&#039;s a good idea to give investors regular updates every three months or so, perhaps in the form of a webcast or an email newsletter.&quot;Let them know how the business is doing, where you&#039;ve been having some trouble, what you&#039;re going to do to mitigate that trouble&quot; and other important points, says Mr. Bush.It&#039;s also important to spell out those ground rules early on. &quot;Let them know that you will be providing updates this way prior to getting the money,&quot; Mr. Bush says. &quot;You will not be returning phone calls because you need to focus on your business.&quot;  Mr. Espinoza is a London-based staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal Europe. He can be reached at javier.espinoza@wsj.com. ...'>Doing Equity Crowd Funding Right</a> <span class="rss-date">May 18, 2012</span></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204791104577108754167617774.html?mod=outsidein' title='By Barbara Haislip Like the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. But many of the pictures on company websites inspire just one: &quot;Huh?&quot;Without the resources to hire professional shutterbugs, many small companies tap employees to handle the pointing and clicking—with disastrous results. They put up product pictures that are too fuzzy to make out. Or employee photos that are more embarrassing than the ones in a high-school yearbook. Sometimes they even use shots that are patently off-putting, like a picture of their offices with traffic cones and construction rubble out front.Whatever the problem, poorly considered pictures can hurt a company&#039;s sales and reputation. Sarah E. Endline, founder of chocolate maker sweetriot, found that out when she put blurry photos of her chocolate-covered cacao nibs on the company website in 2005.Ms. Endline got emails from customers asking what exactly the product was. (One popular guess: chocolate-covered raisins.) The photos were so hard to make out, they even confused the staffers. &quot;One time we almost printed the product photo upside down,&quot; Ms. Endline says.The photo flub ate into her sales, she says, although she can&#039;t quantify how much. By 2009, she realized she needed better pictures, and turned to a French photojournalist, Jean-Luc Mège, whom she had met at a restaurant. The photos—both of the products and the company team—have been amazing ever since, she says. Now &quot;customers love our photos,&quot; Ms. Endline says. &quot;We put them in every delivery box and send them often as postcards.&quot;Sometimes pictures don&#039;t just leave customers confused—they make them a little queasy, too. Matthew Griffin, president and chief executive of Baker&#039;s Edge, says he had some cringeworthy photos on his site between late 2005 and late 2006. To show that the company&#039;s signature brownie pan could double as a roasting rack, &quot;we had a photo that had our brownie pan with a huge, bloody hunk of meat on top—showing off its awesome features,&quot; Mr. Griffin says.The photo &quot;wasn&#039;t doing us any favors,&quot; he says. Customers asked, &quot; &#039;What is a giant meat hunk doing on your pan?&#039; &quot; and &quot; &#039;What is going on with the product?&#039; &quot; he recalls. Around April 1, some folks wrote to say they thought the picture was a great joke.Mr. Griffin can&#039;t say how much business he lost due to the &quot;horrifying meat pans,&quot; but by 2007, the company got the message and ditched the photos. It now taps employees who are talented photographers to take the shots, and has outside pros touch them up.Another poor picture didn&#039;t bring any customer blowback, but Mr. Griffin suffered &quot;direct consequences&quot; for it: an image of his then-pregnant wife squeezed into a chef coat. She said it made her look &quot;gigantic,&quot; he recalls. &quot;I had to personally delete that image so I could stay married.&quot;Some photo issues are more subtle than Mr. Griffin&#039;s, but can do just as much to hurt a company&#039;s image. According to presentation-design firm ProPoint Graphics LLC, one of the most common problems comes in the &quot;About Us&quot; section, where companies put up pictures and bios of their officials. All too often, it ends up as &quot;headshot soup,&quot; with photos of individuals all taken at different times and with different backgrounds.&quot;The disparity in the photos distracts from the intended use of the photos, which is to portray a cohesive unit of individuals,&quot; says Daniel Pries, co-founder of ProPoint. &quot;Rather, it portrays a jumbled assortment of individuals, which communicates inconsistency and carelessness.&quot;In some cases, the individuals who show up on company sites don&#039;t even work there. &quot;We have experienced clients of ours using stock photos in their presentations and website to represent actual people—mainly office or meeting shots,&quot; Mr. Pries says. One client, he adds, was called out on it by a customer &quot;when the photos of their supposed people showed up on another company&#039;s materials.&quot;Sometimes Mr. Pries has to use a bit of trickery to keep company presentations looking good.In one case, a client had a corporate group shot in which everyone in the photo was wearing a suit except one person who refused to do so. Mr. Pries didn&#039;t want to leave the image as it was, because it would send a message that the company was disorganized. So, ProPoint grabbed a stock image of a man in a suit and put the suit on the dissenter in the group shot.Getting those details right is crucial, Mr. Pries says. &quot;The images you use should reinforce your brand and message,&quot; he says, &quot;because in the end it is the pictures that your clients will remember.&quot;  Ms. Haislip is a writer in Chatham, N.J. She can be reached at reports@wsj.com. ...'>Picture (Not) Perfect</a> <span class="rss-date">May 16, 2012</span></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304543904577396691153835210.html?mod=outsidein' title='By Shayndi Raice Silicon Valley start-ups are being energized by some new big spenders in town: Facebook Inc., Groupon Inc. and Zynga Inc.This year, Facebook and newly public Groupon and Zynga have been snapping up companies at a record pace. In the first three months of the year, the three companies bought at least 21 firms, more than double their combined acquisitions in the same period a year ago, according to Dealogic and people familiar with the deals.While Facebook, Zynga and Groupon haven&#039;t been shy about buying companies in the past, they recently have ramped up their acquisitions pace and delivered some of their highest-ever prices for deals. Many of the deals, such as Facebook&#039;s purchase of app developer Glancee, are strategic moves into mobile technologies or new markets, instead of like past acquisitions to grab engineering or other talent.The activity is an outgrowth of the huge sums that the Web companies have raised, or expected to soon raise, through IPOs. Groupon and Zynga went public late last year, snagging $805 million and $1 billion, respectively. When Facebook goes public this week, it is expected to raise up to $13.6 billion.The rapid-fire acquisition pace and the swelling deal prices are rippling across Silicon Valley, boosting the expectations of many entrepreneurs and investors that lucrative—some would say overly expensive—payouts will continue.