"What young entrepreneur would not want the opportunity to mingle with giants in the business?" asks Madiha Sultan, CEO of Lals Chocolates -- a luxury chocolate business based in Karachi, Pakistan which she founded with her mother in 2006. Her company has retail outlets in Karachi and Lahore...

In 2004, Esther Psarakis founded her imported specialty foods company, Taste of Crete, out of her love for Greece. She married a Greek, and very quickly embraced the language, the culture, the religion and the food...

According to a recent report from the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire, women-owned ventures account for 20 percent of entrepreneurs seeking capital, though only 13 percent of them actually receive funds, lagging behind the overall rate by about 5 percent. One crucial step...

One night in May, the premises of AOL in downtown NYC vibrated with the chatty energy and nerves of 47 teenage girls from 17 local high schools getting ready to pitch their newly created...

In the first part of our conversation, Vanessa Wilson, who after a long distinguished career as an equity analyst on Wall St. became an angel investor with Golden Seeds and also teaches entrepreneurship for the Athena Program at Barnard College, outlined some first steps for emerging entrepreneurs to consider as...

Vanessa Wilson

Whether you are just starting a new venture or have been working on one for some time, it's important to go through some very basic exercises. Recently, angel investor Vanessa Wilson, who teaches entrepreneurship for the...

Maria Lores-Browne, a Colombian immigrant, began dreaming about her own business during her years working as a laborer on construction sites, doing everything from pouring concrete to laying flooring. She asked herself, "How can I do this when I'm 45 or 55 years old?" So she went to school to...

Overlooked in the recent raucous debate on illegal immigration is the powerful role of legal immigrants on both innovation and job creation. A few years ago a study by the National Venture Capital Association estimated that nearly half of all private venture-backed companies, and 20% of private...

Perhaps one of the least well understood parts of being an entrepreneur is how to incorporate an exit strategy. With all the demands start-ups face, exits often appear low on the "to do" list with the result that CEO's and their Boards sometimes miss the optimum window. That window...

When Laura Ching and her two co-founders of Tiny Prints, a Sunnyvale, California-based online customized stationery company, first sat down to create their enterprise in 2003, they were four years out of the Stanford Business School and had all spent time working at big companies. "We saw...

This month it got a little easier to add to your client list the country's biggest spender: the US Government. The Small Business Administration announced its Women-Owned Small Business Procurement Programs (WOSB) which provides greater access to contracts with 83 industries by allowing procurement officers to set aside...

Though global business has never been easier to manage, thanks to e-commerce, nothing cements relationships as easily as face to face interaction -- a pricey option for struggling start-ups. To the rescue comes British Airways with its Face of Opportunity program which offered 250 entrepreneurs, selected out of...

New York City may have weathered the recession better than many major cities, but it still suffered from a strong hit to the capital markets with a loss of revenue and jobs when some major firms collapsed. But though Wall St. continues to rebound, the city has sought to...

Early dreams for a new business took root during the agonizing ten months Army Captain Dawn Halfaker spent recovering from over 20 operations she endured when she was severely injured in Iraq. She had spent five months in Baquba, in the volatile province of Diyalah as a Platoon Leader,...

For 24 years Ernst and Young, a global company with 144,000 employees,which specializes in assurance, tax, transactions and advisory services, has held a competition for Entrepreneur of the Year. But three years ago as part of its commitment to the advancement of women, the company initiated a competition...

TV game shows may have declined in recent years, but idea contests are riding a wave among big corporations. Competitions often arise when problems loom large and times are tough, so no surprise they are currently on the uptick. Encouraged by the ease and success of cloud computing and crowd...

A new breed of entrepreneurs is gaining steam: moms who decide to create new businesses after giving birth. While pundits ponder why women are underrepresented in corporate leadership, despite the fact that women now account for the majority of the workforce, these "mompreneurs" find opportunity, rather than disadvantage, in...

Recently, Donna Rounds, the Director of Technology Development at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York noted that "the dirty little secret for starting a new business is that you can get most things out of a tech transfer department pretty damned cheap." This December marks the 30th anniversary...

No area of investing has greater potential risks -- or greater pay-offs -- than companies in the life sciences sector, especially if you consider their potential benefits to society. Who doesn't want to contribute to a cure for Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease or even to the development of a "marker"...

On one of the last sweltering days of summer in New York, a group of 21 eager entrepreneurs gathered for an all day boot camp on how to position their fledgling companies to attract investors. For nearly four hours in the morning, they listened intently to impressive panels of...