I am intently watching the Olympics this year and it occurred to me, these brave and strong young people represent a business, the business of the Olympics and their country. Many even go through training on how to behave while representing their country. While watching the media hype around the games, one thing stood out: if there were going to be any remarks or behavior that weren’t humble, it usually came from a man, not a woman.

Now granted, the Olympics are hyper-competitive, more so than most businesses. So in such a competitive atmosphere, perhaps men are more self-focused than women. Here are just a few examples I’ve seen of unprofessional behavior among male athletes in Olympics past and present:

When asked to explain the team’s success, U.S. ski champion Bode Miller said, “aside from the fact that we’re just much better than anybody else…” He went on to say, “All the big events, I’ve always done well in—when I decide that’s what I want to do.” I guess he decidedly didn’t want to do well in Torino when he talked about skiing drunk in a 60 Minutes television interview. He touted that he had “an awesome two weeks while at the Olympics. I got to party and socialize at an Olympic level.”

Silver medalist figure skater Evgeni Plushenko questioned the judging, saying he was the only leading competitor to land a quadruple jump, and therefore should have secured first place over gold medalist Evan Lysacek.

In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Ara Abrahamian of Sweden threw away his bronze medal in the Greco-Roman wrestling tournament because he thought he was robbed by the judges. He took the medal from around his neck during the medal ceremony, stepped off the podium and dropped it in the middle of the mat before storming off.

Korean speed skater Lee Jung-Su criticized Apolo Ohno as “too aggressive.” “Ohno didn’t deserve to stand on the same medal platform as me.” He said that he was so mad it was hard for him to contain himself during the ceremony.

On the other hand, a few positive things I noticed from the female athletes:

Gold medal skier Lindsey Vonn, who was the center of media attention with an injured shin, is very close friends with German skier Maria Riesch, who she competes with on a regular basis. She also reportedly considers U.S. skier Julia Mancuso as a competitive rival, but neither of them seem to say anything bad about the other.

The three women on the U.S. snowboard team, Hannah Teter, Gretchen Bleiler, and Kelly Clark, all medalists at one time or another, all pull for each other and call each other great friends. They also congratulated the non-U.S. gold medal winner very warmly. They all seem to be in it for the sport.

So, how does this relate to any business? Are women more humble than men? Sure seems like it in the Olympics. It also could just be that there are more male athletes in the Olympics so it’s a game of numbers. But these “business” men and women also have to be aware of what they might get out of it at the end of all of this: a great sponsorship. We all witnessed what happened to many of Tiger’s sponsorship deals when he seemed disingenuous.

Maybe in your business you need someone who is completely self-focused and self-motivated, and that’s ok. You just need to ask yourself–are you comfortable with the people that represent you and your company’s values? When you look at men and women in your organization are there clear differences in how they represent your company? If so, are the differences what you’d want them to be? Maybe so, but it might be worth a look.

Now before I get blasted by readers, women are not immune to bad behavior in these Olympic games, as noted by the shameful incident when our own figure skaters Tonya Harding had Nancy Kerrigan attacked. And on a positive note, gold medalist snow boarder Shaun White is a gracious, charitable man who is out to give his sport a great name. So it’s not a sweeping generalization, just food for thought and an opportunity to relate these exciting Winter games to your own business like I do at my company VerticalResponse.

Hey, I think Bode Miller is a great skier and really fun to watch. I just wonder, how many of you want him on your team, no matter how great he is? It’s just something to think about for your business.

Like most college students, Dickerson, a junior at Syracuse University, found himself wedged into a small dorm room that fit little more than a bed and a desk. The son of an interior designer, he set out to optimize that space. The idea? Turn the bed into a couch during nonsleeping hours. And, in 2009, the Rylaxer was born. The ergonomic, “bed transforming pillow” is made of foam, with lumbar support, and it comes in two sizes and a variety of colors, plus a cheetah print. Rylaxing has an online store, but for now the company is Syracuse-centric: The pillows are made in town and sold primarily on campus. A year from now, though, Dickerson hopes to be selling them at colleges nationwide, through an army of brand ambassadors.

When Rhodes, a junior at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, sold his college textbooks at the end of the spring 2008 semester, he received $18 — for books that cost him $560 just a few months earlier. There had to be an alternative way, he thought. So over the next year, he developed MyBookBorrow.com, which allows students anywhere to save on textbooks by renting instead of buying. When a student requests a textbook, Rhodes (or one of the three friends who assist him) finds a used copy from one of the two textbook distributors that are his suppliers. He then provides a rental quote (after checking on competitors’ rental prices and Amazon’s purchase price) to the student. If the student agrees to the price, Rhodes buys the book and has the supplier ship it directly to the customer. When the semester ends, the customer ships the book back to Rhodes, who keeps his stock in a $22-a-month storage space.

