Discussions

Commonwealth Capital Launches New Venture Capital Fund Dedicated Exclusively to Start-up and Early Stage Companies

The company also launched a new microsite at www.commonwealthcapital.fund to assist capital seekers. Entrepreneurs can sign up now and be matched with a no-cost, personal funding concierge who guides them through a standardized process for fund eligibility. Users first engage in an online “proof of concept” stage to gain community support for their project, product or service. They then create a marketable deal structure for investors and an operating plan to attract a well-connected management team. After completing these stages, users potentially qualify for an investment from the new Fund. “Our goal is to give startups a better alternative to traditional venture capital. Our unique combination of a standardized process, no-cost personal funding concierge, and direct investment for those who qualify gives founders a clearer path to build and fund their businesses the right way, the first time,” said Timothy Daniel Hogan, CEO of Commonwealth Capital. About Commonwealth Capital LLC Commonwealth Capital LLC is a subsidiary of Commonwealth Capital Advisors (CCA). Since 1998, CCA has successfully engaged hundreds of start-up and early stage companies in their quest for raising millions of dollars in capital. As former Wall Street Investment Bankers and experts in compliance matters related to selling securities, the company’s executives are intimately familiar with the criteria employed to successfully raise seed, development and expansion capital. Learn more at www.commonwealthcapital.co

Crowd-Funding Success

The definition of the term “crowdfunding” has evolved in recent years. The term was originally used for donation-based crowdfunding only, but is now used to define capital-based crowdfunding — also known as Regulation Crowdfunding — under Title II (2) and then under Title III (3) of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act of 2012. The JOBS Act has significantly leveled the investment playing field, encouraging a growing number of entrepreneurs to begin fielding their own crowdfunded offerings. Unfortunately, in their excitement to take advantage of these new opportunities, many entrepreneurs fail to recognize that significant legal and managerial risks remain when raising crowdfunded capital. These risks can be devastating professionally and personally if not identified and addressed from the start. To help entrepreneurs get started right, Commonwealth Capital provides a complimentary 40-page Abridged Edition of the e-book, downloadable from its website. The new Chapter Two includes comprehensive excerpts and summaries from the 685-page document known as the SEC Final Rules regarding crowdfunding. More importantly, the Abridged Edition enables entrepreneurs to make qualified decisions on whether a securities offering is right for their company’s capitalization needs. Educate yourself on the facts of this process. Understand all the aspects. Plan for prosperity, but document for disaster. A complimentary copy of the Abridged Edition can be downloaded at: https://commonwealthcapital.co/get-your-ebook

Business Opportunities

California agriculture real estate business opportunities. http://HeritageFreedom.US

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWEMoYoWiPg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWEMoYoWiPg

Going Global

As digital advances continue to widen the global market, so too do they widen the horizons of freelancers. Where there’s internet connection, there’s business. Independent entrepreneurs are often perfect candidates for global expansion, offering services which can be virtually recruited and implemented, regardless of geographical location. With new territory comes new risks and challenges. It is important to understand what tools and support you are going to need before you set out.http://www.smallbizdaily.com/going-global/

Global Connectivity as an answer to Global Challenges

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been growing at a vigorous rate for a few years. All the actors involved in the industry, including analysts, estimate that this growth rate will not only remain steady but will even catch up even more speed in the future. IoT applications are meant to become a revolution for the already-existing business areas: the self-driving connected car, smart homes, farming, handling and shipping of goods, security, smart cities, etc. Technological revolutions are not possible without having to overcome technical challenges first. The first challenge for an industry, that aims to connect billions of objects, is to enable the infrastructure and communications networks that will be needed to provide connectivity to those things.https://iot.telefonica.com/blog/global-connectivity-as-an-answer-to-global-challenges

Global Game Jam stokes global development community

Jam sessions are where some of music’s most memorable masterpieces were born. They enable artists to collaborate to create new and exciting music that could only be born from that unique environment. Now, apply that concept to game development, and instead of a handful of people in one room together, you have hundreds of these rooms spread out across the world. Welcome to the Global Game Jam (GGJ) . The GGJ is an international non-profit organization that hosts annual game development jam sessions at over 500 locations in 93 countries, and these numbers are growing each year. These sessions happen at the same time, and center around a theme where developers around the world are challenged to come up with game concepts and create them.http://readwrite.com/2016/03/29/global-game-jam-a-win-for-developers-pr1/

