Month: August 2025

An interest rate is the cost of debt for the borrower and a rate of return for the lender. It is calculated as a percentage of the principal sum and applied over a period, which is usually a year but may be less than a year. This percentage is also often referred to as the annual percentage rate (APR). It’s important to understand interest rates because they play a major role in financial decision making. Whether you’re looking to secure a loan, manage your credit or build savings, understanding the concept of interest can save you thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars over time.

Interest rates are influenced by a variety of factors. The most obvious is the risk profile of a particular type of debt. For example, mortgages are secured by real estate which reduces the risk of default. That’s why they generally have lower interest rates than personal loans or credit cards, which aren’t secured by anything other than a person’s promise to pay.

Other factors include the economy, which influences the demand for money and credit. When there is a lot of demand, lenders raise interest rates to encourage borrowing. When the economy slows, the opposite happens and interest rates decline.

In addition, the compounding frequency and length of the debt or savings period can impact total interest. It is important to know how these factors affect your interest rate, which can help you compare different options when shopping and negotiating for loans or savings.

The type of funding your startup receives will have a significant impact on its future. There is no one-size-fits-all funding solution, so it’s important to choose the option that best aligns with your goals and business model.

Startups often need early capital to support development, product marketing, and other operational costs. This stage is called the seed phase, and common sources of startup funds include personal savings, friends and family, and angel investors. Typically, these investors provide more than just money, bringing their experience, networks, and mentorship to help the startup accelerate its growth. In exchange for their investment, they’ll want to see a clear business plan and financial projections that demonstrate the potential for return on investment.

As the startup finds its product-market fit and starts to grow, it will need more capital for expansion, hiring, and marketing. The growth phase is often the time when the company raises larger venture capital rounds (Series A, Series B, and Series C), or debt financing through banks. During these stages, the startup might also begin considering an exit strategy like an acquisition or IPO.

Government grants and subsidies are another source of early-stage capital for startups. These are often tied to specific projects or objectives that align with the startup’s vision, making them a great choice for startups with a social mission. However, grant recipients must often submit progress reports and adhere to regulations, which can add additional administrative burdens. Moreover, these types of funding tend to be more competitive and may require extensive research and preparation to ensure eligibility.

A tech startup is a business with the mission to innovate using advanced technology. Founded to solve a real problem, they aim to disrupt existing markets by offering novel solutions, leveraging emerging technologies and creating value through the use of innovative tools. Tech startups typically require substantial funding to launch their products and services. They often rely on venture capital or angel investors to fuel their growth and achieve sustainability.

Tech startup success depends on a well-crafted business plan that encompasses all business aspects. It includes goals, strategies, timelines, financial forecasts and more. It also defines the legal foundation of the business, such as choosing an appropriate legal structure (like a Limited Liability Company or C Corporation), selecting the optimal state for registration and ensuring compliance with essential tax requirements.

Thorough market research is a must for tech startups, helping them understand their customers and competitive landscape better. In addition, they must assess their own product’s performance, gather user feedback and optimize it based on the findings. The development of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is another key step in this process, as it helps them test their ideas and validate their assumptions.

Startups need to develop a strong marketing strategy to increase brand awareness and boost their user base. They should build a solid social media presence and utilize online and offline channels to reach their target audience. In addition, they should keep track of key metrics, like Customer Acquisition Cost and Lifetime Value to evaluate their financial health and make strategic decisions.

Business news is a branch of journalism that covers commercial and economic issues. It reports on business processes, trends, and consequences. Its subject matter ranges from small businesses to multinational corporations and their impacts on societies around the world. Business news articles can be found in newspapers, magazines, and online. Business news articles often feature stories about companies and their operations, including mergers, acquisitions, quarterly earnings reports, and leadership changes.

A company is an organized group of people working together for the common purpose of bringing goods and services to consumers in exchange for profit. A business is considered to be successful if it can make a profit while providing consumers with what they want and need. Business is the backbone of a country’s economy, and it provides jobs and income for citizens. The most advanced and developed countries are those that have a robust and active business sector.

