Hailo announced it raised a new $30 million round of funding led by Union Square Ventures. Here's what that means.

As taxi-hailing-app maker Hailo attempts to tackle the crucial New York City market, it has investor Fred Wilson on its side.

The London start-up announced Tuesday that it finalized a December deal that raised $30.6 million led by Wilson's Union Square Ventures (think: Twitter, Tumblr, Kickstarter). British mogul Richard Branson and Japanese telecommunications company KDDI also chipped in for the round.

Wilson seems to have had his eye on Hailo for a while; last year Jay Bregman, the company's CEO and co-founder casually told me that Wilson had described Hailo as "Foursquare for taxis."

Reached on the phone Tuesday, Bregman laughed when I referenced that phrase. He explained that he'd met with Union Square Ventures twice in December. In the course of pitching his company, and explaining how it differs from other ride-hailing companies in the aggressive and growing space, Bregman said Wilson stopped him, by saying, "I got it, I got it," followed by that line: "It's Foursquare for taxis."

With this latest round of funding from Wilson, Hailo has raised almost exactly the same amount as fast-growing ride-hailing company Uber. Both have about $50 million total invested. But the new round reportedly values Hailo at roughly $140 million--half what Uber was valued at when it closed its last round a year ago. (Hailo operates its taxi-hailing technology in nine cities; Uber offers its taxi-hailing service in five, and its sedan-hailing in more than two dozen.)

Founded in 2010 by a group of four friends in London, Hailo has thrived there. It's reportedly used by more than 10,000 drivers and its app has been downloaded by 225,000 potential passengers. The company raised a series A round of financing last year from Accel Partners (backers of Facebook and Dropbox), Wellington Partners, and Atomico (a fund created by the Skype founders).

Bregman's first dive into entrepreneurship was in London, after he finished graduate school. He founded a logistics company and delivery-business called eCourier, which is recognizable due to its big purple vans.

"We developed some scheduling algorithms to boost the efficiency of the deliveries, and learned a lot of hard lessons about how to create an on-demand transportation marketplace," Bregman says.

But Bregman was born in New York--and couldn't be happier to be home. He's been working for months now out of Hailo's shared office space at WeWork in the Meatpacking District, and planning for the New York City launch of Hailo, slated for the middle of this month.

Uber is likely to start its taxi-hailing service about the same time. Both are part of a year-long pilot program established by New York City's taxi commission to allow digital dispatch of taxicabs. GetTaxi and Flywheel (the start-up formerly known as Cabulous) are other contenders that also provide technology to let passengers locate, secure, and pay for taxicab rides from smartphones.

Wilson noted on his blog that Hailo released data Tuesday, including the fact it has 5,000 cab drivers already signed up in New York.

In cities where cab fares are relatively expensive (say, Dublin and London), Hailo takes a percentage cut--usually roughly 10 percent--of the already-high fare. Here in the United States, however, Hailo plans to simply charge a "Hailo fee."

"It's like tipping the doorman at the hotel," Bregman says. "You know what you're going to pay when you open the app."

Bregman says he considers Hailo more of a benefit to taxicab drivers than to passengers. It's not only a payment platform and fare-finder for drivers, but also gives them maps--and a sort of social-network of other drivers, letting them share tips about locations in real-time.

You know, like Foursquare.

Want to gain confidence, wisdom, and leadership skills in record time? Go to work for a floundering company.

If you've never worked for a floundering company, you don't know what you're missing.

I'm serious. Nothing will prepare you better to lead. And nothing will prepare you better for life.

I've worked for a number of companies that, at one time or another, found themselves on the ropes and, you know what? I learned more about business, management, and leadership trying to help those companies fight it out with giants like Microsoft and Intel than all the rest of my experience combined.

The truth is that working for troubled companies brings out the best in people. It creates strong, resilient, adaptive leaders. Here's what you'll learn by working for companies that have to slug it out with market leaders while on a shoestring budget:

How to drink from the fire hose without drowning. When you're understaffed, underfunded, and losing money every quarter, nobody's going to wait around for you to figure things out. Your customers have better things to do. So do your competitors. These days, markets are constantly changing. Everything moves at lightening speed. There's always too much information and never enough time to breathe. Better get used to it.

