Dear friends, there has been a lot of debate these last weeks among the entrepreneurial community about how to help startups TO take off, and foster the best environment for them. The Obama administration took one option by signing the JOBS Act legalizing crowdfunding and simplifying IPO regulations for young tech companies. Entrepreneurs will yet have to be carefull because:
- the SEC hasn’t provided clear regulations about crowdfunding yet, and may take up to 270 days to do so
- they will only be able to spread the word about their startup’s funding goal on accredited websites
It’s a fact that nobody can deny: the SIlicon Valley is the most dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystem in the world. Yearly studies keep confirming it, and it is increasing its overall domination: last year the Valley attracted about 40% of private investments in startups (about $20 B). Other states leaders and foreign governments keep scrutinizing this area, hoping to replicate its secret formula and host the next Facebook. Unfortunately, the secret is well kept and no one succeeded in this enterprise until now. 
Dating back 280 million years or so, the oldest known fossil reptile embryos have been unearthed in Uruguay and Brazil. They belong to the ancient aquatic reptiles, mesosaurs. The study of these exceptionally well-preserved fossils suggests that mesosaurs were either viviparous(1) (pushing back this mode of reproduction by 60 million years) or that they laid eggs in advanced stages of development. These finds, published in the journal Historical Biology, were revealed by an international team including Michel Laurin, CNRS senior researcher at the Centre de Recherche sur la Paléobiodiversité et les Paléoenvironnements (CNRS/Museum national d’histoire naturelle/UPMC).
Dear readers, we present to you a series of three articles focused on Technology Transfer in the U.S, manly in universities. The articles are based on the interview of the former Association of Universities Tech transfer Managers (AUTM) president, Prof. Ashley Stevens of Boston University, who gave us great insights on TT. 
Yet, a lot of new initiatives, both public and privates, are being developed to help young companies succeed and assist the entrepreneurs in their endeavors. 
“The Global Innovation Index” is just out, and its results concerning the United States are very positive: despite some flaws in the American policies, the U.S. stay very competitive in terms of innovation. Only in two of the seven innovation-spurring areas are the U.S. slower than western European countries and Asian major economic cities. And even there they are still ranking better than a lot of the fifty-five countries studied in this report. 
The health care reform in the United States has been one of the main projects of the U.S government in recent years and is beginning to bear fruits. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed on March, 23rd 2010, defines the legislative framework for the development of biologic drugs. However, some major questions remained unanswered, and health care related industries were impatient to have more formal guidelines. Finally, the FDA issued three guidance documents on February, 9th 2012, to assist industry players in developing biosimilars in the United States.
The “valley of death” is ” the “dragon” of most entrepreneurs, a phase one dreads the most. It is the period during which an early stage company is developing its technology (or a proof of concept), its market, its offer and strategy, burning the few dollars it has in the bank at a high rate while not fueling the tank at the same time. At that time, the company is at its most vulnerable state financially, and in order to survive has to attract enough customers or investors to help it “cross” this valley of death.