&quot;The effect [of Facebook, Zynga and Groupon buying companies] has been throwing a match into an already very heated venture environment,&quot; said Patricia Nakache, a partner at venture-capital firm Trinity Ventures, which invested in travel start-up Uptake that Groupon acquired in February for an undisclosed sum. &quot;It is leading in the short term to an even more frothy investment environment.&quot; Jason Willig, chief executive of San Francisco-based mobile game company Booyah, agrees: &quot;I think there is tremendous opportunity for big exits.&quot;Of all the companies, Facebook has been the fiercest acquirer, buying 12 firms in the first three months of 2012, compared with 12 for all of last year, according to Dealogic.That puts Facebook in line with one of Silicon Valley&#039;s most voracious buyers, Google Inc., which grabbed 13 companies in the first three months of 2012, according to Dealogic.Since the first quarter, Facebook&#039;s deal making has included its biggest-ever purchase: the $1 billion agreement last month for photo-sharing app firm Instagram Inc. At the time, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the acquisition differed from past deals in that Instagram&#039;s technology would be incorporated into Facebook&#039;s mobile strategy to help the social network beef up its presence in the mobile market.The Menlo Park, Calif., social network is spending its funds in other ways too, buying $550 million worth of AOL Inc. patents from Microsoft Corp. Meanwhile, Zynga this year also made its biggest-ever purchase: a $180 million acquisition of games maker Omgpop in March. The sum exceeds the $147.2 million that Zynga said it spent in all of 2010 and 2011 to buy 22 companies. Zynga declined to disclose how many acquisitions it has made this year apart from Omgpop. Rob Coneybeer, a venture capitalist at Shasta Ventures, has seen firsthand how hungry Zynga has been in acquiring start-ups. He invested in 20-person mobile game company Wild Needle Inc., which he said Zynga scooped up several weeks ago for an undisclosed sum.Mr. Coneybeer said Zynga executives were &quot;rapid in their decision making and they made an offer that was easy to say yes to.&quot; Zynga wooed Wild Needle by selling the start-up on its reach and cross-promotion abilities, he said. Wild Needle employees were &quot;really fired up,&quot; he added.&quot;Zynga can&#039;t afford to miss the next big hit,&quot; said Mr. Coneybeer. &quot;Games have a shelf life so Zynga by definition will have to be a voracious acquirer.&quot; Groupon, the Chicago-based daily deals site, bought seven companies in the first three months of 2012, compared with seven in all of 2011, according to Dealogic. But unlike Facebook and Zynga, Groupon isn&#039;t spending big sums, instead shelling out just $28.4 million on start-ups so far this year, according to a regulatory filing.Recent deals include San Francisco mobile-payment company Kima Labs, which Groupon bought in February. Terms weren&#039;t disclosed.Groupon said the purpose of the deals has been to snag talent to build up product and technology offerings. That is a shift from last year, when Groupon focused on buying daily-deal sites in international markets to expand its footprint.Executives at Zynga and Facebook have sought to blunt expectations that their buying streaks will continue. Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said in an earnings call last month that big acquisitions such as Omgpop will be rare.Facebook&#039;s Mr. Zuckerberg, in a blog post announcing the Instagram deal, said, &quot;We don&#039;t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all.&quot;But entrepreneurs aren&#039;t discouraged. Mike Ouye, CEO of games company Red Robot Labs Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., said Zynga&#039;s $180 million for Omgpop is a sign that entrepreneurs building one-hit wonders in the mobile space have the chance to sell that hit for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. Mr. Ouye adds that he has already had some calls from bigger companies looking to buy, but wouldn&#039;t disclose the details of the conversationsVenture capitalist Ms. Nakache said hope springs eternal. &quot;Silicon Valley is a glass half-full optimistic place,&quot; she said. Write to Shayndi Raice at shayndi.raice@wsj.com ...'>New Tech Spenders in Feeding Frenzy</a> <span class="rss-date">May 14, 2012</span></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304371504577406030171075966.html?mod=outsidein' title='By Andrew R. Johnson American Express Co. won&#039;t charge small businesses to use a service for creating discount offers that are delivered to Amex cardholders via a new smartphone feature and other platforms as it looks to expand merchant acceptance of its high-end cards.Small merchants represent the last mile for credit-card companies, which want as many retailers as possible to accept their plastic to increase transaction volume. American Express enjoys mass acceptance among major merchants such as Best Buy Co., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp., but has been less present among small businesses, which often scoff at the fees they must pay each time a customer swipes a card.&quot;With small merchants we believe particularly now it&#039;s a...cluttered space [for merchant offers], and we don&#039;t want to charge small merchants for this,&quot; said Ed Gilligan, vice chairman of American Express.Large merchants can load one offer for free but must pay for additional offers based on customer use.In addition to having offers delivered to cardholders&#039; mobile phones, all merchants who use American Express&#039; Go Social platform can have deals presented via social-networking services Foursquare and Facebook, which have partnerships with the credit-card lender. Merchants must accept its cards to use the service.The latest proposition for consumers from American Express is a service that presents similar offers inside of American Express&#039; existing mobile app. Cardholders can click a tab to see all the offers available to them, ranked by their past spending and their location when they have the app open on their phones.The feature was added to the company&#039;s iPhone app in an update Monday and is expected to be added to its Android app in the future, Gilligan said.Cardholders can redeem an offer by clicking a button to sync it to their card account and then using their card at the participating merchant. The discount is applied to a cardholder&#039;s account as a statement credit in about three to five days.&quot;Essentially we&#039;re bringing to bear all the data that we have from cardmembers and from merchants, and from the transactions that happen in between,&quot; said Luke Gebb, vice president of global marketing for American Express.American Express has the ability to generate revenue by charging other merchants fees to load offers and by increasing customers&#039; use of their cards, Gilligan said.&quot;Every time a transaction is consummated where we connect the cardmember and merchant, we&#039;re getting more spend on our network,&quot; Gilligan said.In addition to being the largest U.S. credit-card lender by spending, American Express also operates a processing network that handles transactions between merchants and cardholders. That model differs from Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., which operate processing networks but rely on banks to lend and issue cards to consumers.They also have been getting into merchant offers.Visa is testing a service that lets cardholders receive offer notifications via email and text message based on their location. MasterCard announced last month it was partnering with a company called Local Offer Network to allow banks to give their cardholders access to &quot;daily deals&quot; content.American Express has been particularly aggressive, announcing partnerships last year with Foursquare and Facebook that let cardholders receive offers based on locations they have checked into and companies they have &quot;liked.