You can find your home. If there's a test for knowing if you're in the right place, it's when the company you work for is in deep trouble and everyone's got to sacrifice, pitch in, and fight. If you still love getting up in the morning and going to work under those conditions, then you've found your home.

You know what great leadership really is. Chief executives don't usually get fired when things are going well. They get canned when times are hard and the board figures out what they're really made of--and it falls short of their expectations. When business is floundering, that's when the rubber meets the road. That's when you can really tell if the company's leadership has what it takes: the guts, the smarts, and most of all, the resilience.

The miracle of market segmentation. One of the most powerful techniques in marketing is called market segmentation. We can't all be market leaders, but we can all find unique market segments and focus on leading those. It's all about positioning your product in a niche you can dominate, and then growing from there.

How to win no-win situations. When you're outmanned and outgunned, you always end up having to troubleshoot seemingly impossible problems. When you're pushed so hard that your back is up against a wall, that's exactly when you'll rise to the occasion and do your best work. That's right: necessity really is the mother of invention.

Guerilla warfare. Let's face it: You don't learn how to be scrappy, how to be crafty, how to do more with less, while working for the industry leader. You learn all that by working for an upstart that has to scrape and claw for every point of market share and every product feature with a fraction of the resources that the big guys have.

How tough and adaptive you really are. More than anything else, working for a company in trouble teaches you about yourself. You learn what you're really made of. What you're capable of doing when everything's on the line and everyone's counting on you. That's why troubled companies really are gold mines. They're opportunities for you to step up to the plate and take risks.

You'll gain confidence from your successes and wisdom from your failures. Most of all, you'll grow into whatever it is you're capable of becoming.

A fascinating article on "emotional labor" argues against companies coercing staff into feigning cheerfulness. Is it OK to pay workers to pretend to be happy?

You go into a fast food shop or a shoe store. What are you expectations for the staff member who serves you? Politeness, sure. Knowledge of the products on offer and efficiency in getting you want you want? Fair enough. But how about a big smile and a sunny disposition?

As a consumer your initial response to this last requirement is probably, yes please. Of course it's nice to have service staff behave like they're thrilled to be at work and our mere presence in their establishment has genuinely brightened their day. But as a business owner, is it a good idea to actively require your employees to express joy at work, even if it's feigned?

That's the question posed by a fascinating recent article in the New Republic. Looking at the sandwich chain Pret a Manger, Timothy Noah argues that there's a dark side to forced cheer at work. Pret, Noah reports,

Keeps its sales clerks in a state of enforced rapture through policies vaguely reminiscent of the old East German Stasi. A "mystery shopper" visits every Pret outlet once a week. If the employee who rings up the sale is appropriately ebullient, then everyone in the shop gets a bonus. If not, nobody does. This system turns peers into enthusiasm cops, further constricting any space for a reserved and private self.

So what's wrong with paying employees for "emotional labor" as well as simply slinging sandwiches? While empathy for pay may be a legitimate part of some professions, Noah feels introducing it to gigs where its not strictly necessary is a little sinister:

Emotional labor is not itself new. Prostitutes have faked orgasms for millennia. With greater sincerity (one hopes), undertakers calm the grieving, nurses comfort the sick, and migrant nannies lavish on other people's children the love they aren't present to furnish back home…

In all these instances, emotional labor served (legitimately or not) identifiable emotional needs. That's not true at Pret. Fast-food service is not one of the caring professions. The only imperatives typically addressed in a Pret shop are hunger and thirst. Why must the person who sells me a cheddar and tomato sandwich have "presence" and "create a sense of fun"? Why can't he or she be doing it "just for the money"?

Or, as Noah puts it elsewhere in the article, "Pret doesn't merely want its employees to lend their minds and bodies; it wants their souls, too." His concern, evidently, is that demanding cheer is demeaning, exploitative and dehumanizing, but psychology blog Mind Hacks, which commented thoughtfully on Noah's piece, notes that forcing people to fake emotions also has negative practical consequences.

