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Venture Capital Investor Brad Feld on What It Takes to Succeed As an Entrepreneur Brad Feld dives into the trenches of entrepreneurship to learn what makes some businesses successful

By Michelle Juergen •

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Brad FeldLast year, more than 1,400 fledgling companies applied to TechStars, the startup incubator run out of Boulder, Colo., Seattle and Boston.

Exactly 30 of them got in. It's not hard to see why the program is so competitive: Each person admitted gets $6,000 in seed money, a handful of expert mentors and three months to refine a business plan and pitch it to investors. TechStars alumni include the mobile social networking site Brightkite, online artisan food marketplace Foodzie and digital comics community Graphic.ly.

According to The Nielsen Company, 110 billion minutes are spent on blogs and social networking sites. The average visitor spends 66% more time on these sites than a year ago. (almost six hours in April 2010 versus three hours and 31 minutes in 2009.) This equates to 22 percent of all time online, or one in every four-and-half minutes.

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