What is the main purpose of business?

The purpose of business is to make goods and services available to consumers in an efficient manner. This is done by generating revenue, which is used to pay for the production of goods and services. Business also includes activities like marketing, sourcing, and manufacturing.

Adam is the editor of Business News Daily and has more than 10 years of journalism and content marketing experience. He focuses on entrepreneurship and emerging industries, such as legal cannabis and electric vehicles. A New Jersey native and Rutgers University graduate, he currently lives in Brooklyn.

The term tech giant is used to describe any big technology establishment with a large global footprint. Typically, it is used to refer to the world’s biggest five tech companies—Amazon, Apple, Google (or Alphabet), Meta, and Microsoft—although other huge technology companies also qualify. These giants have a massive influence on the technology industry and the world as a whole.

Tech giants have a lot of power in their industries and are often accused of using that power to control the Internet, skew information or opinions, and create monopolies. Many are subject to anti-trust lawsuits, which seek to limit their control and increase competition for the benefit of consumers.

These giants make products or services that are widely used, which gives them outsized control over the Web and a valuable advertising space. They also innovate new technologies that can transform entire industries. Amazon’s e-commerce site is the world’s largest, giving them tremendous influence on what people buy and the data they generate; Apple makes iOS and macOS, the most widely used mobile and desktop operating systems; and Google owns the most popular search engine and various other useful products.

Some of the biggest tech giants have made a number of major acquisitions, such as Facebook purchasing WhatsApp and Instagram and Oculus VR, which created the first virtual reality headset. They also seek to dominate in certain areas of technology, such as with their cloud computing. Google, for example, acquired Mandiant to better protect its own cloud infrastructure.

The unemployment rate is an important measure of the health of a country’s labor market. However, many people are confused about what exactly it measures and how it’s calculated. This article explains the different measurements of joblessness used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and why they may not paint the same picture as the official unemployment rate that is widely quoted.

The basic definition of the unemployment rate is the percentage of the population who does not have a job and who is actively looking for one. This is commonly referred to as the “official” unemployment rate, which is reported each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). There has been a lot of debate over whether or not the official unemployment rate adequately captures all of the jobless in the country. In particular, many pundits and President Trump have argued that the official unemployment rate undercounts those who are truly unemployed.

The BLS uses a monthly survey of households to determine the unemployment rate. The survey includes both working and non-working household members age 16 or over. Those who are not working but who want jobs and have looked for work in the past four weeks are considered unemployed. There are six different unemployment rates that the BLS publishes to take into account various degrees of unemployment. These include U-3, which is the official unemployment rate; U-4, which includes discouraged workers; and U-5, which adds those who are marginally attached to the labor force and those who would like a job but have given up searching.

In the past 50 years, the global economy has expanded sixfold and per-capita income has almost tripled. This unprecedented growth has been fueled by rapid population growth and labor productivity gains. But not all countries have benefitted equally. Some have experienced spectacular economic growth, propelling them into the ranks of the rich world, while others have stagnated or even shrunk. Why is that?

The most common measure of economic growth is gross domestic product (GDP), which represents the total value of all goods and services produced in a country in a given period. GDP is calculated by adding up consumer spending, business investment, government spending and net exports.

When economic growth is strong, it usually means that people and businesses are earning more money and feeling better off. When economic growth slows or stalls, it can lead to job losses and financial stress. Eventually, it can cause outright recessions and other social problems.

But understanding what causes economic growth isn’t simple. One major problem is that different individuals place different values on the same goods and services. For example, a heater is worth more to someone living in Alaska than it is to someone living in Florida. Another issue is that increasing the number of workers doesn’t necessarily lead to economic growth if those new workers don’t generate enough additional output to cover their basic needs.

