Yahoo! and Egypt-based NGO Nahdet El Mahrousa have launched a campaign called ‘Social Innovation Starts with YOU’ that hopes to inspire and motivate young Egyptians to be social entrepreneurs.
The campaign is in line with the U.S. Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship that will take place on April 26 – 27, 2010 in Washington D.C., where Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang will deliver a keynote speech on how the Internet can positively transform lives, societies, and economies in Arab communities.

Candace Fleming’s résumé boasts a double major in industrial engineering and English from Stanford, an M.B.A. from Harvard, a management position at Hewlett-Packard and experience as president of a small software company.
But when she was raising money for Crimson Hexagon, a start-up company she co-founded in 2007, she recalls one venture capitalist telling her that it didn’t matter that she didn’t have business cards, because all they would say was “Mom.”
Another potential backer, reports Claire Cain Miller in The New York Times, invited her for a weekend yachting excursion by showing her a picture of himself on the boat — without clothes. When a third financier discovered that her husband was also a biking enthusiast, she says, he spent more time asking if riding affected her husband’s reproductive capabilities than he did focusing on her business plan. Ultimately, none of the 30 venture firms she pitched financed her company. She finally raised $1.8 million in March 2008 from angel investors including Golden Seeds, a fund that emphasizes investing in start-ups led by women.

As entrepreneurship has emerged as a global phenomenon, it is apparent that many popular entrepreneur myths remain. Among them, none is perhaps more common (and potentially devastating) than that of the entrepreneur as a bold risk taker, the flamboyant gambler who bets it all and…

Not so fast, Martha Stewart.
OK, you’re special. You are talented and one of the best at what you do. But that doesn’t mean that you’re equipped to run your own business–even one within a field or industry you’ve been working in or following for years.
To wit: 627,200 new businesses opened in the U.S. in 2008–the same year 595,600 businesses shuttered and 43,546 filed for bankruptcy, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Likewise, 30% of small businesses fail within the first two years and half close shop within five years, according to the SBA.
The fact of the matter is that far too many people launch their own companies for all the wrong reasons and without the tools it takes to succeed. Before handing in your notice and signing a lease on an office, it’s imperative you take a hard look at yourself in the salaried eye and ask yourself a few critical questions that could mean the difference between a fulfilling life as your own boss and speed-dialing a bankruptcy lawyer.

Who is the real entrepreneur? What does it mean to be self-employed?  Dane Stangler examines this question and what it means to be an entrepreneur during these tumultuous economic times.
At the University of Miami a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend an entrepreneurship class with roughly 40 students. Most of them were juniors and seniors, joined by a small number of law students. The course had so far covered the theoretical literature on entrepreneurship, but on this particular day all the students wanted to talk about was their own futures.

Some people are born rich, but it is the self-made billionaires who inspire people more than anybody else. While most entrepreneurs won’t end up in the 10-digit club, there are lessons to be taken from these elites.

With pink-slip taxes increasing, more small-business owners may be motivated to appeal claims for unemployment benefits filed by former employees who quit or were fired for cause—but such appeals can sometimes backfire.
U.S. employers are required to make regular tax contributions toward unemployment insurance. They’re taxed at a rate that varies by state and the size of their payroll. That rate can increase as a business lays off more employees.

After the recent “48 Hour Launch” weekend that drew more than five dozen participants, eight new companies now dot the city’s small-business landscape.
The third annual event, sponsored by LaunchMemphis, replaced the organization’s former Startup Weekend program. Interest in the program easily surpassed previous incarnations, leaders said, and the number of viable companies was nearly triple that of last year.