A junior at Harvard University, Shah launched his SAT prep site INeedAPencil.com in 2006 when he was still in high school. The free site offers low-income students an alternative to pricier courses such as those at Kaplan and The Princeton Review. Students can log on to the site and choose from more than 60 lessons in math, reading, and writing, many of which use pop-culture and sports references to liven up the material. It’s not just a gimmick — a random sampling of the site’s users showed an average improvement of 202 points on their SAT scores. INeedAPencil.com earns most of its revenue by generating leads for colleges and universities eager to recruit the site’s 30,000 users, who can opt in to receive information about different schools.

Williams, a senior at Texas Christian University, showed a knack for design and business from an early age. In elementary school, she fashioned her own stationery and sold it door to door. Later, she started a business selling purses swathed in laminated photos from magazines. In 2007, after being inspired by artisans she encountered on a trip to Italy, she started a jewelry business called Tramonti, the Italian word for sunset. After two years selling primarily through trunk shows — the pieces range from $30 to $300 — Williams set up an e-commerce site last year (tramontibywhitney.com). Now she’s planning for expansion, to coincide with her graduation. A factory in Hong Kong is waiting to produce her necklaces and earrings, and a big department store has expressed interest in her line, which she hopes to expand into a full-blown lifestyle brand with shoes, clothing, and accessories.

Since age 6, Olvera had a deep interest in technology, and within a year of coming to this country at 15 from his native Mexico City, he started a computer-repair business. His current business, RailTronix, sells a Web-based software system that helps rail shippers in the oil industry keep track of their valuable shipments in real time. With no employees (though he outsources some of the coding work to a Mexican firm), the University of Houston senior produced revenue of $250,000 in 2009, his first year in business. Next, he is turning his attention to the grain industry, one of the largest rail shippers in the United States.

Harsh, a junior at University of Texas at Austin, started selling baked goods to raise money for a high school orchestra trip. She raised $700 that first year — and built a loyal following in the process. When she arrived at college, she continued to bake, and word of her cookie prowess spread. Today, hungry classmates can order Finger-Lickin Peanut Butter and Cranberry White Chocolate Chip cookies online or request custom ingredients. On her Facebook fan page, Harsh lists a bold mission statement — “Changing the world one cookie at a time.” It’s a promise she’s trying to make good on. Every year, she bakes 700 cookies for a local fundraiser called the Helping Hands Benefit Concert, which in 2009 raised money to dig wells in villages in Africa.

When Funk was 17, his grandmother died, and the mortuary gave his family an audiotape of the funeral service. At the time, he thought that was peculiar. But he found himself listening to the tape and marveling at the stories he heard about his grandmother. That was Funk’s inspiration to start attending the funerals of strangers and making CDs, which he sold, through mortuaries, to families of the deceased. He eventually took the business online and now offers live streaming audio and video, transcripts, and other services. FuneralRecording.com has four employees and works with more than 200 mortuaries across the country, charging them $99 a month for broadcast services. The Weber State University senior expects sales of about $500,000 this year. –Lauren Folino

Davy’s first college business (though not his first business; he started a Web analytics company the summer before he started high school) was an IT consulting company. As the company grew, Davy found he didn’t have the software he needed to keep all of his consultants and the companies they were working with on the same page. He started building what is now EvoApp to use internally. The product, which is being used by more than 200 companies, works through third-party partners to pull all team members’ documents, calendar events, and communication activity into one place. The University of North Carolina junior, who has four full-time employees, expects revenue of about $500,000 in his first full year of business.

Skoda, a senior at Texas Christian University, drew on his experience as a high-level amateur baseball player to start CollegeFitness.com, a social networking site for students hoping to drop the “freshman 15″ and more. The free site, which is supported by ads from sporty companies like Under Armour and Everlast, has 12,000 members, who turn to it for workout videos, diet planners, a weight-loss tracker, and the like. In January, CollegeFitness.com launched a customized site for the University of Oklahoma (it’s called CrimsonFitness.com), and Skoda is negotiating similar deals with other large schools. He and his nine employees have also started to sell on-campus ad space in and around the fitness facilities at some of those schools. All this activity explains why CollegeFitness.com, which had revenue of $250,000 last year, hopes to reach $3 million in 2010.

Recently I had a chance to record a Skype chat from my living room with Matt Mullenweg. Matt is the founder of Automattic, the company that publishes Wordpress.com. Automattic was founded without a central office and has 50 employees spread all over the world. (For this reason he uses the term “distributed company” to describe Automattic’s structure.)I asked Matt how he stumbled on this novel organizational model, how it works, and what he thinks of our little experiment. Enjoy!

Amid reports of the damage brain drain inflicts on the economy, Senators John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, Wednesday introduced the Start-up Visa Act, which would open up the U.S. to immigrant entrepreneurs.

If passed, the bill would grant foreigners U.S. visas if they can secure at least $100,000 from a sponsoring angel investor or at least $250,000 from a qualified venture capital firm. After two years, if the immigrant entrepreneur can create five or more jobs (hiring his or her children or spouse is not included), attract an additional $1 million in investment, or produce $1 million in revenue, he or she can become a legal resident.