&quot; Earlier this year it rolled out a similar service with Twitter, allowing customers to load deals to their cards by tweeting special messages. ...'>American Express Targets Small Businesses</a> <span class="rss-date">May 15, 2012</span></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304371504577402531319165366.html?mod=outsidein' title='By Jeremy Singer-Vine A security lapse at the popular crowd-funding website Kickstarter.com exposed more than 70,000 project ideas that weren&#039;t ready to be viewed.The information that could be seen didn&#039;t include credit-card numbers or other sensitive personal details, but it could make users more wary of Kickstarter&#039;s data practices and lower their expectations of privacy on the site.The lapse stemmed from a website update in late April, the company conceded on Sunday.Kickstarter provides an online platform for users to raise money from friends and strangers for project-based creative endeavors, such as building a videogame, making a documentary or recording an album. The company said, &quot;The bug made accessible the project description, goal, duration, rewards, video, image, location, category, and user name for unlaunched projects. No account or financial data was made accessible.&quot;The company said it didn&#039;t yet know if many people beyond a Wall Street Journal reporter saw the nonpublic information, but believes the exposure was limited. Kickstarter said it patched the security hole on Friday afternoon, after The Wall Street Journal began analyzing the exposed data. &quot;Obviously our users&#039; data is incredibly important to us. Even though limited information was made accessible through this bug, it is completely unacceptable. We want to underline once again that zero account or financial information was at any time made accessible by this bug,&quot; Kickstarter said Sunday.The information, while not visible to casual visitors, was reachable through a set of data feeds—together known as an application programming interface, or API. Kickstarter processes all pledges through a third-party, Amazon Payments. The company says it never sees users&#039; credit-card information.The three-year-old Manhattan-based company is a darling of the New York start-up scene. Last year, it was reported that Kickstarter had raised $10 million in venture-capital funding from high-profile investors. Among them were Union Square Ventures; Twitter co-founder and executive chairman Jack Dorsey; Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake; and Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Kickstarter takes a 5% cut of the funds successfully raised through its site. In 2011, visitors pledged nearly $100 million to more than 27,000 projects. That dollar figure appears to be growing exponentially. This year Kickstarter boasted its first of several million-dollar projects, and its first $10 million project—for a smartphone-enabled watch named Pebble. But for every mega-success, there are hundreds of flops—and even more projects that never make it through the site&#039;s vetting process.The Journal was able to download nearly 77,000 of Kickstarter&#039;s most recent projects and drafts, dating back to mid-March, before Kickstarter plugged the security hole around 1:40pm Eastern on Friday.When told about the lapse, Kickstarter users whose draft projects were affected didn&#039;t seem particularly troubled. Sam Billen, a teacher and musician in Lawrence, Kan., had set a goal of $5,000 to help fund his first full-length album in three years. &quot;I&#039;d expect things like [the breach] to happen as they&#039;re growing,&quot; Mr. Billen said. &quot;It&#039;s probably a one-time thing. But I think there are possibly some bigger projects out there where it might have been a bigger issue.&quot; On April 27, Kickstarter touted its new home page in a blog. &quot;Oh, and try to find the secret Easter Eggs hidden on the page,&quot; the company wrote, referring to the playful surprises that computer programmers often work into websites and video games. &quot;Wink wink, nudge nudge.&quot; Corrections &amp; Amplifications  Kickstarter.com is based in Manhattan. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the company was based in Brooklyn, New York. ...'>Kickstarter &#039;Bug&#039; Exposed Projects</a> <span class="rss-date">May 15, 2012</span></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070304577395953754702524.html?mod=outsidein' title='By Antone Johnson Venture capitalists, angel investors and start-up lawyers these days tend to be obsessed with &quot;intellectual property,&quot; or IP. And for good reason: In the information economy, the core assets of a new venture are likely to be talented people, the IP they create, and little else. To maximize future value, founders should try to lay a solid IP foundation even before a new start-up is incorporated. Here are five common mistakes to avoid:  1. &quot;Contamination.&quot; Perhaps the single greatest source of IP anxiety in Silicon Valley stems from the fact that engineers and executives tend to build on what they know best when starting a new venture. If a former or &quot;day job&quot; employer can lay any claim to the IP upon which a new start-up is built, that claim, however tenuous, injects risk into the venture. And that risk grows in magnitude over time proportionate to the success of the business. A classic example is the so-called &quot;Winklevoss Twins problem&quot; made notorious by the movie &quot;The Social Network.&quot; Some degree of ambiguity regarding IP ownership may be inevitable, but if a sliver of equity must be granted to settle the dispute, it makes quite a difference if the &quot;sliver&quot; is in a company worth $1 million or $100 billion. In Facebook&#039;s case, the settlement netted the Winklevoss brothers stock worth many millions of dollars. Of course, such disputes are rarely litigated except when the new start-up turns out to be a big success, in which case everyone scrambles for a piece of it.  2. Mixing up what came from where. IP rights ordinarily belong to the individual who creates the work unless the creation occurs as part of the person&#039;s job, a so-called &quot;work for hire.&quot; One common mistake is to use a non-employee contractor or consultant to produce work without obtaining the necessary assignment of IP rights to the client company. After the contractor has been paid, the company&#039;s leverage to coax him or her into signing more legal documents is more or less gone.This all gets complicated, thanks to the natural fluidity of start-ups as business enterprises: A software developer may have started out tinkering with a side project during evenings and weekends, bring some of that knowledge or code to bear on a consulting engagement with a colleague who founded a startup, and ultimately join the team as a co-founder or one of the first employees. Commonly, co-founders are asked to assign all rights in any IP they may have created in the past that relates to the new business in any way as part of the &quot;purchase price&quot; for their shares of stock. Assuming the individual has those rights to assign in the first place, that takes care of the past, but it still leaves the future. To ensure that the company gets the benefit of future innovation, every employee, co-founder or contractor should sign an agreement with the start-up, commonly called a Confidential Information and Invention Assignment Agreement or similar mouthful, that clearly assigns IP rights in all work done on the company&#039;s dime going forward to the company.  