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New legislation that could free up start-ups to fundraise online is gaining steam. Here's how it could disrupt traditional capital formation.

Chris Christensen's $4 million company is growing fast in a business without rivals: Creating and selling high-end products for dog shows.

The best way to avoid bickering over family ownership of a company is to put everything in writing early on. Dear Norm, My sister had a great idea for a product and started a business. I joined her and put in long hours, without compensation, for two years

Every end-of-year gesture says something different. Last year, I chose to give a gift that honors the craft of tool building.

Looking for ways to stand out in a sea of e-mail promotions? Check out this cool tool

After 11 months and $550,000, they had gotten nowhere. Could they really gamble what was left on a hunch? Josh Levy and Ross Cohen left the offices of Beyond.com, a hiring website based outside Philadelphia, feeling like fools.

How to regain your motivation and determination on even the darkest days.

So far this year, Pravina Raghavan, district director for New York at the U.S. Small Business Administration, loaned $789 million, up 63 percent over 2011.

The startup Womply recently brought us Groupon-like "effortless offers." Today it launches Loyalty Cloud, hoping to slice through the messy customer-loyalty market with the "simplest loyalty program ever for local merchants." Last month a new startup, Womply , launched to bring "effortless offers" schemes to local merchants--coming with an impressive pedigree because it's co-founder Brandt Squires was formerly GM and Head of Sales at LivingSocial . Just weeks later, Womply has an additional offering--Loyalty Cloud--that promises the same sort of effortless experience but for customer loyalty schemes, rather than Groupon -style "special offers." According to the new sitei, it's simplicity rests on the fact that, "Merchants create offers that reward customers for repeat visits and Womply handles everything else, from marketing and remitting offers to customers, to providing analysis and insight on the amount of revenue generated as a result." To this end, Womply's new Loyalty Cloud is trying to be a complete one-stop shop for local business loyalty schemes: Simpler even than stamping a rubber stamp on a collector card, and providing deep customer analytics that would be tricky to get any other way. It manages this by being seamless from a customer and merchant point of view, with the transaction happening "in the cloud" via "Womply's high-tech platform that enables the company to spot credit and debit card transactions at participating merchants and to push cash credits to customer payment cards." The whole thing is designed to be merchant-centric, rather than focussing on the deals or the end-user customers.

Vayable helps tourists get off the beaten path. Can this San Francisco start-up find its way beyond seed funding? The Pitch: "Vayable makes it easy to find unique things to do when you're traveling.

The challenging economy has forced everyone to look at cutting unnecessary costs.

Somewhere along the line you started treating it more like a resume. It's time to fix that. Overall, LinkedIn is the best social media platform for entrepreneurs, business owners, and professionals.

%excerpt% Read more from the original source: How to Avoid a Bad Case of ‘Deal Fever’

Industry leaders may be intuitive, innovative, and able to handle risks, but real success requires them to be mature. We’ve all heard stories about the early start-up days of well-known tech companies like Apple, Microsoft and Facebook

One bad employee can quickly turn a positive working environment into a divisive and negative atmosphere. The comedian Larry Miller once quipped "I don't understand couples that break up and get back together—especially couples who divorce and remarry. That's like pouring milk on a bowl of cereal, tasting it, and saying, 'This milk is sour