Acting happy when you don't genuinely feel happy, creates "emotional dissonance" that "leads to burnout, low mood and poor job satisfaction," notes the blog. And monetizing emotion can cut into an employee's sense of the intrinsic value of their job. "It has the capacity to denigrate genuine compassion as ‘required labor,’" concludes the post. (For a deeper dive into the question of what areas of life shouldn't be invaded with the market logic of buying and selling, check out this fascinating essay from Michael J. Sandel.)

Meanwhile, researchers have also cast doubt on the long-term efficacy of "forced fun" at work, finding that required levity can lead to an array of bad outcomes such as burnout among employees, and that these cheerful work cultures often serve to distract workers from excessive control or poor conditions elsewhere in the business.

Do you think its right to require employees to be happy at work?

Users will hand over a lot of data to an application, sometimes without even noticing that’s what they’re doing. Unless you’re working with a particularly savvy group of users, the only time your users will pay attention to what information they’ve provided is when something goes wrong. You have to make the decisions to protect them and minimize those problems ahead of time — a smooth experience means that you can land and keep more users.

As Little as Possible

When you’re considering what information to ask your users for in the first place, and what you need to save, there is a simple rule to stick to: ask for as little as possible. It’s tempting to ask for a lot of data; after all, you can do all sorts of analysis and use it to help you land even more customers. But the reality is that you usually don’t need all that much information for an app to actually work. Since you can’t really predict when you’ll get around to that big analysis project, why ask for data you don’t need yet? You can always get some of it with a customer survey later on, plus perhaps some more useful information.

Go through what fields you’re considering asking your users to fill out when they sign up. Eliminate everything you can — it’s not a bad option if you’re only asking for an email address and a password. Heck, you might not even need that. The same goes for what information you’re collecting that your users might generate. It’s much harder for a security vulnerability to expose information that wasn’t actually saved.

Dealing with Financial Information

Financial details, like credit card numbers, are in a class of their own when it comes to keeping them secure — there’s so much more incentive for someone to try to get ahold of such information. If you’re selling something, you’re going to have to accept payments in some fashion. In general, it’s a good idea to make credit card numbers and other financial data someone else’s problem.

Handing the issue over to a payment processor that has already invested their resources into safeguarding payment information will make your life easier, but it can also make you appear more trustworthy to your users, especially if they recognize the payment processor you’ve chosen.

Your Legal Obligations

Just what your legal situation is when it comes to storing data about your users depends greatly both on where you’re based and where your users are based. In the U.S, for instance, there are laws specifically governing what information you can store about minors, particularly those under the age of 13, as well as about financial and medical data. Do your research so that you don’t have to deal with a legal problem right off the bat.

Security and privacy issues are only going to get more press in the future, so invest whatever you need to make sure that you’re saving user information correctly and safely.

Image by Flickr user Daniil Vasiliev

The business titan behind KB Home and Sun America--also an author, philanthropist and art collector--on the trait that brought him success. Hint: It's not complacency.

Slightly built, bespectacled, mild mannered, and dressed as if he were attending a CPA seminar, Eli Broad comes off as anything but the legendary entrepreneur who started homebuilding giant Kaufman and Broad (later renamed KB Home) and the pioneering financial services company SunAmerica. The Los Angeles billionaire is also one of the nation's leading philanthropists and art collectors. In his recent book, The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking, Broad, who turns 80 in June, says much of his success, in business and elsewhere, stems from a dogged (some would say obstinate) unwillingness to go along with the crowd. --As told to Mark Lacter

Growing up in Detroit in the 1940s, I was always inquisitive. In high school, I would drive my teachers batty. They would make a statement, and I would say, "Why is that?" They didn't want to be questioned. But I've never accepted the status quo. After I was married a few years, my wife, Edye, found a quote from George Bernard Shaw that essentially said reasonable men adapt themselves to the world; unreasonable ones don't--therefore all progress comes from unreasonable men. She gave me a little plaque with the quote.

The first thing I did after I graduated from Michigan State was accounting. My initial salary was $67.40 a week, after taxes. I was married with a child on the way, and I wanted to make some money. I had some clients who were homebuilders--I didn't think they were all that smart, and they were making a lot of money. I decided that I could do that, and I found a partner in Donald Kaufman, a carpenter who did remodeling. I didn't know how to build a house, but I had a pretty good sense of finance and marketing. We started in Detroit at the end of 1956.