Economists study several factors that contribute to economic growth, including energy use, trade, capital, labor and foreign direct investment. Their results generally show that a one percent increase in any of these factors is associated with a corresponding one percentage point rise in economic growth.

An acquisition deal is a business transaction that involves the buying and selling of assets or shares. The process begins with due diligence where the acquiring and purchasing parties develop strategies to ensure that they purchase the right assets. This is a critical part of the process and can save valuable resources as well as time.

In addition to evaluating the target company’s price, it’s important to look at its debt load. Too much debt can be a red flag that the company may have trouble meeting its financial obligations. It’s also necessary to examine the target company’s future growth potential. If the company is not poised to grow, it’s probably not worth pursuing.

One of the main reasons why companies pursue mergers and acquisitions is to gain access to new markets or distribution channels. By combining their strengths, businesses can quickly expand into new territories without having to spend a lot of money on new facilities or marketing.

Another reason is to acquire a business with existing customers or an established brand name. This can help a company to reduce its risk of entering a new market, increase its customer base or even cut out competition. Companies can also make acquisitions to meet specific operational goals, such as eliminating excess capacity or expanding their supply chain. For example, a bank may buy a brokerage firm to add more banking services and eliminate competition. Other reasons include reducing costs by taking advantage of tax deductions or gaining an advantage in the marketplace by adding new technology.

When a customer sends a request for cloud services (like storing a file, running an application or analyzing data), it goes to the cloud provider’s large network of data centers managed by the vendor. There, software allocates the virtual servers, storage systems and network bandwidth required to process the request. The customer can then access the requested services over an internet connection.

Security is a primary concern, especially for sensitive information like medical records or financial data. But it’s possible to reduce your risks by choosing a reliable cloud service provider with robust security features. Liquid Web, for example, offers firewalls, distributed denial-of-service protection, Cloudflare CDN and Server Secure Plus to protect our customers’ data and resources.

Achieving business value from cloud

Businesses that move applications, infrastructure and workloads to the cloud gain benefits that go beyond reducing costs and improving IT agility. McKinsey research shows that cloud enables business innovation, which generates higher rates of return than improvements to IT operations alone.

Different industries benefit from the cloud differently, with high-tech, retail and healthcare organizations occupying the highest end of the value capture spectrum and consumer-packaged goods, materials, and infrastructure companies clustered in the middle. Regardless of the industry, successful cloud migration requires organization-specific technological challenges—like developing application migration strategies and security-as-code protocols, optimizing operating models and investing in FinOps—that need to be carefully considered. Read the full article.

A cyber threat is any attempt to gain unauthorized access to your systems, data or information. Successful attacks can carry huge costs ranging from financial implications and business disruption to damage to your reputation. In the case of critical infrastructure, such as power plants and hospitals, a cybersecurity threat can be life-threatening.

Typical cyberattacks occur for one of three reasons: Coercion: Threat actors may use extortion tactics to gain unauthorized access and manipulate data, with the aim of stealing money or halting system operations. This type of attack can be mitigated by using multiple layers of security to ensure that data cannot be accessed by those who shouldn’t have it.

Spying and Espionage: Increasingly, cyberattacks are carried out by nation-state entities with significant resources, advanced capabilities and long-term objectives that align with their national military or economic strategy. Strengthening national cybersecurity policies and enhancing international cooperation can help address this type of threat.

Disruption and Sabotage: In addition to stealing sensitive data, some attackers seek to disrupt and bring services to a halt, whether through distributed denial-of-service attacks or by attacking supply chains to wreak havoc. This is often done for political or ideological reasons, with hacktivist groups like Anonymous targeting organizations whose policies they oppose.

The cybersecurity landscape is constantly changing and expanding, with thousands of new vulnerabilities discovered every year. With the rise of AI technologies, operational technology (OT), IoT devices and the cloud, bad actors have an ever-growing attack surface to target. It is important to protect your business with a layered approach that includes security software updates, robust end-user education to guard against phishing and continuous monitoring of all network activity.