More than 100 heavyweight angel investors and venture capitalists are backing the act, including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Mobius Venture Capital’s Brad Feld. In a letter of support, they complained that “it is often impossible” for immigrant entrepreneurs to get a visa to stay in the U.S. “Even in cases where the founders already have a visa of some sort, they typically can’t use this visa to start a company. As a result, they often have to leave our country to start their company, resulting in a loss of innovative entrepreneurs and the correspondingly created jobs in the U.S.” (For ways to support the visa, click here.)

The VCs’ passion isn’t surprising when you consider that 25 percent of America’s venture-backed, publicly-traded businesses – among them Google, Yahoo!, eBay and Intel – have been founded or co-founded by immigrants, according to the National Venture Capital Association (which also supports the bill.) An NVCA report on the subject also concluded that foreign entrepreneurs are more likely to build companies that create high-tech, high paying jobs. Meanwhile, Richard Herman, a Cleveland immigration lawyer and the author of Immigrant, Inc.: Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Driving the New Economy, claims nearly all of the net job creation in the past 20 years has come from companies less than five years old. “The Start-up Visa should be something to help turbo-charge American entrepreneurship and get our juices flowing again,” he blogged.

Currently, there is a class of visa called EB-5 that’s much harder to get: It requires immigrants to invest at least $1 million in the U.S. and employ 10 people. The H1B highly skilled immigrant visa is limited to 65,000, with an additional 20,000 for holders of advanced degrees – not much when you consider that U.S. universities pump out 1 science graduate for every five China does. But unlike H-1B visa holders, foreigners granted Start-up Visas wouldn’t be taking existing jobs.

Though only 4 percent of bills become law, supporters are hoping the Start-up Visa’s chances of making it onto the books are better because there already is a similar visa-reform initiative pending in the House of Representatives. That effort is thanks to Jared Polis, a first-term Democrat from Colorado — and the founder of Proflowers.com and Bluemountain.com, both of which he sold in nine-figure deals. It’s anybody’s guess whether the fact that Polis’s initiatives have been bundled into a controversial wider immigration reform bill, called the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009,” will help or hurt its chances of survival.

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the nonprofit Center for Immigration Studies think tank, told Polis’s local paper The Daily Camera that “there is a much stronger case” for Start-up Visas than, say, for expanding guest worker programs or family-based immigration, both of which are included in the larger reform bill. She said of Polis’s proposals: “There’s a much more obvious benefit to the United States.” 

What do you think? Is a start-up visa a smart way of attracting entrepreneurial immigrants to the U.S.?

To flourish, an idea must be developed, nourished, and, these days, protected. Filing for a patent with the U.S. government is just one step along that road, but it is a crucial step. For that purpose, you’ll want to work with a well-known and effective patent lawyer. 

So how do you find a good patent lawyer?

Just as you wouldn’t start flipping through your local phone book these days to find an attorney, the Google search should largely be avoided. A typical search, even with local parameters, yields an onslaught of promotional sites that provide nearly indistinguishable services. Avoid 800 numbers and  highly-templated websites – you know the ones, comprised of stock images and primary-colored fonts.There are better ways to search for a patent lawyer, but first, you should do your homework, and know precisely what – or whom – you are looking for.Dig Deeper: Inc.com’s Guide to Intellectual PropertyFinding a Good Patent Lawyer: Know Your Needs and Do Your ResearchIntellectual property covers a wide swath of legal issues, from entertainment to media to contract and copyright law. Before deciding whether you want to work with a lawyer who strictly deals in patents, or one who can advise you on other potentially relevant areas of intellectual in the future, first you must assess your needs.If your business is based only on creating, marketing, and selling innovative products, you might look for someone who specializes in and whose practice is solely focused on patents and copyright. By contrast, if your company also embarks on online pursuits or publishing, a lawyer who deals also in First Amendment and information technology law could be a useful partner.  Should your business already have legal counsel, it is certainly advisable to assess whether they might be able to cover patents for you as well, though you should not fall into the habit of using the lawyer you have as a substitute for the lawyer you want.

Before you vet patent lawyers, it’s helpful to know just how much competition you–and they–will have from other patent holders. A quick search of the U.S. Patent Office website will yield information on your market and identify would-be competitors. If it is an active space, then it is probably going to take a lot of effort to secure your product’s future. In that case, you’ll likely need an attorney with great credentials and much experience in the area, says John E. Clarkin, professor of entrepreneurship at the College of Charleston. But be prepared: A higher level of experience will cost you plenty more in billable hours.Dig Deeper: How to Secure a PatentFinding a Good Patent Lawyer: Know Where to Search

Once you know what you’re looking for, you can – and should – skip the typical step of asking around in social and business circles for someone reliable. “The absolute worst thing you can do is talk to your friends and hear so-and-so’s brother is an attorney, you know he does wills and stuff,” Clarkin says. Instead, search the reliable site  Lawyers.com using the specific parameters you’ve laid out as well as your geographic area. Select  “business” as the topic and scroll down to find the area of practice – intellectual property – for which you are looking. From there, you can select a sub-category to further specify your needs.