3. Planning to launch a business around a clever, catchy brand name that can&#039;t be used. Registering a corporate name with a state or obtaining a domain name doesn&#039;t necessarily mean the same name can be used in commerce. Here is where trademark law rears its ugly head. It&#039;s also one of the most notoriously subjective areas of law. If I start a company called CloudTech Solutions Inc. in California, and you start one in New York called TechCloud Systems Inc., are they confusingly similar? An entire law school final exam could be given on this one question. There&#039;s no substitute for consulting with a qualified trademark lawyer before investing heavily (financially or emotionally) in a brand. Although it never hurts to consult the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office TESS online database, that kind of search alone is notoriously inadequate.  4. Confusing types of IP and means of protection. Even industry veterans occasionally confuse a trademark with a copyright or a patent with a trade secret. Often multiple IP rights reside in the same product or creation. They may overlap but they&#039;re viewed as discrete rights under law and should be treated accordingly. So, a little terminology goes a long way:  5. Overvaluing patents. Although entrepreneurs often want to &quot;patent an idea,&quot; ideas themselves are not patentable. To be patentable, an invention must be a new, useful and non-obvious method or process, described in enough detail that it can be &quot;reduced to practice&quot; by a person with the relevant technical expertise.What makes patents unique is that they can legally prevent a copycat competitor from doing business, regardless of how hard it may have worked to develop something similar or equivalent to the patented invention. (In other areas such as copyright or trade secret, with few exceptions, independently developing a similar product or work without actually copying the original is perfectly legal.) Patents require the greatest investment—of technical employees&#039; time and the company&#039;s money—and they tend to be narrow in applicability, and written in highly technical terms. The process is slow and expensive, but for those who succeed, the payoff is a 20-year government-sanctioned monopoly over the patented technology. The &quot;Holy Grail&quot; in IP is obtaining a valid patent that your fiercest competitors cannot avoid infringing in order to do business at all. Patents are most valuable in areas such as pharmaceuticals.But they can be of minimal value in Internet and software businesses because those categories of businesses generally come with continuous change in technologies and business models. ...'>5 &#039;IP&#039; Mistakes Start-ups Should Avoid</a> <span class="rss-date">May 10, 2012</span></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304363104577392342603822440.html?mod=outsidein' title='By Emily Maltby, Scott Denne and Shira Ovide Employees are often required to cede the rights to their designs and inventions to their employers. But Twitter Inc. has recently upended that tradition by drafting a policy that will put control over how such patents are enforced into the hands of its engineers and employees. The company&#039;s unusual approach—aimed at curbing patent litigation—is triggering fresh discussion among the founders of some tech start-ups about weaknesses in the current patent system. For small companies with minimal resources, they say, it&#039;s often better to focus energy and resources on executing an idea rather than researching patents and filing patent applications. They argue that patents left in the hand of individuals are less likely to be exploited as a litigation weapon between companies. What&#039;s more, software engineers may be more keen to waive patent rights to work collaboratively. The debate comes as entrepreneurs generally are paying closer attention to patents&#039; potential value because of a coming change in patent law. Under the America Invents Act, which will take effect next March, a patent will be awarded to the first person who files an application. Historically, patents have been awarded to the first person who created the invention.Twitter&#039;s &quot;Innovator&#039;s Patent Agreement,&quot; which was introduced last month, prevents the company from suing others for patent infringement unless it&#039;s acting defensively or the employees whose creations were patented give it permission to do so.Adam Messinger, Twitter&#039;s head of engineering, said his company&#039;s approach isn&#039;t appropriate for everyone, but he said that if others adopt similar principles, &quot;You will reduce the overall amount of patent litigation, which I think is not value creating&quot; for Silicon Valley.Mr. Messinger said Twitter&#039;s policy was a reaction to growing concerns about how patents are being used in litigation. &quot;Everyone is not quite sure it&#039;s right. Everyone would like it to be better somehow,&quot; Mr. Messinger said. &quot;This is our small contribution.&quot;With the values of some technology patents reaching frenzied levels, few, if any, big tech companies with lots of patents are likely to take a similar stance.Even at nascent companies, some lawyers argue, giving employees control over the ideas and designs they develop is risky and perhaps even foolish. They note that patents can be critically important assets for start-ups. Since such companies generally don&#039;t make much of a profit, many investors zero in on their patents as a way to get some value from a company if it eventually fails. Adopting an agreement like Twitter&#039;s would be akin to &quot;taking bullets out of my own gun,&quot; said Nick Soman, the founder of LikeBright.com, a social-media dating start-up. Investors and new hires &quot;want to know where you are driving unique value,&quot; he said. &quot;The best value is your ideas, and sometimes the best protection for that&quot; is the intellectual property itself. Come Lague, the chief executive of Zetta Research, which buys patents from failed start-ups and sells them to other companies, believes Twitter&#039;s new policy could affect the value of its own patents. If a patent has encumbrances on how the intellectual property can be used, &quot;that is not a free and clear title,&quot; he said. At this point, Twitter doesn&#039;t have any patents of its own, but it has at least two patent applications pending. Some of its critics say Twitter&#039;s new position is merely an attempt to discourage other companies from filing patent-infringement lawsuits against it. &quot;This is a P.R.-and-pray strategy,&quot; said Robert Aronoff, the founder and managing partner for Pluritas LLC, an advisory firm for companies buying and selling patents.Twitter&#039;s position has supporters, though, including some venture-capitalist investors. They say that patent litigation chills innovation and that they&#039;re frustrated nascent companies must spend time and money defending themselves against patent-infringement claims. &quot;In the software field, you don&#039;t need a patent to innovate,&quot; said Jason Mendelson of the Foundry Group, a venture capital firm in Boulder, Colo. &quot;It&#039;s not making a new lawnmower or drug or solar cell. It doesn&#039;t cost millions in R&amp;D.