In the global competition for economic prosperity, some places are positioned to perform better than others. That’s the natural order of things. However, even those places with the tools to compete must remind others about the elements of their strategic edge. That’s not bragging, which many...
Ken Johnson, the veteran Wisconsin investor who is a partner in the Badger Fund of Funds, has held true to his vision from the start. Even before the Badger Fund of Funds was officially seeded in 2014 with a $25-million investment from the state of Wisconsin,...
Social Capital and American Express Ventures backed Simplee, a startup that aims to facilitate medical bill payments, in its latest $20 million funding round. Simplee says it works with over 900 hospitals and physicians and helps process “over $1 billion in annual payments” in the U.S....
Even the low-end estimates of connected devices in the world by 2020 is a mind-bending number. Gartner, the technology research firm, pegs the number at 26 billion. Cisco Systems estimates 50 billion. Semiconductor giant Intel predicts 200 billion. International Data Corp. forecasts 212 billion. To paraphrase the...
An overwhelming majority (94 percent) of active investment angels believe it helps to have subject-matter experts weigh in when they evaluate a startup investment opportunity, according to a Propel(x) survey of 200 aspiring and active angel investors in the United States....
Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to land an unmanned spacecraft on Mars as soon as 2018 with the help of NASA, an extraordinary collaboration between the public and private sectors in an effort to eventually get humans to the Red Planet. SpaceX is laying out...
MADISON – Wisconsin has a business startup problem. Despite the buzz in Madison and a few other communities, there are far too many places in the state where entrepreneurship is still just a fancy word versus economic action. The reasons are somewhat easily explained: manufacturing and...
MADISON – By the time the annual Governor’s Business Plan Contest boils down to its final round after several months of judging and mentoring, some tough cuts have already produced a competitive crop of startup ideas. This year’s contest, the 13th annual, is no exception. Twenty-seven...
Customers are becoming "impatient narcissists," according to Rick Davidson, president and CEO of the consultancy Cimphoni. "They want what they want, and they want it now," he said during this presentation on cognitive computing for the enterprise at the recent Fusion CEO-CIO Symposium in Madison,...
In San Francisco, as in most cities, parking is an expensive daily grind that saps the soul. So a year and a half ago, when I discovered the valet-parking app Luxe, the heavens parted, choirs began singing and double rainbows colored the sky. This, I...