Once you have a short list of qualified attorneys, conduct a Google search on each of them. Look for clues to their reputation; quotes to the press, which will indicate how a lawyer may represent you; and  a sense of workload. If a lawyer is tied up with a alrge or ongoing case, you may want to pass on him or her. If you want to dig even deeper, call your state Bar Association and ask whether the lawyers you are considering remain in good standing, and confirm the background you’ve found them to have.Dig Deeper: When to Hire an AttorneyFinding a Good Patent Lawyer: Doing a Preliminary InterviewOnce you’ve done your homework and have come up with a list of perhaps four or five great candidates, reach out to their offices first to make sure they’re taking new clients and, secondly, to schedule a preliminary interview. “I treat attorneys like I do physicians. I go through an interview process,” Clarkin says. “This is a person I’m going to spend a lot of money on and they will determine the health of my business.”Treat the preliminary interview as you would a business partner meeting. Come prepared, dressed for a professional meeting, and bring along any relevant information that might help the lawyer determine whether working with you will be a good fit. (Remember, this is a two-way street.)

You’ll also want to come prepared with a slate of questions, which can include: How, specifically, do you go about a patent search? What are some of the patents you’ve registered in the past? How long does the process take? How much can I expect it will cost? You should also ask for references of clients she or he has worked with in the past – and do check them. It could also be advisable to get a reference from a bank.The other things to check on are whether the lawyer, his or her family, or clients, have any conflicts of interests. Does she or he represent any interests opposing to or intersecting with your business? Also ask for a copy of the firm’s retainer agreement and make sure you understand it thoroughly before moving forward.Arming yourself with the most possible information in an interview will help you – and the intellectual property lawyers you are dealing with – determine which relationship is right for your business. Dig Deeper: Working With Your Lawyer

Let’s face it: Nobody really enjoys making cold calls. But the fact is that cold calling remains a part of life whether you are a business owner, a job seeker, or even a volunteer looking to raise money for your local non-profit group, says Eliot Burdett, co-founder of Peak Sales Recruiting in Ottawa, Canada. “Even with the rise of the Internet, which has changed the way people buy, having the ability to connect with someone cold on the phone remains a valuable skill for anyone to have,” he says.The problem, quite frankly, is that like any skill, cold calling requires practice. And even then, the numbers don’t always add up, says Joanne Black, founder of NoMoreColdCalling in Greenbrae, California, and author of a book by the same name. “People who cold call will make between 100 and 150 dials, talk to between 18 and 20 people, and schedule six to eight appointments,” she says. “And if they’re lucky, close one deal.”We’ve compiled some expert tips below to help you improve your odds of closing more deals with fewer dials.Dig Deeper: Improving Your Cold-Calling TechniqueImproving Your Cold-Calling Skills: Set a Calling ScheduleSet a target number of calls per week and schedule time every day to make a portion of these calls, Burdett advises. “This kind of discipline will create rhythm and the calling habit, don’t procrastinate, just do it,” he says. “The more calls you make the easier it gets.”

The best times to call are early or late in the day when potential customers are less busy and more likely to answer their own phones. You may also prefer to use a hands-free device or headset that allows you to stand up and walk around when you’re talking to sound more energized.

One of the first questions to ask  might be, “Is this a good time to talk?” If it isn’t, ask the person when a better time might be. Then, get them to schedule it on their calendar. Then, when you call back, they’ll be expecting you. Pick a quick and clever way to break the ice - perhaps with a short dose of humor.

Dig Deeper: Advice on How to Practice Your Sales Pitch

Improving Your Cold-Calling Skills: Communicate Value

Start your call by promising brevity and keep your promise, says Stephanie Hackney of Branding Masters in Austin, Texas. “Before you lift the receiver, you need to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that what you provide has value to the people you’ll be calling on,” she says. “Once you know that, and you can show why your potential customers care, create simple wording that briefly communicates that value and answers the customer’s primary question: What’s in it for me? As a customer, I don’t care what you have or what your product does, I want to know how it benefits me. How does it make my life better, easier?”

One key is to communicate the benefits of what you’re calling about, not just its features. Remember also to focus on what your customer needs, not on what you have.

Questions you should be keeping in mind, Hackney says, are:

•    Is your product and/or service offering solving your customer’s issues, or is it simply something you want to offer?

•    Have you adequately researched the market to determine there is a real need for what you have to offer? If not, then go back to the drawing board until you are able to answer “yes” to that question.

Dig Deeper: A Sales Force Built on Cold-Calling Improving Your Cold-Calling Skills: How to Head-Off ObjectionsYou should know every reason your potential customers might have for not wanting to give you the time of day, Hackney says. One way to prepare for this is to script answers to every objection you can think of, and then think of and answer more. Identify a list of several meaningful and probing questions that will stimulate a conversation and allow you to develop a relationship. Role-playing is perhaps the best way to develop the list of objections, says Hackney, especially if you can convince an uninterested (and therefore more objective) person to play the role of the customer.