&quot;Because companies that own patents can later sell them, patents can even wind up in the hands of &quot;patent trolls,&quot; a derogatory term for companies that enforce patents they have acquired by going to court. Lawsuits brought by trolls, also called nonpracticing entities, have become more than five times more common now than they were in 2004, according to a 2011 Boston University study. The study estimated that from 1990 through 2010 such lawsuits cost innovators $500 billion in lost wealth. Software-company founders generally have neither the time nor the money to file patent lawsuits themselves, but it can also be close to impossible for them to know in advance whether they are infringing on someone else&#039;s patent, some founders and venture capitalists say.Twitter itself has been hit with several patent-infringement claims, including one that alleges it violated a patent that covers methods for delivering messages from known senders over the Internet, which is still pending, and another involving creating an interactive virtual community of famous people. In that case, a jury found last fall that Twitter hadn&#039;t infringed any of the asserted claims.Start-ups may also have to contend with bigger rivals that hoard patents strategically and then use them as a basis for infringement suits. For instance, about 20% of the start-ups backed by venture-capital firm Spark Capital received &quot;threatening letters&quot; at some point from companies claiming potential intellectual-property infringement, according to Bijan Sabet, a general partner. Mr. Sabet said such threats force the companies and investors like Spark to spend time and money they can&#039;t afford to waste. (Mr. Sabet used to be on Twitter&#039;s board; Spark invested in Twitter.) Many of Twitter&#039;s supporters hope it has the clout to create a new movement among tech start-ups. If founders adopt Twitter-like agreements, software engineers will be able to create new products that build on others&#039; innovations without as much fear they will trigger lawsuits, these supporters say.  David Sacks, founder and CEO of Yammer Inc., a San Francisco business-software company, said he will throw out Yammer&#039;s existing employee patent agreements, which turn over patents based on employee work to the company, and replace them with something similar to Twitter&#039;s policy. &quot;What we hope is that more entrepreneurs and engineers will want to work for us because we&#039;re an &#039;IPA&#039; company,&quot; he said, referring to the Twitter policy.&quot;It solves a problem for me that I&#039;ve been thinking about for two years,&quot; adds Angus Fox, founder and director of Multizone Ltd., a mobile-applications developer for the public sector based in Leatherhead, U.K. &quot;We hire subcontractors, and we need to protect our [intellectual property] but preserve their rights. It&#039;s a very difficult area for a start-up.&quot; The company hasn&#039;t yet filed for any patents, but it plans to patent several ideas before turning them into products, he said. Reece Pacheco said he is &quot;certain&quot; he will adopt an IPA at his New York start-up, Shelby.tv., a video-sharing website. &quot;If the innovators had a vision for the technology, that&#039;s what&#039;s best for it, rather than using it to be litigious,&quot; he said.Last month Twitter posted its draft patent policy on GitHub, a website for sharing software code, to solicit feedback and spark conversation. It says it&#039;s incorporating the feedback into its draft. Write to Emily Maltby at emily.maltby@wsj.com, Shira Ovide at shira.ovide@wsj.com and Scott Denne at scott.denne@dowjones.com ...'>Twitter Gambles on a Patent Plan</a> <span class="rss-date">May 10, 2012</span></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304451104577392092551482830.html?mod=outsidein' title='By Michael Michalowicz When most of us hear the term, &quot;the placebo effect,&quot; we think of drug trials and the tendency for some patients to experience positive results even when given a harmless pill with no therapeutic benefits. A similar effect can happen in the workplace to the benefit of your small business, if handled correctly. Simply put, when you tell yourself you can or can&#039;t do something, you not only predict your future; you make your future. The same is true for your employees. For example, when you tell them, &quot;We&#039;re in for a fight,&quot; you are telling them it&#039;s inevitable. Since you&#039;re the boss, they believe you. Now your staff is in &quot;fighting mode,&quot; on the defensive and approaching every situation with hostility. Pretty soon, your company is in a full-on battle with whichever competitor or vendor you predicted you&#039;d end up fighting.If, on the other hand, you tell your employees something like, &quot;This situation will be resolved easily and peaceably,&quot; you&#039;ll &quot;placebo&quot; your team into being a calm, rational staff behaving in a way that would ensure that your prediction is true. Again, they believe you, and the appropriate action follows belief. That is the power of the mind. I think back to an employee we nicknamed Shaq. He was short, and so obviously the name was ironic. But it was really an enabling name, because the real Shaq is a successful basketball player, an icon. We could have called our guy Stretch, but calling him Shaq pumped him up. He owned the name, performing above our expectations every single day.Hire two identical people and call one Flounder and the other Falcon, and I&#039;ll tell you which one has a better shot at success. (Hint: It&#039;s not Flounder.)In his book &quot;Get Anyone to Do Anything&quot; (St. Martin&#039;s Griffin, 2000), David Lieberman references a study about the &quot;powerful role of expectations.&quot; He states: &quot;Assembly line workers who were told that the job was complex and difficult performed less efficiently at the same task than those who were told that it was easy and simple.&quot;Entrepreneurs have a tendency to dramatize the work required when hiring new employees. I&#039;ve been guilty of this myself. We work hard, oftentimes doing the job of 10 people, and when it comes time to hire someone, we want them to feel our pain. So we tell them, &quot;It&#039;s not going to be easy, but…&quot; or &quot;You&#039;ll have to make sacrifices and work long hours, but…&quot; We set them up for a challenge, and what do you know – the job is far from easy, and pretty soon your staff is suffering from the same work-life balance issues you had experienced when you were solo.Rather than predict difficulty, stress and strain, set positive expectations for your employees. Tell them, &quot;It&#039;s going to be easy, and we&#039;re going to work well together. Let&#039;s get to it.&quot; Leave out the &quot;but,&quot; no matter how tempted you are to throw it in. If you do this, your employees will believe you, and those who don&#039;t will probably experience the same outcome because they will be surrounded by a team of believers.  Write to Smalltalk@wsj.com ...'>How to Turn Average Employees into Rock Stars</a> <span class="rss-date">May 8, 2012</span></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304363104577390011371006778.html?mod=outsidein' title='By Angus Loten One of the potential downsides of being a supplier or a vendor to a big company is that you may have to wait a while to get paid.