Entrepreneurial

The East Coast has been buried in copious amounts of snow this winter. In Silicon Valley, the only thing falling from the sky seems to be money.

If the first couple of weeks of the new year are any indication, Web startups appear to be awash in cash, with every day bringing one or more high-profile funding announcements.

The latest company to join the fund-raising parade is Formspring, which announced Wednesday it has raised $11.5 million in a round led by Redpoint Ventures. The San Francisco online social networking service, which has garnered more than 20 million registered users since launching 14 months ago, actually raised the money late last year, but had not disclosed the round until now, CEO Ade Olonoh told Reuters.

Earlier this week, Square, the mobile phone payments company started by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, said it raised $27.5 million (Dorsey even took a victory lap with an appearance on the Charlie Rose television show) and Klout, a San Francisco startup that measures users’ influence on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, said it secured $8.5 million in funding.

Other recent winners in just the past few days include Bump Technologies, which makes technology for swapping business cards, money and other data between smarpthones and captured $16.5 million, and Foodspotting, which raised $3 million.

– SecondAct contributor Michelle V. Rafter covers business and workplace issues for a variety of national publications. She is based in Portland, Oregon. The views expressed are her own –

Reinventing yourself at midlife is no simple undertaking, especially if it involves switching careers. It takes equal parts planning, stamina and guts.

But everybody’s got to start somewhere. Here are a dozen first steps, based on advice from SecondAct interviews with authors and other experts on careers and midlife transitions.

- Minara El-Rahman is a contributor to FindLaw’s “Free Enterprise” blog. FindLaw is owned by Thomson Reuters. -

Small business owners have new federal requirements to protect against identity theft in their businesses.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimates that over 9 million Americans are victims of identity theft annually. As a result, the FTC introduced what is known as the “red flags” rule that was slated to be enforced back in November 2009. The so-called red flags rule requires that certain creditors and organizations with covered accounts implement programs that would identify, detect and address warning signs of possible identity theft in the course of business.

-Jared O’Toole is co-founder of Under30CEO. The views expressed are his own. -

Small business Web site Under30CEO recently polled its readers to find out who they deemed to be the 30 most influential CEOs under the age of 30. Influence was judged on how much the person’s ventures were impacting the world and the way we live everyday. Here’s a look at the top 10.

1. Mark Zuckerberg
Company: Facebook
Age: 26
Net Worth: $6.9 Billion

Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook in 2004 at Harvard and since then the social network has grown to over 500 million users. He is the world’s youngest billionaire with Facebook receiving a valuation of over $30 billion in 2010. Zuckerberg has literally changed the way people interact and has broken down social walls faster than ever imagined. Time Magazine named Zuckerberg Person of the Year for 2010 and his company Facebook shows no signs of slowing down.

2. Andrew Mason
Company: Groupon
Age: 30
Net Worth: Groupon Valuation $4.75 Billion

– Paras Chopra is an entrepreneur and the director of online analytics startup Visual Website Optimizer. The views expressed are his own. –

Sorry for crushing your dreams but your Web app for tracking happiness levels (or for “social-aware” to-do lists) is probably not going to make enough money to let you retire in Hawaii.

Many programmers and developers find making a Web app very satisfying and there is nothing wrong with that – as long as you are doing it for fun, it’s OK.

– Jon Hyatt is a 22-year-old producer/director based out of Boston, Massuchusetts. This article originally appeared on Under30CEO. The views expressed are his own. –

Regardless of what type of company you have, or what type of product you’re selling, there are always online videos that can be used to up your marketing and sales.

“Every company can affordably increase marketing and sales with the help of online videos,” said producer/director Jon Hyatt, who is most recently filmed a Boston-based reality show called “Making Moves“. “Nowadays more companies are starting to see the advantage to having online videos right on their website or Facebook pages.”

-- Lisa Nicole Bell is a serial entrepreneur and CEO of lifestyle consultancy firm Inspired Life Media Group. This article originally appeared on Under30CEO. The views expressed are her own. –

Every entrepreneur knows that the key to a thriving business is sales. Without it, cash flow dries up, checks turn to rubber, and heads roll. With it, few things are impossible. The challenge for most entrepreneurs is understanding how to sell what they offer.

Throughout the years, the sales gurus of our parents’ generation have offered their conventional wisdom about “building rapport” and “explaining the features”. In the new economy, this advice just doesn’t cut it anymore.

– Melinda F. Emerson, known as the SmallBizLady, is an entrepreneur, professional speaker, small business coach and the author of “Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months“. In 2010, Forbes magazine named her as one of the Top 20 Women for Entrepreneurs to Follow on Twitter. This article originally appeared on Second Act. –

Until three years ago, Janet Hill Talbert worked as a vice president and executive editor at a major New York publishing house. It was challenging work, and Talbert enjoyed nurturing her writers, including many bestselling authors.

But the stress of the job took its toll, and she started making jewelry as a way to unwind after hectic days.

– Jason Beahm is a contributor to FindLaw’s “Free Enterprise” blog. FindLaw is owned by Thomson Reuters. –

The cliche is true: the one constant is change.

This year a series of regulatory, compliance, and legislative changes will occur that will affect small business owners. Paychex, Inc., recently put together a list of the most influential business regulations in 2011. We narrowed the list down to five that we found the most interesting.

1. Tax changes – In 2011, taxes are going to get even more complicated for small business owners. (What did you think, it was going to get easier?) However, as a plus, there will be a retroactive extension of some of the tax incentives that expired at the end of last year.

– Dave McClure is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and the founder of Internet seed fund 500Startups. He has worked with companies such as PayPal, Mint, Founders Fund, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Twilio, Simply Hired, O’Reilly Media, Intel and Microsoft. The views expressed are his own. –

Over the holidays Silicon Valley is a ghost town while most geeks and venture capitalists are busy hitting the slopes at Tahoe or playing Angry Birds Holiday Edition.

If you haven’t had enough football or eggnog yet, stop reading this blather and go watch some grown men beat the snot out of each other while drinking yourself into yuletide stupor. If that doesn’t sound more appealing then you’ll just have to settle for my crazy tech predictions for this year.