If you are asked a question you can’t answer, don’t make up an answer just to fill the silence. “Offer to research the question and to get back to the customer,” Hackney says. “You will be seen as honest, professional and interested in your customer’s success.”

Dig Deeper: How to Respond to an Objection over Price

Improving Your Cold-Calling Skills: Think Research

If all you’re only goal in making cold calls is to close deals, it’s easy to get frustrated when someone hangs up on you. That’s why you should change your focus and think of the calls as research time, Burdett says. “Don’t just call and hard pitch, because everyone hates to have their day interrupted by a sales call,” he says. “Instead try think beforehand what challenges the prospect is dealing with and then use the call to collect insight, validate your assumptions, share insight about what solutions exist and what might work for them.”

Then, you make your calls, use what you have learned about your customer’s needs and leverage it, says Hackney. “Once you know, to the core of your being, that your offering can solve someone else’s pain,” Hackney says. “It will be much easier to communicate it to the customer.”Dig Deeper: How to Leverage Sales ResearchImproving Your Cold-Calling Skills: Know Your CompetitionBefore making calls, it is critical to know who your competition is. Know what they offer, along with their strengths and weaknesses, and make that part of your script. “But never, and I do mean never, belittle your competition,” Hackney says. “Every company has its strengths and weaknesses. You have yours as well.”

The key, she says, is to succinctly communicate the differences between yours and your competition’s offerings without resorting to bashing which will help you look more professional, and most importantly, will make the customer feel that you have their best interest at heart.

If the customer can’t see any difference between what you’re selling and what the competition is offering, you have not done a good job of communicating what makes you unique and the best solution, Hackney says. Or, your offering might not be the best fit, in which case you could choose to recommend a competing product or service that’s a better fit to your customer’s individual needs. The point is to try and address these kinds of questions and distinctions before you place the call.Dig Deeper: Tools on Researching the CompetitionImproving Your Cold-Calling Skills: Follow Through

One of the most important lessons in business is to follow through on commitments, Hackney says. “Be true to your word and deliver what you promise,” she says. “Just knowing that you will do so makes it easy to communicate a caring attitude and professionalism to customers. After all, that’s all most customers want: someone to make their life easier.”

It also makes sense to employ a sales tracking system such as SalesForce.com as a way to stay on top of your discussions, emails and campaigns. Dig Deeper: Mastering the Follow-ThroughImproving Your Cold-Calling Skills: Warm Up Those CallsOf course, there are many ways to set up your calls so that if they’re not hot leads, they’re at least warm. To get there, one tip is to get referrals.”The only way for business owners to get hot leads, close more than 50 percent of their prospects, reduce their sales time, ace out the competition, and incur no hard costs, is to receive a referral introduction to their ideal client,” Black says. Referrals work as an instant connection and address the two biggest issues that all salespeople face:1. Getting the meeting at the level that counts.2. Converting prospects to prime customers.So how do you go about getting referrals? Black says there are two key ways. First, ask your current clients to introduce you to people they know. Second, create referral metrics for your company. That can include: How many people you ask each week, the number of referrals you receive, the number of referral meetings you conduct. Also measure the increase in revenue and profits and the reduction in your cost of sales.

It could also be wise to invest in lead-generation programs so that some of the outbound calls are more warm than cold, Burdett says. There are also countless online social media tools available to help warm up your calls and generate leads. You and your colleagues should see social networking as an opportunity to meet clients and open up entire social pockets of exposure. Check out:

•   Jigsaw •   LinkedIn•   Google Profiles•   Facebook•   Twitter•   InsideView•   ZoomInfo•   ConnectAndSellDig Deeper: Using Social Networking Sites to Drive BusinessImproving Your Cold-Calling Skills: Additional Resources  The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cold Calling, by Keith Rosen. Alpha, 2004.Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling, by Sam Richter. Beaver’s Bond Press, 2009.Cold Calling Techniques That Really Work, by Stephan Schiffman. Adams Media, 2007.Lessons from 100,000 Cold Calls, by Stewart L. Rogers. Sourcebooks, 2008.

More Quick Tips on Cold Calling from Inc.com

Ranking the top angel investors. A couple years ago, we told you about a start-up called YouNoodle that claimed it came up with an algorithm that could tell you what your company’s worth. Now YouNoodle’s teamed up with BusinessWeek to use the same vetting process on angel investors, with some surprises. Ex-Googlers Chris Sacca, Aydin Senkut, and Andrea Zurek–all relatively unknown outside the industry–are some of the best performers. And Hunch confound Chris Dixon, who may not be a top tier influencer, does have the most diverse portfolio, as well as YouNoodle’s endorsement as the top investor in tech.

Web analytics, the sketchy way. Ever wonder how the different web analytics companies get their data? TechCrunch has the lowdown on one practice said to be used by Compete. And it feels a little dirty.

New service allows brands to build their own Yelp. We already written about how to make money on Foursquare and how Yelp can be a boon to business owners but what if your company’s needs don’t mesh with these outside services. Well, Ad Age reports that a new service called Socialight allows companies and brands to build their own versions of Yelp, Foursquare, and Gowalla, kind of like Ning but for location based services. Our article on online review and answer sites has some pointers on whether you’re ready for your own branded community.

