How To Raise The Next Zuckerberg: 6 Coding Apps For Kids

via readwrite.com

If you want to give your kid every opportunity to succeed, it’s hard to argue with teaching them to code. Some of the wealthiest and most influential people of our time began programming young, and who wouldn’t want that kind of future for our kids?

Yesterday, we reviewed Hopscotch, an iPad app that teaches children the basics of any modern programming language. However, that’s just one of the many options out there. Here are six free tools to get kids excited about code. Whether she’s 5 or 15, and whether she wants to learn Ruby or Java, there’s something here just for her...

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12 Crowdfunding Websites to Fund Your Next Project

via instantshift.com

Many of us have creative ideas that we would love to see come to life but we typically do not have the funds to back such dreams. The realization is sometimes hard to stomach especially when faced with reality that your big dream might never come to fruition. Fortunately nowadays finding the funds to support your projects isn’t as hard and unobtainable as it once was thanks to the emergence of crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding is a method in which every day people provide funding, with their own money, to projects that they personally want to see come to life. In other words a mass amount of people are donating money to your project in hopes that you will be able to make your dreams come true. There are various methods of crowdfunding from offering rewards and incentives to backers to just having people donate to you without seeking anything in return. Today I’m here to share with you 12 crowdfunding websites that could help you fund your next project. Below you will see a summary of each website along with how it works, the fees levied, acceptable projects and of course the up side and down side of each website so let’s get started.

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What Will Happen If We Don't Raise Debt Ceiling

via businessinsider.com

The United States has already hit its debt ceiling--the legal limit of the amount of money it is allowed to borrow, as established by Congress.

Right now, the U.S. Treasury is resorting to "extraordinary measures" to keep paying the country's bills.

Sometime between February 15th and March 1st, the Bipartisan Policy Center projects, the Treasury's ability to use these "extraordinary measures" will end.

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Raise Money: The $100 Million Funding Secret

via inc.com

I often help entrepreneurs raise money from investors. I'm not a venture capitalist or investment banker, but I have raised millions of dollars for companies I've started, so I know what works.

A few years ago, some technology company founders I was mentoring asked me to come with them to their investor pitch. I helped them get the presentation fine tuned and ready. But we never got to the presentation. Five minutes into the introductions, the lead investor stood up and said: "We don't do technology investments, why are you even here?"

How could this happen, you ask? I did too. But here's the No. 1 rule of working with investors that this company, and so many others, failed to follow: Do your homework.

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How to Raise Your Freelance Pay Rates in the Next 60 Days

via freelanceswitch.com

Freelancers interested in earning big should always be looking for opportunities to raise rates. Luckily, if you’re reading this in the fall, you’re at one of the easiest times of year to get a raise.
I’ll explain why in a minute.

But first, let’s talk a little economic reality about why you need to get aggressive about asking for a raise.

Freelancers need to continuously raise rates, because the cost of living isn’t stable. The price of oil and corn are both going up as I write this, for instance.

You need your rates to rise a bit just to keep up with inflation — and they need to go up more if you want to get ahead.

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Kickstarter lays down strict new rules for creators

via technologytell.com

Kickstarter has exploded in popularity in the past year. It has become the go-to place for companies or individuals to showcase ideas for products and services they hope will become a reality. Backers are led to believe it only takes the right amount of money to turn an idea into an actual product, but it’s much more difficult than that. Kickstarter wants the public to know that Kickstarter is not a store where they can buy products that aren’t found anywhere else. To accomplish this, Kickstarter has created new guidelines for creators that are effective immediately.

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How To Raise Financially Savvy Kids

via forbes.com

With bagged lunches and crisp clean notebooks, kids everywhere are heading back to school to brush up on their math, English and geography skills. One lesson they won’t get in the classroom, however, is arguably one of the most important for their future success: How to smartly and responsibly handle money. That is a course we leave to parents, who do not get a lesson plan.

“Parents do great teaching kids good manners and how to be safe, make their beds and be culturally savvy,” says Mary Hunt, personal finance expert and author of recently released Raising Financially Confident Kids. “But so very often parents neglect the most important thing of all—to prepare them to be financially astute.”

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10 Tips for Raising Money on Kickstarter

via mashable.com

Double Fine, the game developer, raised $3.3 million for its adventure game, Double Fine Adventures. InXile, a game development company, made $500,000 in 17 hours for its role-playing game, Wasteland 2. Both did it on Kickstarter, the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects. Naturally, it would be easy to think of Kickstarter as a virtual Gold Rush. That would be a mistake.

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4 Secret Methods to Raising Money

via openforum.com

The most common entrepreneur's question I hear is “How do I raise money for my company?” Before I can respond a second question is often immediately fired off, “And how do I do it fast?”

This second question sounds off a siren in my head. A company that needs money immediately is usually a company that is struggling in some way. And a struggling company is a sign of mismanagement, whether that be in money, strategy, customers, personnel or all the above. In these situations, money is simply a small bandage on a major wound.

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Why Has This Man Raised $2.7 Billion In The Last Three Years?

via businessinsider.com

The list is a "who's who" of hot tech companies: Pinterest. Facebook. Fab. AirBnB. Groupon. Instagram.

And that's just a fraction of the portfolio of elite Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. As of last month's announcement of a new $1.5 billion fund, they have raised a total $2.7 billion to continue making bets.

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What It Takes to Raise $9.5 Million

via openforum.com

Talia Mashiach always knew she wanted to start a big, disruptive technology company. But unlike many young entrepreneurs, this 35-year old mother of five was in no hurry. Mashiach’s company, Chicago-based Eved (Hebrew for “servant”), is an online marketplace for meeting and event planners—a $263 billion dollar industry that Mashiach says is woefully behind the curve in terms of technology. In that pain point, she saw an attractive business opportunity. But the company she started eight years ago bears little resemblance to the one she has today, the one that just landed $9.5 million in venture capital.

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