‪On average, big businesses – those with 1,000 or more employees – paid their bills more than a week past the due date on invoices, according to a report that&#039;s expected to be released by Experian next week.‪These big businesses appear to be taking even longer than they did last year to cut checks, and thus, settle their accounts with suppliers: The wait beyond contracted terms – that is, the date agreed to at the time of a sale – grew by 27% over the past year, from six days to nearly eight days, according to Experian.‪‪This trend is particularly disturbing for many small business owners and start-up founders, because they tend to be highly dependent on regular cash flows for working capital to pay their own suppliers and vendors, along with their employees.‪&quot;You&#039;ve done the work, but there&#039;s no cash coming in,&quot; says Brandon Cotter, who runs an online small-business invoicing service.About 14% of nearly 5,000 entrepreneurs cited late payments -- or customers that didn&#039;t pay at all -- as their biggest challenge in 2010, up from just 2% in 2008, according to a study released Wednesday by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, Mo.In 2011, small businesses waited up to 46 days on average to get paid, six days longer than in 2010 and 10 days longer than 2006, according to the National Federation of Independent Business, a small-business lobby group.‪Small-business lending broker Ami Kassar in this video makes the argument that big companies should try to help America&#039;s small businesses by paying their bills in 10 days, rather than several months.‪Readers: we&#039;d like to hear your stories.‪How long are you waiting to get paid by the big companies you are supplying? And how are big companies that are late payers affecting your business?Email me at angus.loten@wsj.com  This online story was updated to include a Ewing Marion Kauffmann Foundation study on small business. Correction: As a result of erroneous data provided by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, an earlier version of this story misstated the increase in small-business owners citing late or non payments by customers as their biggest challenge, which rose to 14% in 2010. ...'>For Small Firms, the Check is Not in the Mail</a> <span class="rss-date">May 9, 2012</span></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304451104577390543936443660.html?mod=outsidein' title='By Angus Loten Small businesses in Oklahoma City may be less frustrated with local regulations than small businesses elsewhere.Local business owners gave Oklahoma City top marks for &quot;overall regulatory friendliness&quot; – including health and safety, environmental and labor rules, according to the survey of 6,000 small firms by Thumbtack.com, an online marketplace for local services, such as general contracting, plumbers and florists. The city received a grade of A-plus. By contrast, San Francisco and New York both received Ds, at least from this sample of business owners. Oklahoma City also ranked high for low hiring costs, lighter licensing regulations and more robust networking programs. The online poll asked business owners to rank the most and least friendly states and cities for small business in more than a dozen categories. Dallas-Fort Worth, Tex., came in second for least burdensome regulations, followed by San Antonio and Austin. Across the board, business owners who responded to the survey were nearly twice as concerned with onerous licensing issues, at state and city levels, than tax rates. Sacramento, Calif., and Albuquerque, N.M., had the least small-business friendly regulations, both receiving Fs in taxes, among other factors—at least, according to this group. Among states, Idaho, Texas and South Carolina ranked highest, in the eyes of the small business owners. However, the ranking excluded Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming, because those states received fewer than 10 responses apiece in the survey.The survey also didn&#039;t ask businesses for their views on local crime rates, for instance. Thumbtack.com says it decided to undertake the survey because most of its customers are small businesses. It worked in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to develop the survey.In fact, here&#039;s a profile in the Wall Street Journal in November on Thumbtack. Readers, please share your comments. How would you rank your city and state in terms of small-business regulations? ...'>Survey: Oklahoma City Tops for Small Business</a> <span class="rss-date">May 7, 2012</span></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304746604577380050008243234.html?mod=outsidein' title='By Sarah E. Needleman While some high-tech companies got their start in garages, a new crop of business founders, including Nick Miller of Baltimore, is giving fresh meaning to the term &quot;garage entrepreneur.&quot; Mr. Miller co-founded Parking Panda Corp., a three-person company that helps city dwellers make money by renting their garage, driveway or other property to people looking for parking spots. Many people can fit another car, or even two, into their drive, he says, especially if they can tuck their own car into the garage. Aspiring parking landlords, typically located in neighborhoods where parking is costly or hard to find, can list their space on the company&#039;s website, along with price and availability. Then, they can use social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to advertise their parking real estate. The 24-year-old Mr. Miller says his website lists 2,500 spaces available in private driveways and garages and in commercial parking facilities in Baltimore and Washington, the two cities where it currently operates. The company makes money by taking a cut of the rent. His and a handful of other parking start-ups are an offshoot of house-sharing services such as AirBNB, and car-sharing services like Zipcar, which claims to be the world&#039;s largest car-sharing service. Such &quot;sharing&quot; businesses are spreading rapidly, in part because they are so easy to replicate, and have attracted some high-profile investors, says Andrew Zacharakis, a professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. Last year, Wheelz Inc., a year-old car-sharing service that operates on three California college campuses, landed an initial $2 million investment from a group of angel investors that includes several Facebook executives. It plans to expand to a fourth college campus later this week.The new parking entrepreneurs hope to develop a niche in what the National Parking Association, a Washington-based trade group, estimates is an $18 billion-a-year U.S. parking market. Their services generally take cuts of 15% to 20% of each rental.&quot;It&#039;s partly a land-grab situation,&quot; says Ulrich Quay, managing director of BMW i Ventures LLC, a new venture fund from BMW AG that recently invested an undisclosed amount in U.K.