As VCs get skittish, start-ups suffer. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning on what one venture capitalist is calling an “unprecedented level of syndicate failure,” which occurs when a VC decides not to invest in a start-up at the last minute, effectively scuttling the deal. “Syndicates” are groups of venture capital firms that invest together to cut down on the risk that a start-up doesn’t pan out; they’re the norm in most VC investments. But some firms have been so risk-averse during this recession that they’ve been getting cold feet and leaving entrepreneurs at the altar. This creates an awkward situation where the start-up must hastily explain to its employees and customers why it didn’t raise the money, and in some cases must shut down. The Journal notes that better established VC firms are usually able to kick in more cash when a syndicate collapses, which is a good reason to make sure that you’re investors are financially sound before you sign a term sheet.

Do B-Schools set up entrepreneurs to fail? Tech entrepreneur and consultant Sramana Mitra certainly thinks so. In a column today at Forbes, she argues that the tendency of most business schools to focus on raising funds, especially VC funding, rather than the more fundamental aspects of launching a business is doing entrepreneur students a disservice. As she explains, “I have come to observe that most business school programs have an extensive emphasis on fundraising, especially from venture capitalists, and very little pragmatic understanding of what it really takes to get a venture off the ground. As a result, business schools launch students into the real world with completely unrealistic expectations, set up to fail.” Her idea to fix it? Give students a crash course in bootstrapping.

Jobs still on the fritz, but not for temp workers. For four months straight, companies have hired more temporary workers — but that doesn’t bring the omen of recovery that it used to, according to an article by the Associated Press (via the L.A. Times). While it was once considered a preface to the hiring of permanent workers, the phenomenon is now viewed as one of many signs of low confidence in an unstable economy. “Even companies that are boosting production seem inclined to get by with their existing workers, plus temporary staff if necessary,” the article says. Check out this article by Inc.com contributor J.J. McCorvey for more info on temporary hires, and one start-up that’s cashing in on the uptick.

Lawyer turned cupcake entrepreneur When David Arrick got laid off from a Wall Street law firm in 2008, he thought he would end up in real estate. But he ended up in cupcakes, or, more precisely, “mancakes.” Last December, he started an online delivery service that makes cupcakes with manly flavors, like beer-infused cake with beer buttercream. The WSJ has full details on the sweet startup, which Arrick plans to expand into Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles within the next year.

Dramatic changes to your industry? Try reinvention. Do you ever feel like new technologies are edging out the way you’re used to getting things done? Do you worry that consumers are rapidly changing their demands? Entrepreneurs whose industries are being turned upside down should never rule out the possibility of reinventing their business, especially in a downturn. USA Today has come up with five suggestions on how to get your company back on track after a period of transition, including recognizing new opportunities, leveraging your current assets by developing new products or services, and learning to juggle, by developing a strategic plan to help you shift your resources.

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Yelp hit with a class action lawsuit. In our January/February cover story, Inc. told you about the rising tensions between Yelp, a popular reviews site, and the small businesses that are being reviewed by it. Yesterday, as Inc.’s Christine Lagorio reports, the site was hit with a class action lawsuit that alleges that Yelp’s sales people are extorting some businesses. “The suit hinges on the question of whether Yelp is simply offering to run a positive advertisement above negative reviews, or whether it is further offering to remove negative reviews for cash, which could in court amount to payoffs to prevent the site from doing future harm - a.k.a. extortion,” Lagorio writes.

The hidden headaches of starting a business. There’s an interesting article in today’s Wall Street Journal about an aspect of launching a new business that many first-time entrepreneurs often overlook. Namely, the unexpected trials and tribulations of being a boss. For a new entrepreneur intent on growing a budding business, managing employees is the one part of the job that many are unprepared for. As one first-time business owner explains, “I was interested in building a company. I never thought through that it meant I would have to hire people, terminate people and do all of the things associated with being a boss.”

Start-up visa wins friends. Fred Wilson, who has been agitating for legislation that would entice start-up founders from other countries to relocate to the United States, blogs that Senators John Kerry, a Democrat, and Richard Luger, a Republican, introduced a bill yesterday to the Senate to create a so-called “start-up visa.” “I am certain that anti-immigration forces will find something not to like in this proposed legislation…but we have to fight back,” Wilson writes. “So many great American corporations…were founded by immigrants…We need to create new businesses that employ our citizens. And the history of our country is rich with stories of immigrant entrepreneurs. We have to embrace them, welcome them, fund them, and let them do their thing.”

Think you know the real Silicon Valley? Prove it in 15 questions. You’ve heard of Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, and Mark Zuckerberg. But Business Insider is betting they still have 15 questions that might stump you. For starters, which Valley start-up that took an investment from “the Evil Empire” has a lego replica of the Death Star hanging in its office? What does “WFH” mean in Yahoo parlance? Which start-up uses board games, such as Mouse Trap, to name their meeting rooms? What famous, successful start-up CEO has been known to throw (stuffed) sheep? What start-up has a picture of a Shiba Inu drawn on a couch and why?