Global Networking Event 2016

As the wise and wondrous Aristotle once said, “quality is not an act, it is a habit.” For over 270 years, the Sotheby’s International Realty® brand has continuously proven this mindset true with its unparalleled service and continuous record of excellence. Encompassing over 150,000 agents and 850 offices throughout 63 countries and territories, the firm is clearly a world leader in luxury real estate, and a supreme professional family of which we are proud to be a part. In fact, just this past week, William Pitt and Julia B. Fee Sotheby’s International Realty agents and senior leadership were fortunate enough to attend this year’s Sotheby’s International Realty Global Networking Event held in Las Vegas. Over the course of three days, a total of 2,300 attendees experienced firsthand the matchless offerings of this great brand, as they joined representatives from across the globe to honor our already established principles, and become even more empowered by the sophistication of our marketing, industry of information, resources, vast global affiliate network and so much more.http://www.williampitt.com/global-networking-event-2016/

Gambling with Lives

The fifty-something lab technician swabbing my arm before a routine test this past May nodded toward the symbol on my T-shirt. “Did you get that at Foxwoods?” she asked, referring to one of two Indian casinos in the region. I shook my head. “It’s from New Mexico. Do you go to Foxwoods often?” She nodded. Then, after a moment, with just the two of us in the room, she lowered her head and said softly, “I am in so much trouble with the machines.” “What kind do you play?” I asked. “Penny slots,” she replied. “How can you get in trouble playing penny slots?” “I play fifty lines at a time,” she said. In other words, she wasn’t betting a penny with every press of the button. She was betting fifty cents. No wonder her losses were adding up. http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/11/gambling-with-lives

The Perfect Bet: Taking the Gambling out of Gambling

Mathematician and author Adam Kucharski talks about his new book The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling (Basic Books, 2016). http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/the-perfect-bet-taking-the-gambling-out-of-gambling/

Gambling With Your Cyber Defense

Back in college, my fraternity had a monthly casino night. We’d rent all manner of table games, put on ESPN, invite our sister sorority over and proceed to bet on everything from Australian rules football to camel races in the Middle East. Each time, our house usually won enough money to host the next party and then some. I, on the other hand, always lost. As a result, I became a student of all-things Vegas, odds-making and how big-time gambling business works in general. As I dove into the subject, I quickly realized gambling is a serious business. One that serves as a time-tested model of near-guaranteed success. Dice Some of the first big lessons I learned from studying how Vegas operates explain why they’re so successful week in and week out. You see, odds-makers:http://www.securityweek.com/gambling-your-cyber-defense

Monkeys found able to weigh risks in gambling experiments

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers with the University of Cambridge in the U.K. has found that Rhesus monkeys are able to weigh the risks between at least two alternatives and to decide when a risk is worth betting on. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers describe the experiments they carried out, their results and why they believe there is relevance for humans. Human beings are known for weighing risks and rewards to give themselves the best chance of avoiding the former and gaining more of the latter, but do other animals have such abilities as well? In this latest effort, the researchers put a pair of Rhesus monkeys through a series of tests to find out if they have the ability to gamble, and if so, to what degree. http://phys.org/news/2016-07-monkeys-gambling.html

Taxes on gambling winnings in sports

Have you placed your Super Bowl office pool bets? Don't feel guilty. Gambling is inevitable. That was the determination in 1976 of the Commission on the Review of the National Policy Toward Gambling, which spent 3 years studying gambling in the United States. "No matter what is said or done by advocates or opponents of gambling in all its various forms, it is an activity that is practiced, or tacitly endorsed, by a substantial majority of Americans," the report noted 40 years ago. http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/taxes-on-gambling-winnings-in-sports-1.aspx

Counter-Strike' gambling is falling fast as Valve hands out cease and desist letters

There are two types of gambling in the CS:GO community: weapon skin gambling and match gambling. Match gambling works like any other sport: gamblers put money or weapon skins down on which team they think will win a match and win or lose based on outcomes. The other type, weapon skin gambling, is much more complicated. Weapon skins are purely-aesthetic upgrades earned or purchased in CS:GO that can be traded or sold in Valve's Steam marketplace. Some gambling sites allow users to put their skins on the line against other players, and the website picks a random (or not-so-random) winner who takes home the pot. Some of these rare skins can fetch several hundreds dollars on the marketplace.http://mashable.com/2016/07/20/counter-strike-gambling/#K3vCeaMYAaqT

Twitch pulls the plug on CS:GO gambling broadcasts

Twitch is warning streamers not to broadcast or promote Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skin gambling on its service. The warning comes in the wake of Valve’s announcement yesterday that it is cracking down on third-party websites that use Steam to facilitate gambling. The issue came to a head when the company was sued for helping to create, sustain and facilitate a market that allowed players to bet CS:GO weapon skins as if they were casino chips. Valve said in announcement yesterday that it was sending out cease-and-desist notices to websites that operate what amount to online weapon skin casinos. Late last night, Twitch published a notice to tell streamers how Valve’s news impacts them.http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/14/12187460/twitch-csgo-gambling

