Help! There’s a patent on my idea! What now? - Leonid Kravets

One of the most frequent questions I get asked goes something like this: “I have a really great idea, but (name of big company or university) has a patent on that. What do I do?” With over 8,000,000 patents issued to date and thousands of new patents issued weekly, chances are good that patents have been issued that are relevant to your business or idea. Knowingly infringing an active patent can lead to disastrous consequences for your business. So what do you do?

@AustinBillC of MicroVentures Expains CrowdFunding for Investors and Entrepreneurs

The Crowdfunding craze has arrived! (and it's here to stay) From independent film to non-profits crowdfunding shows us just what can be accomplished when a lot of people give just a little.

Curious how it all works? Bill Clark, CEO of MicroVentures in Austin, Texas explains how Crowdfunding has arrived for startups in this video for investors and entrepreneurs.

Coming March 8th - Lean Startup Vancouver presents Can We Be Lean In All Stages?

Lean Startup Vancouver is hosting an event on March 8th, 2012 at 6pm.

[One Year Anniversary Event]

We have an impressive array of guest speakers to engage us with an interesting insight into staying Lean whether you are a serial entrepreneur, successful organizer, or a leading voice of Lean in a large corporation.

Join us for this exciting event!

DocDep Develops Free Online Cap Table Tool for Venture Community

Philadelphia, PA (February 21, 2012) – DocDep announced today the release of SmartCap, a free, online cap table application, which augments its line of business automation and organization applications for the venture capital and private equity community.

SmartCap is a cloud–based cap table application which records capitalization structure, tracks investment evolution, and stores underlying investment documents. The resulting organization and standardization help investment-backed companies establish professionalism, especially as they seek additional funding or plan for an exit. SmartCap supports multiple equity holders and classes of security, including preferred and common stock, convertible notes, options and warrants. Pre-defined formulas, templates, and calculations make it easy to build a cap table free from the manual errors common to spreadsheet cap tables, promoting accuracy.

Fight My Monster™ Closes Monster Seed Round with Greycroft Partners and eVenture Capital Partners

Considered by many to be one of the UK’s best-kept startup secrets, Fight My Monster™, the online trading card game for boys, has closed a $2.1M seed investment round led by NY and LA-based Greycroft Partners (other investments include Klout, Maker Studios and Buddy Media). Bootstrapped by the founders to date, the game has already reached almost a million schoolboys across North America and the UK.

Nimbula Unveils Nimbula Director 2.0, Delivers Amazon EC2-Like Functionality to VMware Users

SANTA CLARA, CA--(February 13, 2012) - Today at Cloud Connect, Nimbula, the Cloud Operating System Company, introduced Nimbula Director 2.0 which dramatically enhances its public, private and hybrid cloud capabilities for enterprises, SaaS companies, governments and service providers. The new release introduces groundbreaking new functionality requested by Nimbula's growing customer base and advances Nimbula's technology vision.

“Touch” Mobile-Centric Social Connectivity Platform Usage Outpaces First Two Years of Twitter

“Touch” Has Served More Than 100 Million One-on-One Messages, Nearly 10 Million Group Messages and Enabled Users to Create 200,000 Experiences with Closest Relationships

WATERLOO, Ontario – February 8, 2012 – The creators of TextNow, the leading free and unlimited picture and text messaging application, today announced that in less than two months since launching their interpersonal connectivity platform “Touch,” it has achieved significant market traction and already served more than 100 million one-on-one messages and nearly 10 million group messages. In fact, usage of the Touch mobile social networking platform has outpaced total usage for the first two years of Twitter. The usage of Touch has exceeded all expectations, growing at a more rapid rate than even TextNow, the wildly popular free texting application that currently serves 1.3 billion impressions per month.