A new tool to increase foot traffic in your store. E-commerce may have replaced the traditional means of shopping for some, but physical retail stores have a new trick up their sleeves to lure customers, according to an article by TechCrunch. Location-based advertising start-up Placecast has launched a technology called ShopAlerts, which can notify consumers of sales and specials through texts and Facebook alerts whenever they are in the vicinity of the store. A major benefit of the platform is that it also works on non-smartphones, which means the potential to reach a much broader audience than other location-based services like Foursquare and Loopt. The New York Times recently reported that Seattle-based outdoor gear retailer The North Face is among the first to try out the technology, sending texts about new arrivals and promising free goodies such as water bottles with a purchase.

How to test each and every part of your business model. If you know Steve Blank, you know he loves his diagrams. Today, the serial tech entrepreneur doesn’t disappoint as he outlines the Customer Development technique, used by start-ups to “quickly iterate and test each part of their business model.”

How to use online video to market your small business. Using Web-based videos can be a powerful tool for small businesses that lack the finances and branding experience of large corporations with their own marketing departments. While Inc. has reported on the business benefits of hosting videos, video marketing site Reel SEO has also supplied five helpful tips for small businesses who want to market their videos online. Advice includes adding video to Facebook fan pages, optimizing video for Google searches, and posting your videos on YouTube and other video sites to increase your potential for expanding your audience.

Yahoo teams with Twitter. Yahoo announced on Wednesday that like Microsoft and Google, it too has teamed with Twitter to offer access to tweets from its sites. CNN reports that the partnership will allow users to access their Twitter feeds on Yahoo, including through their home pages, Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo Sports. Users will be able to update their Twitter feeds from Yahoo! as well as share Yahoo! content in their tweets. GigaOm notes that this is part of Yahoo’s plan to become an aggregator of the social web, which includes an integration with Facebook that the companies announced in December. Unfortunately for Yahoo, Google also has aspirations to become the social web aggregator, having launched its own social networking feature, Google Buzz, last month.

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How bad is the credit crisis. This bad. The Wall Street Journal reports that 2009 saw the lending fall at an “epic pace,” the most severe drop since 1942. The article predicts that more banks will fail this year than last, even as the largest banks have begun to post profits. Small companies, which typically rely on smaller community banks, have been especially hard hit. The Journal says that President Obama’s $30 billion small business lending program may help, but that many community banks, which are supposed to make the small business loans, have problems of their own. Community banks face defaults in commercial real estate loans that they made before the recession and that generally take longer than home loans to default.

Could the nation’s capital be the next Silicon Valley? As part of an ongoing series on cities around the world that might one day usurp the Valley as the nexus of innovative start-ups, ReadWriteWeb has turned its scope on Washington, D.C. The piece highlights some pros and cons of the city’s entrepreneurship scene — Mixx founder Chris McGill notes, for example, that “the best thing about D.C. is the diversity of people,” and the worst is the “inability to walk down the street and form a strategic partnership” as one would in Silicon Valley. The article also acknowledges the government’s role in shaping the development of local companies, citing an $80 billion allocation in the President’s budget for new technology, which could represent a lucrative opportunity for tech start-ups in the area.

A happy 55th birthday to Steve Jobs. A round of kudos goes out today for entrepreneurial icon and Apple founder Steve Jobs, who was born on this date in 1955. To celebrate this momentous occasion, the folks over at tech blog Walyou have put together a virtual trip down memory lane in his honor. The tribute includes old photos of Jobs throughout the ages, fan artwork of Jobs, YouTube clips, and a video of the Simpsons episode inspired by Apple. Best of all is a rare clip of a young Jobs at a 1983 Mac event hosting something called the Mac Dating Game. One of the contestants is none other than Microsoft’s Bill Gates. It’s amazing to see the two giants in their youth getting along so well. What’s even more amazing is Gates’ praise of Apple. As he explains, “To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different. It takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination. The Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.”

A tech investor’s public insult binge on Twitter. Former PayPal-er Keith Rabois, an investor in LinkedIn, Yelp, YouTube, Slide, and more went on a Twitter rampage yesterday and Valleywag has the 140-character carnage. Mint.com designer-cum-venture capitalist Jason Putori was told he was “confident and ignorant,” for someone who’s never sourced a deal. Rabois also had no respect for startup advisor Tyler Will since, as he says, “I have raised more capital than you will ever see in your life.” And in a twofer, Rabois also manages to undermine both TechCrunch and an “idiotic ‘professor’ who has never accomplished anything except creating pseudo-titles.” Warning: contains strong language.