This State Has the Worst Gambling Addiction

And here's how the other 49 rank. Whenever legalizing gambling is discussed, it becomes a seriously contentious issue, for obvious reasons—fun and games can quickly spiral out of control into addiction. Gambling may not be legal in many states, but its addiction is a fairly sizable and expensive problem that affects over 2% of the population and had a total social cost of $7 billion in 2013, according to the National Council on Problem Gambling. Certain states, however, have it worse than others.http://time.com/money/4322783/gambling-addiction-worst-states/

Five Top Casino Gambling Tips

Once you are nestled safely inside the casino, know where you parked your car, and have found your way to a table or slot machine, you should remember the five top casino gambling tips to help make your stay profitable. Tip Number One – Know Your Limit Know your spending limit. Money management is a really boring subject and many people have trouble keeping track of what they have spent after a few hours of casino action. Make things easy on yourself by deciding on what you can afford to lose before your start playing. If you actually win, great, and don’t be afraid to go home with the bucks, the casino will be open tomorrow, too! Know your time limit. If you start work at 8am, know when you need to quit playing to get everything you need done before hitting the sheets. Then, stick to your plan and leave the casino when your curfew comes, even if you feel like Cinderella. Know your drinking limit. In the heat of battle, fighting for chips and rearming your weapons, you really need to keep track of how many drinks you have had.http://casinogambling.about.com/od/strategyandsystems/a/Five-Top-Casino-Gambling-Tips.htm\",#casinotips VIRTUAL WEAPONS ARE TURNING TEEN GAMERS INTO SERIOUS GAMBLERS,Gaming/Gambling,The video game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Hidden gambling habits of staff exposed

A new study has uncovered the secret world of betting and gambling enjoyed by British employees. A poll commission by Reed in Partnership and conducted by YouGov has found that 28% of UK working adults who gamble want to keep the extent of their habit hidden from co-workers. The report said that businesses, and HR, should place a bigger emphasis on workplace gambling policies, as it is detrimental to both the bottom line and employee wellbeing; staff should be educated so they can recognise the signs in themselves or others, and can act accordingly. The problem is accentuated in the finance, accountancy and legal sectors, where 34% worry about their work colleagues finding out about their gambling. The results found that employees with management responsibility were more likely to gamble that those who don’t (45% compared to 39%), and 72% said businesses should be concerned about the negative impact of gambling on their workers. Martin Fallon, Managing Director of Reed in Partnership, said: “It’s important that we provide adequate support and guidance for those who are at risk of losing their jobs because of gambling, and those whose addiction is stopping them from getting back into the workplace.”http://www.hrgrapevine.com/markets/hr/article/2016-04-13-research-exposes-hidden-gambling-of-employees

10 signs that you may have a gambling problem

Perhaps your idea of a perfect weekend is flying to Las Vegas, picking out the casino games with the best odds, and allotting yourself a set amount of money to gamble. Maybe this is how you choose to spend the entertainment money in your budget, or you’re meeting your friends for a weekend getaway. Whatever the case, gambling can start out as a perfectly controlled activity. However, it can quickly become an issue for your well-being — both in relationships and financially speaking — if you’re not watching for warning signs. Unfortunately, having a gambling problem isn’t totally abnormal in the U.S. Like many addictive behaviors, the problem with gambling addiction isn’t the gambling itself — it’s how an individual responds to that activity. In fact, someone with a gambling addiction experiences the same effects in the brain as someone who is an alcoholic, according to the National Council on Problem Gambling. “The gambling alters the person’s mood and the gambler keeps repeating the behavior attempting to achieve that same effect. But just as tolerance develops to drugs or alcohol, the gambler finds that it takes more and more of the gambling experience to achieve the same emotional effect as before,” the council explains.http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-signs-that-you-may-have-a-gambling-problem-2016-06-09

Study: Instagram Users Think Positively of Gambling

A new study from OnlineCasino.ca analyzed Instagram posts from around the world to determine what Millennials think about gambling. The company analyzed hashtags related to gambling and gambling tournaments, and used AlchemyAPI to determine whether posts had positive or negative user sentiment. The report found Millennials overall have a positive opinion of gambling. To be specific, the company found 33,926 Instagram hashtags that were determined to be positive, and 9,636 hashtags that were negative. Another 8,309 hashtags were considered neutral, while the sentiment of 4,776 posts couldn’t be determined.http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/study-instagram-users-think-positively-of-gambling/634998