-based ParkatmyHouse Ltd. The six-year-old driveway-sharing service is expected to debut in the U.S. next month.Studies show that drivers in the U.S. spend an average of eight minutes cruising for city parking, mainly so they can find a space free or at the lowest price possible within the shortest distance of their destination, according to Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. He estimates that hunting for parking is responsible for about 30% of traffic congestion.Overall, there are more than 40,000 paid parking facilities in the U.S., but they aren&#039;t necessarily convenient or affordable for everyone. Last year, Katie Ott, tired of circling the blocks around Chicago&#039;s Wrigley Field in search of parking for Chicago Cubs games, decided to search ParkWhiz.com. She found one private driveway space open for as long as nine hours at a price of $35. Ms. Ott, an enrollment-benefits manager for an insurance company, entered her credit-card number online, and was charged the fee upfront. On game day, she says, she simply left her silver Toyota Camry hybrid at the designated address, before joining friends at a restaurant.As more players enter the field, however, competition may make it harder for the new parking services to succeed. &quot;You have to do millions of these transactions to make it worth your while,&quot; says Prof. Zacharakis, adding that it would be difficult to discourage consumers from listing their parking spaces on multiple services.  Jeremy Smith, co-founder of SpotHero Inc., says driveway owners sometimes forget they have rented out their spaces, leaving renters without room to park, while others overestimate just how many vehicles they can accommodate. The company provides a phone number renters can call in such cases to find a last-minute alternative, or arrange for a refund. Because the new operations are based on a &quot;peer to peer&quot; business model, &quot;issues can arise that are out of your control,&quot; says the 25-year-old Mr. Smith, who launched SpotHero in July 2011 as a driveway-sharing service for the Chicago market, but has since shifted its focus. It now lists mostly commercial parking spaces.Since the Web-based businesses essentially manage the rental of driveways and other private parking spots, the owners don&#039;t have to wait around at home for renters to arrive. Payments are automatically deposited into their bank accounts. Homeowners could face liability if for example, a driver&#039;s car is stolen while parked on their driveway, or if a driver hits a pedestrian while entering or exiting the rental space. Homeowners insurance policies generally &quot;don&#039;t cover business dealings,&quot; says Rebecca Ross, a partner at Troutman Sanders LLP. Mr. Miller, along with co-founder Adam Zilberbaum, launched Parking Panda from a start-up incubator that provided $25,000 in seed money. He says the company recently raised $250,000 from a group of angel investors and it expects to close soon on another $250,000 round of angel funding. He says the business plans to expand to Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.&quot;We don&#039;t use our driveway very much. We might as well make a couple of bucks,&quot; says Mondiu Ladejobi, a 35-year-old information-technology professional in Baltimore, who recently started to rent out half of his driveway for about $8 to Ravens and Orioles fans seeking parking for games at nearby stadiums. He and his wife, he says, normally keep their cars in their garage.  Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com ...'>New Turf for Sharing Services: the Driveway</a> <span class="rss-date">May 3, 2012</span></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303916904577376022989070732.html?mod=outsidein' title='By Jessica E. Vascellaro Silicon Valley companies, hamstrung by patent litigation, are seeking help from the masses.Tech giants like Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc., along with several start-ups, have tapped Article One Partners LLC to crowd-source evidence that a patent they are being sued for allegedly infringing isn&#039;t novel. Proving so in court can invalidate a patent.It&#039;s called finding &quot;prior art&quot; and has long been a core part of fighting patent cases. Now companies are trying a techie twist: describing the disputed technology online and giving awards of around $5,000 or so to those who find the best stuff, from photos to literary references to obscure foreign documents, to strike down the patent.Powering the service are people like 32-year-old Pamela Jackson. A bioengineering Ph.D. student who lives in Oakland, Ms. Jackson saw an ad for Article One researchers while searching for a part-time job on Craigslist a few years ago.Since then, Ms. Jackson has submitted research for 84 studies posted by Article One&#039;s clients on topics including car engines and chemistry, far afield from her specialty in magnetic resonance imaging. She says the clients determined her research was the best six times, earning her thousands of dollars.Her method for probing the validity of a patent often starts with a Google search, moving on to Wikipedia and more obscure troves, like Japanese patent databases translated into English. Ms. Jackson, who isn&#039;t told which companies requested the research, declined to comment on the prior art she has found, citing confidentiality agreements. Still, &quot;it&#039;s a good amount of money for a part-time job,&quot; she says, adding she enjoys the &quot;thrill of the chase.&quot;Article One, a New York-based company founded 3½ years ago, opened its Silicon Valley office last August in Palo Alto and has benefited as patent suits have proliferated in the region. With tech companies chasing hot technologies like smartphones and social networking, rivals are increasingly looking to settle their differences in court. Article One says its largest concentration of clients—some 15%—are in Silicon Valley. Overall, about three-quarters of Article One&#039;s cases are related to high-tech. The site currently features studies seeking prior art on technologies ranging from virtual keyboards to digital payments. Clients pay about $25,000 a study, or they pay varying annual subscription fees. The amount includes the awards for the people who find the best research.Ray Felts, Article One&#039;s North American president, says the company doesn&#039;t tally how many cases it has helped win and declined to comment on most clients. But he highlights one example—the work Article One researchers did for Vlingo Inc.Vlingo, a Cambridge, Mass., start-up that has developed a voice-activated virtual assistant, used some foreign-language documents generated by Article One researchers last year to fight a lawsuit filed against it by Nuance Communications Inc. Vlingo won the case. Nuance didn&#039;t have a comment on the litigation.Mike Phillips, chief technology officer for Vlingo, which Nuance agreed to acquire last year, said Article One had an &quot;innovative&quot; approach. Another Article One client is Nest Labs Inc., a Palo Alto start-up that was sued for alleged patent infringement by thermostat maker Honeywell International Inc. a few months ago. A Honeywell spokesman says the company sued to ensure its intellectual property was respected. Nest says Honeywell is &quot;trying to stifle new market entrants with unfounded legal action.&quot; Nest general counsel Richard &quot;Chip&quot; Lutton says he was familiar with Article One from when he was chief intellectual property officer at Apple. Using Article One, he says, &quot;we can extend our reach.&quot; Write to Jessica E. Vascellaro at jessica.vascellaro@wsj.com ...'>Tech Firms Crowd-Source to Fight Suits</a> <span class="rss-date">May 7, 2012</span></li>
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		<title>Boston Biz Journal Headlines</title>
		<link>http://khitan.org/2011/03/177</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:37:33 +0000</pubDate>