VCs and Intel attempt to inspire confidence. Intel is announcing that through a partnership with 24 VC firms, they will be investing $3.5 billion in U.S. start-ups over the next couple of years. It sounds nice, right? However, no new capital has been raised, these commitments aren’t signed in blood, the company and its VC partners are simply looking to send a message, says the Wall Street Journal (via AllThingsD). The announcement is “an attempt by venture firms…to send out a confidence-inspiring message especially to Washington but more generally to the public and the tech ecosystem at large to let them know we’re open for business,” says Dixon Doll, a general partner at DCM, one of the firms involved. If you’d like to join the ranks of the investees, see how your business plan could affect VCs’ investment decisions.

McDonald’s gives free Wi-Fi a big boost. In December, the home of the Big Mac announced that it would start offering free Wi-Fi service at its 11,000 U.S. locations where customers had to previously pay for access. Now, as VentureBeat explains, a new report from the Wi-Fi hotspot ad service JiWire explains just how big a deal the McDonald’s move is to the overall free Wi-Fi hotspot marketplace.

Wondering where to recycle your cellphone? Try an ecoATM. Though Inc. reported on a San Diego-based cellphone recycling startup called ecoATM in December, the company has since begun creating outposts for its environmentally-friendly kiosks across the country, Reuters reports. The ecoATM, which is similar to a Coinstar vending machine, allows customers to plug in the phones they wish to recycle, and its software will then inspect the phone for content, scratches, and the like, and assess whether the device has any monetary value. Customers were reported to have paid an average of $11 for each phone during recent trials at store in Nebraska. “It’s hard to predict how consumers will react to kiosks,” said ecoATM founder Mark Bowles. “But we’re not asking for consumers to pay us. We’re paying them for the used phones, like a Coinstar machine, which is why we think this automated approach will work.”

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I have to admit I was a bit skeptical before Inc. began its virtual experiment earlier this month. My work as a magazine reporter is such that I am constantly interacting with other writers and editors. During the past few weeks, I have become a huge fan of Skype as a way to stay connected with my colleagues, but working virtually has meant missing out on that spontaneous meeting in an editor’s office to discuss an idea, or the inspiration and energy that comes from a random conversation with a co-worker in the hallway.

What’s more, I knew after attending an in-office session on the psychology of virtual work, conducted in January by consultant Cindy Floggart, that I’m the type of person that may not be as productive in the home-office environment. So, for most of this virtual month, I’ve scheduled my workdays with a destination in mind—a café, a library—and spent time accomplishing tasks in places where other people were around.

But, last week I left my apartment in New York City for one of the quietest places around: Alpine, Utah, population: approximately 9,800, where my dad, Dean Schweitzer, who runs a home-based business, has a second home (His primary residence is in Southern California).

And what I found during my time in Utah surprised me.

I used to think that the buzz of office phones and constant stimulation was integral to my work lifestyle. Well, it’s hard to argue against working from home when I’m starring out at the majestic snow-capped mountains from my dad’s huge kitchen window, and the only noise is of the sound of my fingers typing on my keyboard. Granted very few people work in places where they have this kind of view…

But scenery aside, coming here has helped me understand virtual work from the perspective of an entrepreneur. The Inc. challenge for our editorial team was to see if a magazine staff could go virtual, and there have been all kinds of lessons that have already come out of that. I’ve had the added benefit of seeing how our subjects, the people who are actually running virtual companies, are doing it.

My dad is a pediatric dentist, and in 2008 he developed an esthetic full-crown restorative procedure for children and the PedoNatural Crown, an original product integral to the procedure. He holds seminars out of Salt Lake City where he trains other dentists on how to perform the specialized restoration, and he sells PedoNatural Crown kits with all the materials needed for those dentists to implement the procedure in their own offices.

My dad is his company’s sole employee: He serves as the marketer, the public relations person, the fulfillment center, and the web developer, among many other things. So when you do all that my dad does for his business, the concept of having an office really becomes meaningless. He doesn’t go to his company each morning; his company goes with him wherever he may be.

During my few days in Utah, my dad was preparing for an upcoming seminar in Salt Lake City. As I sat downstairs doing research and preparing for interviews with sources, I listened to my dad record audio for an instructional DVD he’s going to sell, and polish the language on his Website. I also watched as he meticulously put together all the materials he would need to bring to the seminar – instructional packets for the dentists, models to work on, ordering forms, etc. – and marveled at all the work that went into creating each element of his business.

Time seemed to go a little more slowly while I was there. Either that, or I was completely free of distractions, and being among nature has a way of helping my mind focus. I barely thought about the things that normally consume me at home like what I will eat for lunch, or when I will catch up on my DVR. Luckily for my dad, that’s what almost every day is like for him. And the best part was seeing first hand the joy he gets from putting everything he’s got into the business, no matter the place or the time.

The virtual work life isn’t for everyone, of course, and there is no denying that there are many entrepreneurs who have built wonderful cultures that employees yearn to be part of. But as my stay at my dad’s home has taught me, entrepreneurship in its truest form has nothing do with the physical structure, boundaries, or even culture of a company. In most cases, entrepreneurship is about starting something out of nothing and pushing the limitations of the status quo.

To see more of my virtual experience in Utah, here’s a video interview I did with my dad using a Flip