“Something I’ve been having to wonder about is the economy. The news is filled with talks of impending recessions, and discussions that it’s too late to do much about it.

However, my business, Adaptive Path, and all similar businesses of which I’m aware, are overwhelmed by work opportunities. We’re all turning down leads left and right (and, believe me, we’re grateful for the situation we’re finding ourselves in).”

“Some things were just never meant to be, but that doesn’t mean that investors won’t pile millions of dollars upon a bad idea — or even a good idea gone bad. Whether they crashed and burned or sucked investors dry, these ventures just didn’t work out. Check out our graveyard of dreams and money to get a look at VC (venture-capital) investments that just weren’t wise.”

Ben Stein: “About a week ago, I was swimming in my pool when I had serious difficulty breathing. ‘Uh-oh,’ I said to myself, ‘now I am about to die.’ My wife was upstairs reading, way out of earshot and, anyway, if I were about to have a lethal heart attack, I wouldn’t be able to scream. It turned out to be a nasty but short-lived bronchitis, and as I was lying in bed recovering, I thought, ‘I will die someday, and before I do, I would like to share with you the best possible thoughts I can, in gratitude for the many insightful letters I have received over the years from my readers.’”

“I work in the surreal world of Silicon Valley where venture capitalists fund companies based on PowerPoint pitches and executive summaries. My friend Tim Berry rightfully pointed that business plans still serve an important role in ‘the rest of the world.’”

“I try to read my favorite business book of all time at least once a month. Luckily it’s only 30 pages. Benjamin Franklin’s The Way to Wealth was first published in 1758 as a preface to Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac. It’s a summary of his previously published thoughts on how to succeed in business (and, I’d say, life). It’s chock full of astute observations…

“Venture Hacks is an entrepreneur’s guide to hacking venture capital. Our first series, Term Sheet Hacks, describes how to get a great deal in a Series A investment. We’re Naval Ravikant and Nivi. Naval is a serial entrepreneur and the Chairman of Vast.com. Nivi is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Atlas Venture.”

“As you read this, hundreds of Silicon Valley CEOs are under their desks in full duck-and-cover mode, fearing that the Department of Justice or a shareholder mob might pounce at any time to cart them off for ‘backdating’ or ’spring-loading’ stock options. The paranoia has gotten so bad that corporate lawyers from San Francisco to San Jose are charging $600 an hour to scour records, all in an effort to clear companies’ reputations before they get besmirched.”

“Y Combinator is now accepting applications for the winter 2007 funding cycle. It will take place in Mountain View, CA, from January through March 2007… How do we choose who to fund? The people in your group are what matter most to us. We use the animal test described in How to Start a Startup, plus, for technical people, the three tests we used for hackers.”

[Geirge] Foreman, street-smart and now mindful of his wallet, has his own perceptive answers to those questions. For the man who came back from the brink, it’s all a matter of discipline and proper boundaries. ‘A lot of people just don’t grow up,’ he says. ‘I mean, 65-year-old men. They just don’t grow up. They don’t understand that money does not grow on a tree and that you’ve got to respect every dollar. Like Rip Van Winkle — the guy who slept — they party, party, party, then they wake up. ‘Oh my God!’ And they do something desperate trying to recapture what they had. And it doesn’t work like that. You must stay awake.’”

“This year is shaping up as a very active year for early-stage companies to receive VC funding. Backers want to get in on the ground floor.”

“I was on a panel this week with some really good VCs and several equally high quality entrepreneurs. The topic was managing a Board and we covered a bunch of important topics. One subject that came up was communicating with your board and investors. One of the entrepreneurs said that she had been advised to send a weekly status email to her board and investors and she cringed when she thought of that.”

“A question for the Radar readers: Does anyone know of a case where a company, let’s say a software or Internet company, took no institutional investment (VC or other significant investment) up until the point of a successful IPO? Let’s say that mezzanine rounds don’t count against a candidate.”

“The surest way to reduce your taxes is to convert personal expenditures into allowable deductions. Turn even a hobby into a business and you’ll cut your tax bill.”

“From the San Jose Mercury News, a report on venture capital honchos John Doerr and John Denniston’s push for investment in clean and green technology at last week’s Cleantech Venture Network conference…”

“More bad news for actively managed mutual funds: A ’survivor bias’ in the Morningstar mutual fund data relied upon by most individual investors and financial advisors has the effect of ’systematically and significantly’ overstating the performance of actively managed mutual funds relative to their related indexes for the 10-year period from 1995-2004, according to a major new study to be released today by Savant Capital Management Inc., of Rockford, IL., and the Zero Alpha Group (ZAG).” (Thanks kottke.org!)