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The global economic downturn has lead to the perception that entrepreneurial opportunities in both the U.S. and Europe have declined. And with the ballooning debts in Europe, many have suggested that these opportunities in Europe are even more restricted.

But is the U.S. really in better shape than Europe for entrepreneurship? According to an infographic created by Grasshopper, the differences between the regions aren't as great as one might imagine.

A recent report issued by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation points to an increase in entrepreneurial activity over the last decade and a half. Despite - and perhaps as a result of - the economic downturn, entrepreneurial activity in 2009 reached its highest point in 14 years, according to the Kauffman report. The increased rate of entrepreneurship occurred across most demographic categories, with the largest increase coming among African-Americans and older individuals.

Silicon Valley-based startup incubator Y Combinator (YC) announced today that is has raised $8.25 million with which it plans to provide funding to a larger group of startups this summer. Leading the funding was Sequoia Capital along with several angel investors, including Ron Conway, Paul Buchheit, Aydin Senkut, XG Ventures, and Geoff Ralston - many of same investors which provided YC with $2 million in March of last year.

Entrepreneur and professor Steve Blank authored a blog this morning that expressed his opinion that business plan competitions are useless to startup culture and should be scrapped for business model competitions. Business plan competitions are just what they sound like: students are encouraged to submit a business plan and a winner is selected by a panel of judges, often resulting in some monetary reward for the triumphant student. Blank argues that models, not plans, are much more applicable to the iterative startup atmosphere, but not everyone agrees that business plans are entirely irrelevant.

In the recent months, entrepreneurship has been a hot topic in Washington. From the proposed Startup Visa, to Senator Dodd's financial reform strategies and even to the overall need for more job creation - many agree that entrepreneurship will play a large role in turning this country's economic woes around. But one group in support of entrepreneurship is asking for something a little different from the President: a national holiday.

As I've mentioned earlier in posts this week, I'm currently up in Boulder, Colorado for Startup Week, a week-long smorgasbord of startup events organized by Andrew Hyde of TechStars. It's been my first time visiting Boulder, and to be completely honest, I've been blown away by its close-knit friendly community of startups, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and more. I had always heard that Boulder was a very unique atmosphere for entrepreneurship, but I had no idea just how special this place was until I was invited to come visit.

A few weeks ago we mentioned an open door of opportunity for startups that could provide a solution to one the Internet's longest enduring problems: comment management. Shortly after that article was published, I received an email from Toma Bedolla, a Denver-based founder of a startup that was looking to provide a unique commenting service to online media outlets. This week I'm travelling in the Denver area for Boulder Startup Week, and Toma tracked me down at a tech meetup last night to tell me about his startup Veracious Entropy and its first experiment, HowTru.

Startup culture is continually growing in the greater public interest, and with that growth comes a sort of celebrity for the founders of the more popular companies. Mark Zuckerberg and Evan Williams are now household names, and in many ways, these entrepreneurs are like rock stars in the startup world. In fact, the journey of an entrepreneur through the startup experience is a lot like that of a musician seeking stardom and millions of adoring fans, and artist Shane Snow has a perfect infographic to illustrate this.

We've been talking a lot about founders and co-founders here on ReadWriteStart over the last week. We discussed the advantages of having a non-technical co-founder on your team, and noted ways these types of partners can best fit in with the code monkeys. But today, Geoff Lewis, founder of Topguest, has written a piece on Business Insider about how entrepreneurs may not need a co-founder to get their startup off the ground and moving in the right direction.

In our discussion of the closing of Devver earlier this week, we mentioned the problems the company faced by being created by two technical co-founders. Without a business-minded co-founder to bring passion to the non-techie parts of a startup, companies may struggle to keep up with both sides of the operation. WePay co-founder Rich Aberman is the quintessential non-technical co-founder, and he recently provided some advice on things to consider before founding a startup without technical prowess.