More than half the students at Harvard Business School are members of the High Tech and New Media Club, and 18% of its 1K graduates joined high-tech companies last year (up from 9% in 1997). The school has replaced its required first year General Management class with a new Entrepreneurial Manager class. [Red Herring, May00. Edupage.]

UVentures.com lists 4K commercial technologies from 50 universities and research labs. 30 licensing deals are currently in the works, with 10% to go to UVentures. Competitors include Yet2.com, Techex.com, and the Patent & License Exchange (pl-ex.com). Dartmouth says that inquiries are up 50% since it listed with UVentures. [Darnell Little, BW e.biz, 05Jun00, EB 116.]

You can get a list of business incubators from the National Business Incubation Association, . On average, companies spend 2.5 years in an incubator. Tech start-ups may do best with a nonprofit incubator -- such as a university operation -- that charges rent and fees. For-profit incubators sometimes charge 22%-44% of equity, so hire a professional to represent you during negotiations. [Karen E. Klein, BW Frontier, 22May00, F.16.]

"Store in a box" Web services cater to the 8M-24M small businesses in the US (and elsewhere), hoping that clients paying low initial fees will grow to need more expensive services. Some of the free online storefront companies are Bigstep.com, eCongo.com, and Freemerchant.com. Swap advertising via LinkExchange, and get a free toll-free number from uReach.com. Communicate with colleagues via HotOffice or ScheduleOnline.com, and do your office work in Sun Microsystems' StarOffice at . Free websites are available from Freeservers.com, YahooGeoCities, Homestead.com, or Tripod, with a domain name from Namezero.com. Tech support? Try 32bit.com, Computing.net, About.com, eHow.com, MyHelpdesk.com, NoWonder, PCSupport.com, or VirtuaDr. [Cecilia Kang, SJM, 17Apr00, 1C.] (Or try Amazon.com's zShops. Not free, but you can get customers from their search engine.)

StartVenture is a support-services newsletter and discussion list for entrepreneurs. Contact . [NEW-LIST, 10Apr00.]

For office salary surveys, see .

If you need venture capital, you might try some of the online sites where business angels and VCs gather. Angels must be worth $1M or have an income of $200K to participate. Some of the sites are currently free, but with plans to charge investors. OffRoad Capital requires a $25K minimum bid per investor, and has raised $42M for seven companies since Mar99. WR Hambrecht has only a $5K minimum. It gets 2% of any deal up front and 20% of profits at IPO or acquisition. Garage.com charges investors only $495/year, but they have to negotiate their own deals after reviewing online business plans. Other sites that introduce VCs and entrepreneurs include and . [Susan Scherreik, BW, 22May00, 172E10.] (Angels fund 30-40 times more ventures than do venture capitalists.)

Info and financing sources for small and home-based businesses can be found at . For buying into existing or larger businesses, including franchises, try Moneytree at . [SJM, 02May00, 18C.]

Recent business books of interest: Bob Reiss, "Low Risk, High Reward: Starting and Growing Your Business with Minimal Risk"; Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer, "Future Wealth," about democratization of wealth and a shift to risk as the basis of wealth creation; and Andrea Gabor, "The Capitalist Philosophers: The Geniuses of Modern Business," which profiles Herbert Simon as one of the 13 great management thinkers of the past century. [Business Reader Review, 24Apr00.]

Even newer books worth noting: Osnabrugge and Johnson's "Angel Investing: Matching Startup Funds with Startup Companies"; Thaddeus Wawro's "Radicals and Visionaries: Entrepreneurs Who Revolutionized the 20th Century," with over 70 biographical sketches; and Alan Gregerman's "Lessons from the Sandbox: Using the 13 Gifts of Childhood to Rediscover the Keys to Business Success." [Business Reader Review, May00.]

-- Ken