I looked at what was going on in homebuilding outside Detroit, where people were building different kinds of homes--say, without basements. I thought this was an opportunity for us. We would sell them for 20 percent less--and the payments would be less than the rent on a two-bedroom garden apartment.

We were more efficient than other builders. We never took out construction loans, which were very expensive. I would pay subcontractors and suppliers at the end of the following month from when the work was done. So if they finished on the 15th, I would pay 45 days later. By then, we would have a house closing, so we'd have enough money. We didn't have any financing costs.

In 1961, we went public on the American Stock Exchange. In 1969, we became the first homebuilder to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. We had a pretty fancy P/E ratio in the 1960s, about 40 times earnings, and a market cap of over $1 billion when $1 billion was an awful lot of money.

We convinced Wall Street that we were countercyclical, that we weren't like a lot of those small homebuilders that would go broke after every cycle. But I knew that wasn't necessarily true. I looked back at the Great Depression. The one industry that did well was life insurance. I said, Maybe we ought to acquire a life insurance company.

In 1971, we acquired the Sun Life Insurance Company of America in Baltimore, founded in 1890, for about $52 million in cash and stock. We were competing with companies like Metropolitan and Prudential, so we needed to find a market niche. It became clear that there was a great need for retirement savings. So we started selling variable annuities, mutual funds, and some other products.

We also had to develop a brand. We changed the name to SunAmerica, hired an ad agency, and became the biggest advertiser on NBC Sports. People thought I was crazy. Well, our name became known, and people started seeing us as a lot larger than we really were.

No one on Wall Street understood the combination of the two companies. So we split them up: I stayed at SunAmerica, and Bruce Karatz stayed at Kaufman and Broad. [Donald Kaufman had retired shortly after the company went public.] I had been in the homebuilding business for more than 25 years, and I found this new industry--retirement savings--to be a great challenge.

By the late '90s, I was in my 60s, and I thought it was time to find a merger partner for SunAmerica. One of the companies that could afford us was AIG. I knew the CEO, Hank Greenberg, and I had high regard for him. I approached him about a merger, and he was excited at the idea. We got a nice premium--not huge, 27 percent, but in dealmaking, it's got to be something that makes sense for both parties.

I stayed on the AIG board for a number of years. And then I got lucky. One day, I said to Hank that 90-some-odd percent of my net worth was in AIG. I wanted to diversify. Hank said, "You're a director; you can't sell stock." So I got off the board and put the stock in The Broad Foundations, a pair of nonprofit organizations that focus on education, science, and the arts. That's why our foundations' assets are $2.5 billion.

I work harder now than I've ever worked. We've spent $600 million over the past 10 years on biomedical research. The biggest time-suck has been education reform. In science, no one wants to maintain the status quo, but people in education have been resistant to change.

We didn't know anything about curriculum, so we started looking at governance and management. With rare exceptions, people become school superintendents without any training in management, finance, systems. So I said, Why don't we create an academy to train superintendents? We've seen a lot of change in the past 10 years.

I didn't get involved in art until the early 1970s. Our first major acquisition was a Van Gogh drawing. Eventually, we moved into contemporary art, because I found it more interesting to be involved in art of our own time. I enjoy meeting the artists. Every artist is unreasonable, because he or she is doing something that hasn't been done before. All of the art in our collection will ultimately be shown at The Broad, our new contemporary art museum that will open in 2014 in downtown Los Angeles.

Philanthropy is not charity. Charity is just writing checks. Philanthropy is an investment where you want to see a return, whether it's breakthroughs in scientific research or performance in education or broadening the audience for the arts. You want to see results.

Buyer beware! Choosing the wrong PR agency can break the bank and tarnish your brand. Here's how to avoid a costly mistake.

It's a huge bite out of the budget when a small business owner hires a public relations firm. For most, it's also new territory. What could go wrong?

The nightmare begins when your publicist spams the press. A large number of my "spam" emails are from PR firms. It appears that these well-meaning publicists submit press releases to pretty much any journalist who makes their address public. This blanket, impersonal approach is an easy way to alienate a member of the press.