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<li><a class='post' href='http://feeds.bizjournals.com/~r/bizj_boston/~3/mNBXxLHXN-s/national-bank-holdings-corp-picks.html' title=''>National Bank Holdings Corp. picks Denver, Greenwood Village for HQ</a> <span class="rss-date">May 18, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>Boston-based National Bank Holdings Corp. — which has acquired a pair of Colorado banks in the last 10 months — is moving its headquarters to the Denver area from Boston, the company announced Friday.  The company will have offices in Greenwood Village and Denver.  Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper joined Tim Laney, president and CEO of National Bank Holdings, in making the announcement.  “National Bank Holdings Corp. has maintained a presence in Colorado for the past year, and the positive business...     </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://feeds.bizjournals.com/~r/bizj_boston/~3/-eLK0H4m3Kk/massachusetts-jobs-numbers.html' title=''>Massachusetts&#039; jobs numbers good, but labor pool is stagnant</a> <span class="rss-date">May 18, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>There&#039;s been a mild amount of celebrating about Massachusetts&#039; economic recovery and the relative strength of the Bay State economy. Indeed, the news has been good, if not spectacular: Massachusetts added 2,500 jobs in April, and businesses have generated over 30,000 jobs so far this year. The unemployment rate is 6.3 percent, the lowest since October 2008 when the national economy was on the cusp of unraveling.  But there is a number that few people mention when the unemployment numbers are released,...     </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://feeds.bizjournals.com/~r/bizj_boston/~3/1KXg3Ey_gFo/shuttered-weylus-could-have-new-owner.html' title=''>Shuttered Weylu’s could have new owner soon </a> <span class="rss-date">May 18, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'></div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://feeds.bizjournals.com/~r/bizj_boston/~3/XKAlTAx1Fj4/seaport-center-sells-for-110m.html' title=''>Seaport Center office building sells for $110M</a> <span class="rss-date">May 18, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>The Beal Cos. and Rockpoint Group have sold Seaport Center, the nine-story office building in South Boston, for $110 million.  San Francisco-based Shorenstein Properties closed on the purchase of the 461,046-square-foot building at 451 D Street in Boston’s Seaport District on Thursday.  Built in 1909 as a wool warehouse, the property is 88 percent occupied and its major tenants include the Boston Herald, JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Monster Worldwide (Nasdaq: MWW) and Verizon (Nasdaq: VZ).  This...     </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://feeds.bizjournals.com/~r/bizj_boston/~3/Z8jFGfytKxw/scott-brown-elizabeth-warren-campaign.html' title=''>Brown-Warren Senate campaign is nation&#039;s most expensive to date</a> <span class="rss-date">May 18, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>It has been one of the more closely watched congressional races in the country for some time, and now the U.S. Senate race between Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren and Republican incumbent Scott Brown is easily the nation&#039;s most expensive.  As of April 30, Warren and Brown had raised a total of $58,669,885 and spent $14,237,227 since 2011, according OpenSecrets.org. A Texas race is the second most expensive race in the U.S. with $25,615,406 raised and $13,915,507 spent so far.  The website,...     </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://feeds.bizjournals.com/~r/bizj_boston/~3/u2p9-XL0wkM/boston-scientific-gets-fda-nod-for.html' title=''>Boston Scientific gets FDA nod for vascular stent</a> <span class="rss-date">May 18, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>Boston Scientific Corp. (NYSE: BSX) won U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval and immediately launched its Epic Vascular Self-Expanding Stent System, which is designed to open blocked arteries in patients with a form of peripheral vascular disease.  The clearance by the U.S. regulatory agency comes three years after the system was approved in Europe and other international markets.  The Natick, Mass.-based medical device company said that the stent system demonstrated a low nine-month major...     </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://feeds.bizjournals.com/~r/bizj_boston/~3/ljlF9X896iA/report-law-school-should-be-more-like.html' title=''>Report: Law school should be more like medical school</a> <span class="rss-date">May 18, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>To remedy the crippling problem of underemployed young lawyers, law schools should become more like medical schools, complete with legal residency programs that teach practical skills, according to a new report from the Massachusetts Bar Association.  The MBA’s 32-page report, “Law, the Economy and Underemployment,” was created by the organization&#039;s Task Force on Law Schools, a group of 14 lawyers who took six months to study the growing issue of underemployment among lawyers, and how law schools...     </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://feeds.bizjournals.com/~r/bizj_boston/~3/0y36pxSuiOw/kayak-only-mass-member-of.html' title=''>Kayak only Mass. member of &#039;billion-dollar club&#039;</a> <span class="rss-date">May 18, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>With a VC round for Pinterest that values the company at $1.5 billion — and Facebook going public — 20 privately held venture-backed companies are valued at more than $1 billion, according to an analysis by Dow Jones VentureSource. Just one is a Massachusetts company — Kayak Software Corp.  That&#039;s compared to the &quot;bubble era&quot; of the late &#039;90s to 2000, when four Boston area companies were among the 18 VC-backed firms with billion-dollar valuations, according to VentureSource.  Kayak, a travel...     </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://feeds.bizjournals.com/~r/bizj_boston/~3/NkGpv9EUr7E/bay-state-home-sales-rise-again.html' title=''>Bay State home sales rise again</a> <span class="rss-date">May 18, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>Evidence is mounting that the Massachusetts residential real estate market has bottomed out and is stabilizing.  Single-family home sales surged by more than 18 percent in April compared with a year ago — the ninth-straight month of increases, and median prices increased for the first time in 11 months, according to data from the MLS Property Information Network.  Last month, agents sold 3,129 single-family homes in Massachusetts, compared with 2,642 in April 2011. While the volume increased, the...     </div></li>
<li><a class='post' href='http://feeds.bizjournals.com/~r/bizj_boston/~3/6hKN2OMmkko/2012-bbj-150.html' title=''>The top 10 public companies in Mass. (BBJ 150 slide show)</a> <span class="rss-date">May 18, 2012</span><div class='rssSummary'>On Friday, the Boston Business Journal Research Department published the BBJ 150, a list of the top 150 public companies in Massachusetts, ranked by 2011 revenue.  This year, Raytheon Co. (NYSE: RTN) lost its top spot on the list. The top company in Mass. is now Staples Inc. (Nasdaq: SPLS).  Staples hit a rough patch in the first quarter of 2012, but it followed a year in which the company posted a modest increase in revenue, cracking $25 billion, with net income approaching $1 billion. That may...     </div></li>
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		<title>Reuters Small Business News</title>
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