Forums. The Rise of Startup Ecosystems: Silicon Valley vs. New York vs. London - Startup Genome. (The original post can be found here on Techcrunch) Falling startup costs have caused an explosion in the number of software companies being started. As a result, new startup ecosystems are springing up all over the world to support the success of these companies and jumpstart regional economic growth. Since startups are one of the biggest drivers of job growth and economic growth, this is a big democratizing force. Previously, most startups were located near Venture Capitalists in Silicon Valley, Boston and New York City, because as Paul Graham noted “when starting a startup was expensive, you had to get the permission of investors to do it.” Now companies are being started everywhere. How to Fund a Startup. November 2005 Venture funding works like gears.
A typical startup goes through several rounds of funding, and at each round you want to take just enough money to reach the speed where you can shift into the next gear. Few startups get it quite right. Many are underfunded. What We Do. What We Do Y Combinator does seed funding for startups.
Seed funding is the earliest stage of venture funding. It pays your expenses while you're getting started. Some companies may need no more than seed funding. Others will go through several rounds. At Y Combinator, our goal is to get you through the first phase. More Than Money We make small investments (rarely more than $20,000) in return for small stakes in the companies we fund (usually 2-10%). All venture investors supply some combination of money and help. What The questions at this stage range from apparently minor (what to call the company) to frighteningly ambitious (the long-term plan for world domination). Though we fund all types of startups, we're especially interested in web/mobile applications. The second most important thing we do is help founders deal with investors and acquirers.
Y Combinator. Amazon Web Services. iPhone - Music on iPhone - Mobile Music. Wallet - where it works. Avoiding Short-Term Thinking In A World of Big Data. A few years ago, a group of economists led by Nobel prize winning Joseph Stiglitz tried to develop measurements of societal well-being beyond the standard metric of GDP, which only measures a narrow spectrum of economic activity.
Beyond any of their specific recommendations, though, their report brought to light the history of GDP, a history that is incredibly instructive for the coming age of big data. The story? GDP was never meant to serve as a proxy for social well-being, but simply as a way to track economic output. Over time, and with few other tangible metrics that give any sense of how society is doing, GDP has inadvertently become the default measurement that governments use to evaluate how much, or little, they’re doing to enhance well-being.
As Stiglitz wrote at the time, “what we measure affects what we do. " Now, this may not sound that bad. One of the worst, recent examples of short-term changes in data causing major problems comes from food. The New Rules Of Innovation: Bottom-Up Solutions To Top-Down Problems. The world is currently standing “on the cusp of a post-industrial revolution.”
So writes Vijay Vaitheeswaran in his new book, Need, Speed and Greed: How the New Rules of Innovation Can Transform Businesses, Propel Nations to Greatness and Tame the World’s Most Wicked Problems, out March 13. Vaitheeswaran, a 20-year veteran correspondent for The Economist and adviser to the World Economic Forum, wrote the book, he says, as a way to inspire bottom-up solutions to top-down problems like resource depletion, climate change, and growing income inequality. We spoke with Vaitheeswaran about the importance of disruptive technologies, social entrepreneurship, and embracing China’s rise. Co.Exist: As you point out in your book, modern humanity has arrived at the first phase of an unprecedented “innovation revolution,” yet many are being left behind. Why is that and what are we gonna do about it? Vijay Vaitheeswaran: First, I think it’s a wonderful time to be alive. I’d put it this way. YouTube U: The Power Of Stanford's Free Online Education.
If "Occupy X" is about protesting jagged inequalities, are we due to see "Occupy The Ivy’s" anytime soon?
Tuition hikes and rising student debt are conspiring to make post-secondary education more wretchedly expensive every day. At least Stanford shouldn’t lose sleep worrying about encampments. This fall, it’s home to a radical experiment that involves putting three classic engineering classes entirely online, for anyone in the world, for free. Whether it’s an economically smart move for the university is unclear. But the program is a stunning experiment in both distance learning--and in broadening higher ed’s reach to the other 99%. In the late summer, professors leading three traditional Stanford classes--an introduction to AI, to databases and to machine learning--decided to offer their classes online for free to anyone in the world.
Professor Andrew Ng is teaching machine learning; professor Jennifer Widom is serving up an introduction to database management.