Many of the press releases I receive have nothing to do with my target audience (hey--that's you!) and aren't even relative to the topics I address in this space. An off-topic, dull, and lengthy press release means that an agency, and the client they represent, get filed in my mind as a "don't read, don't bother" item. Do you really want to work with a publicist who is out there alienating journalists? That doesn't sound like a good strategy to me.

So, I consulted with a few top-notch publicists who are always spot-on when they send a pitch. I asked them to offer advice on how to hire an outstanding PR firm. What are the red flags? How should a business owner prepare before interviewing agencies? They unanimously agreed that it's important to go in armed with these questions.

Is this the right firm to achieve my campaign goals?

Corinne Liccketto, director of sales at Smith Publicity, says that by stating your goals before any contract comes into the picture, you are providing a firm or individual with a clear set of expectations. "A trustworthy firm will be able to evaluate your goals and truly determine if their services are the right fit for you," says Liccketto. "Make a list of questions that coincide with your goals for a campaign so you know where to start."

What is the strategy?

"The goal for a PR agency is to generate earned media, not paid," says Michael Haas, managing partner at Extension PR. "If they are vague about timing for goals and deliverables, be wary. The best PR people will offer strategy and counsel, not just nod their heads to get you to sign with them. They should design a road map for a successful campaign. A great agency will interview you to make sure your goals are attainable and that the relationship will be mutually beneficial."

Does it go beyond the press release?

"Make sure that the firm you choose does not view media relations as simply issuing a press release," says Joy Schoffler, principal of Leverage PR. "Too many PR firms will just write a few press releases and spam reporters, calling it public relations. Press releases are great for search engine optimization, but should also be a part of a bigger strategy and must be news worthy."

Schoffler also points out that good public relations professionals are storytellers. They will glean insights about your company to grow your business and brand by crafting story ideas that are interesting to the media.

What kind of experience does your team have?

All of my experts agreed that many agencies will sell you with their executive-level experience, but then assign your account to less experienced people. Oftentimes, an intern or someone who is new to the industry will execute the campaign initiatives. Make sure you have the opportunity to interview everyone who will be on your team. Find out what their experience is and how they intend to engage with the press.

Who do they know?

Ask about the relationships the team has with your targeted media outlets. Strong relationships yield better media results. If the agency specializes in promoting authors and your campaign goal is to promote a new tech gadget, they won't be a good fit because they aren't likely to have contacts in the tech world. "Not knowing the limitations of a firm can lead to major disappointment when you thought your service included something they simply aren't capable of," warns Liccketto.

What about references and results?

"Always ask for 3-5 clients and journalists that you can contact to learn about their experience with the agency," suggests Haas. Also ask the clients about the results that the agency has produced for them.

Not all campaigns are created equal; it would be impossible for every campaign to be as successful as the last. "Don't be afraid to ask the hard questions," reminds Liccketto. "Learning how an agency has handled the less than successful campaigns says a lot about their team and structure."

What is the payment structure?

Some firms charge on a pay-for-placement basis while others charge on retainer. Liccketto recommends asking questions about the paymentstructures: "What is the charge of the pay-for-placements and do they differ for national, regional, and local placements?" Also ask if there a limit to the number of solid placements for a team working on retainer.

According to Haas once you find out if their billing formula is hourly, monthly, or project based, you'll want to inquire about items they bill for in addition to staff time. Ask about their mark up for out-of-pocket expenses and what those expenses may be.

Most importantly, use your intuition and observe the level of passion that your publicity team has for your industry and for representing your company. The best agency relationships come from people who believe in your product and are proud to be a part of your team.

You've got a seven-floor elevator ride to sell your business idea to an investor. Can you do it? Probably not.

Can you sell your business idea in a seven-floor elevator ride?

You better be able to.

Pitch opportunities are being compressed. Investors have heard so many bad ones they just want you to hustle through that painful part so they can get to their 20 questions. Bear in mind that whether you’re pitching your business to angels, venture capitalists, customers or strategic investors, you will have less time to articulate your business out loud, period.

The 30-second elevator pitch, which I call the seven-floor pitch, is the hardest to nail: You’ve got the investor for seven floors and the core of your business must be communicated in that brief ride. If you try to pull out and show him a mobile device screen, it’ll look like everyone else’s screenshot, and you’ll probably blow your first impression.

Success is when the investor grabs your elbow, asks you to step off the elevator, and says, “Tell me more about your business!”

The elevator pitch should be the fastest, simplest, most easily understood summary of your business. And it takes the most amount of work. No, it doesn’t always happen in the elevator, but sometimes it really does. In fact, I started honing my ear for effective elevator pitches when I ran the elevators in the U.S. Senate, House and Capitol during college. Imagine being in the background as four-star generals and prominent K Street lobbyists fervently make their case to a Congressman during the elevator ride from the Rayburn subway to the gallery of the House of Representatives.

Entrepreneurs have the same challenge: trying to surmise and deliver the shortest, most succinct--and most convincing--description of their businesses.

CEOs should be precise when describing their businesses. Of the hundreds of companies I’ve coached, sometimes I’ll hear a great extended pitch right off the bat. But hearing the great elevator pitch at the beginning of a coaching session is the rarest scenario of all. It’s an extremely difficult skill to master.

If you are just launching, don’t try to start out by creating the elevator pitch. This is backwards and a time consuming folly. Indeed, the seven-floor pitch is probably the last pitch you will polish. Great pitches are an iterative process. Think of politicians who spend months talking to voters. They find their key messages, then they simplify, repeat, simplify and repeat. CEOs must do the same thing.

First, do what you do every day: Think about your business. Determine why you’re going to be successful. Maybe you’ve solved a cool problem by identifying a business opportunity. Investors want to know how you’re going to make money, so start your thinking there.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, you want to start by mastering your longest pitch, and work down from there. Start by crafting a 20-minute, 20 page deck. Get all your thoughts out on the canvas. It is your best first script. Include very tight statements like: "I'm looking for X amount of dollars; this is what our business does; our go-to-market strategy; the competitive environment and how we're different. Define and articulate the revenue streams to illustrate your business model and how you will make money. List a couple business milestones you've already accomplished, define a few down-the-road milestones, and as the closer, tell them a little about your team.

From the 20-minute pitch, you will simplify to the 10-minute pitch, to the five, down to the two-minute and finally the seven-floor, 30-second pitch. (My LinkedIn has a deck template and recommended order of the script.) You’re boiling the business down to its most compelling essence. Never forget: Each pitch is an audition to be a CEO in an investor's portfolio.

Now, can you step off the elevator and tell me more?

Sure, it seems like a great idea to start up in the Valley. But have you really taken a good look at the nation's most famous start-up hub?

Many would argue that since Silicon Valley gets the most venture capital, has the most powerful pillar companies, the deepest talent pool, and the best universities that it’s the best place to locate your start-up.

But all that external evidence of success masks a deeper reality.

Silicon Valley is a hugely expensive place to operate your start-up and depending on what product you’re selling, locating there might handicap your chances for success.

Here are five reasons you should avoid Silicon Valley.

1. Too much seed money. You must be scratching your head now and asking yourself: How can too much money be bad? If you remember the dot-com bubble in the 1990s or the housing bubble that burst in 2008, you get the idea.

So many individual investors have grown super-wealthy in Silicon Valley over the last few years thanks to big IPOs for companies like Facebook and Zynga that there are scores of so-called angel investors.

They can write checks of $50,000 to $500,000 to help start-ups get off the ground. That sounds great but it also means that those “lucky” seed money recipients will be on their own from the moment they cash the check.

If they succeed, those angels will cash out--giving them bragging rights. But odds are good they’ll lose the seed round lottery and fail. And that is not the kind of cash your start-up needs.

2. Insufficient mentoring. If you run a start-up, there’s a good chance that you’ve never built a business in your life. And that means you need experienced entrepreneurs to help you take your great idea and turn it into a business.

A big reason that so many of those Silicon Valley seed-capital-backs start-ups will fail is that their CEOs won’t be able to get that help. The reason is simple, those angel investors have the know-how to give mentoring to start-ups – but they have better things to do with their time.

So if you move to Silicon Valley and get that seed capital, you will be on your own to build a prototype and get customers willing to buy it.

3. Absence of second-stage financing. And even if you get over that first hurdle, your start-up will need a bigger check to hire the sales people you need to generate revenues in the seven or eight figure range.

Unfortunately, if you’re in Silicon Valley you can’t get those so-called Series A checks in the $5 million to $10 million range. That’s because venture capital firms that provided those checks in the past have not generated spectacular investment returns for their limited partners in recent years.

As student loan start-up, SoFi’s CEO, Mike Cagney explained in a December interview, "The $5 million to $10 million dollar check just isn’t out there like it used to be. However, it is not hard to raise $500,000 seed capital and ironically it is not hard to go out and get a $25 million to $30 million dollar Series B at a $100 million valuation. What is hard is getting that $5 million to $10 million Series A."

And without the Series A, your start-up’s growth is going to be stunted. So you’re better off locating close to a source of that second-stage financing.

4. Exorbitant rents and salaries. If you’re like most start-ups, you are not exactly flush with cash. This raises a significant challenge when it comes to renting office space and hiring people. Simply put, odds are that you do not want to pay the highest rents and salaries in the country.

But if you locate your start-up in San Francisco that’s what you have to do. For example, the monthly rent in a decent office space in the South of Market (SoMa) district in San Francisco if $57/square foot – that’s how much Airbnb spent for its 170,000 square foot office in SoMa in November -- and salaries for top engineers can easily top $120,000 (as they do at Google).

The point is that this is a terrible environment for cash-poor start-ups. Why would you want to pour your scarce resources into such high rents? So stay away and less you have a huge capital basis.

5. Fierce competition for talent. And it’s not just the high salaries that ought to dissuade you from locating your start-up in Silicon Valley. It’s the fierce competition for that highly-paid talent.

Waltham, Mass.-based data storage company, Actifiio, CEO Ash Ashutosh, explained that talent in the Boston area is in it for the long-term but not so much in California. As he said in a December interview, “If I am trying to build a company for a long term the last thing I want to do is worry about constant churn of people coming in and out [which is so common with West Coast companies]."

What he means is that in Silicon Valley, it is common for an engineer to join a start-up and get stock options. If those options don’t pay off within a year--with the company going public or being acquired--engineers find another start-up and try again.

Married couples that start a business together are more likely to have a female partner who takes on traditional gender roles according to surprising research.

Imagine a successful entrepreneurial couple who jointly found a business. How do you imagine the gender roles usually get handled?

As being a founder is pretty far from the traditional female roles of wife and helpmate, you'd probably guess that most women in "copreneur" relationships are on a more or at least equal footing than many other dual-career marriages. These "corpreneur" women are in the thick of their businesses, so surely they must generally be equal partners at home and at the office, right?

Despite this instinct, research actually says otherwise, according to a recent lengthy article in Knowledge@Wharton on married couples who found companies together. Amid first person accounts of cofounding a business and tips on making it work from experts, the articles reports some surprising research findings:

[Successful husband and wife business partnerships] tend to be ultra traditional, according to Kathy Marshack, a business psychologist who counsels many husband and wife management teams. She conducted research in the early 1990s involving 30 married business partners, and found that many of these "copreneur relationships" are less egalitarian than dual-career marriages. For instance, 83% of the copreneurial wives were entirely in charge of general housework, compared with 49% of wives with their own careers. Nearly 65% of copreneur wives handled all the household shopping, versus 36% for the other working wives. At work, copreneurial women typically performed "chorelike" tasks, such as payroll and billing….

"Couples who are in business together tend to have more rigidly defined roles. The husband is the founder, the CEO and the president. She is a support person. Many copreneurial wives will tell you that this is not the way it is," Marshack adds. But she says that many of the portrayals of husband and wife partnerships in the popular press feature remarkably egalitarian couples. These people, she notes, often make incorrect sweeping statements about copreneurial ventures. "But then you dig down and find out what she's getting paid, what her title is, and who people in the company come to for a final decision, and you find that" the partnerships are more complicated and less equal than they might seem.

Some of the research this picture of less than equal partnerships is based on is 20 years old, Marshak concedes, but she adds: "I don't think things have changed that much."

What are we to make of Marshak's observations? Is her sample of 30 partnerships simply skewed by how she found these pairs or who they are, or are media accounts of rosy, modern marital relations among copreneurs the ones that are biased?

What's your experience – are married founders more, less or equally likely to take on traditional gender roles compared to your average professional couple?