The number of female executive at a startup correlates to its success, according to a new study. We take a look at 10 popular startups to see how many women are in their executive ranks. Read more »
Friday marks the official launch of former ReadWriteWeb editor Marshall Kirkpatrick’s data-based discovery startup Littlebird (formerly known as Plexus Engine). The company, which aims to automate discovery and vetting of experts and influencers on any given topic, has also raised $1 million in funding. Read more »
New York-based ZocDoc, which allows patients to discover nearby doctors and book appointments online, is releasing its first new product since launching in 2007. With ZocDoc Check-In, patients will be able to complete intake forms before appointments and save the information on the site. Read more »
A new report from health startup accelerator Rock Health shows that funders have invested $1.08 billion in digital health startups this year, which already eclipses the $956 million they spent in all of last year. Read more »
Rap Genius, a site that lets people crowdsource explanations to song lyrics and other kinds of text, has received $15 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz. Read more »
In an interview with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, PBS journalist Charlie Rose asked about the state of tech IPOs, Facebook advertising and the keys to successful tech companies. Read more »
A data visualisation web app, GetBulb, wins a €50,000 loan note from DFJ Esprit in The Irish Times’ Digital Challenge. But what did the publisher learn from working with start-ups? Read more at paidContent »
Entrepreneurs are often told to figure out what the market wants and to follow their passions. Unfortunately, these can be competing directions. Dave Kashen, founder of Quantum Leading, has his own bit of advice for startup founders — don’t settle for what the market wants if it doesn’t intersect with what you’re passionate about doing. Read more »
It’s hard for chip startups to raise funding, but the demands of mobile and cloud computing are providing a window of opportunity for all kinds of innovative silicon-based designs. Thus, when Adapteva couldn’t find a VC backer, its CEO turned instead to Kickstarter. Read more »
Duck Duck Moose, a San Mateo, Calif.-based company that makes educational smartphone apps for kids, has raised $7 million in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Stanford University. Read more »
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is embarking on a gigabit fiber project, thanks to the suggestion of Google’s Eric Schmidt, taking advantage of the overhaul of its water infrastructure to lay new data pipes. The plan is create 15 tech zones to feed Chicago’s growing startup community. Read more »
According to David E. Weekly, CEO Oha.na, Silicon Valley is stupid in three important ways — its startups are stupid, its government is stupid, and its investors are stupid. Companies are successful here because business intelligence is distributed, and the ultimate arbiter of correctness is the market. Read more »
At the Entrepreneur Roundtable Accelerator Demo Day in New York, 10 startups debuted, pitching services ranging from marketplaces for custom goods, catering and yoga gear to companies looking to optimize online video. Here are a few that stood out. Read more »
OpenSignal has collected 2.5 billion signal strength measurements from networks around the world. Now its collecting $1.3 million from a triad of investors to help it put all of that crowdsourced data to use. Read more »
Wealthfront, a San Francisco startup that is an SEC-registered online financial advisor, has launched an interactive tool for the tech community that lets people research cash compensation and equity packages across a range of jobs. Read more »
Paul Tough, author of the book “How Children Succeed” stops by for a special podcast interview about the similarities between raising a successful kid and building a successful startup, as well as how busy Valley execs can still be great parents. Read more »
A new report from the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, shows that the number of jobs created by startups has fallen sharply since 2010. Small businesses are hiring again, so what is the particular problem with startups — and why are they suffering even in a recovery? Read more »
In its first acquisition, New York-based beauty discovery startup Birchbox has acquired JolieBox, a Paris-based subscription beauty company. With the purchase, Birchbox expands its footprint to France, the United Kingdom and Spain. Read more »
Blue River Technology is a startup that raised $3.1 million to take machine learning from Silicon Valley to the farming-focused Salinas Valley. It has built a robot that identifies and then kills weeds and hopes to reduce the use of pesticides in agriculture. Read more »
Sometimes one company’s failures can provide valuable lessons for other startups. That’s definitely the case with a major strategy shift from productivity upstart 6Wunderkinder, which we can reveal. Read more »
It is always fun to watch successful founders come back into the startup arena again. Joshua Schachter, who created the social-bookmarking service Delicious, is back with Tasty Labs and today released Human.io, a platform for micro-task collaboration. It seems like a good platform for creatives. Read more »
Berlin is making great strides towards becoming a serious home for startups and entrepreneurs in Europe. But while it’s getting support from businesses and even government, the biggest fly in the ointment could be the delayed, embarrassing shambles that is Brandenburg airport. Read more »
Chicago’s Excelerate Labs may not have quite the outsized demo day as Y Combinator, but the 10 companies that just graduated from is accelerator program were still impressive. Here are the five startups that made the biggest impression on us: Orbeus, Lasso, Cureeo, Pictarine and Whimseybox. Read more »
As more and more breaking news comes to us through social media, the task of determining what is true and what isn’t becomes exponentially harder. Storyful says that crowdsourcing is the best way to do this, and so it has opened up its professional verification process. Read more »
Y Combinator ed tech startup Clever, which helps education-focused developers more easily integrate with school data, has reached 1,000 schools barely three months after launching. The company is part of the startup accelerator’s most recent class of companies. Read more »
Treater, a social gifting startup launching Wednesday, wants to use Facebook help people send impromptu, casual gifts to friends. The Washington, DC-based startup is also announcing that it has raised $2.5 million dollars. Read more »
ClassDojo, a San Francisco-based startup that helps teachers manage student behavior with game mechanics, is launching out of beta with $1.6 million from some of Silicon Valley’s top investors. To date, the company says 3.5 million teachers and students globally are using its service. Read more »
All over the world, startup accelerator programs have exploded over the last few years – but that growth has been accompanied by diminishing returns for those taking part. How can this improve? Mikko Järvenpää, former staffer at Europe’s HackFwd program, has a few ideas. Read more »
At the Time Life Center in New York on Wednesday, startup accelerator Dreamit Ventures showcased its latest class of 15 startups. The companies were selected from a pool of 500 applicants and originated from cities across the country and around the world. Read more »
Former Google exec David Girouard’s Upstart wants to match promising, not-necessarily-techie college entrepreneurs with backers and mentors. The goal is to fuel the creation of a new generation of startups that would otherwise never see the light of day. Read more »
Crowdfunding has grown from a $33 million market to a $128 million market in the past two years and is expected to reach $500 million in 2012. While it won’t completely replace more traditional fund-raising methods, it’s nonetheless an important space to watch, with plenty of opportunities. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Indoor-positioning-startup Wifarer has landed its first customer, the Royal BC Museum, in Victoria, Canada. Wifarer and the BC, however, aren’t just slinging location-triggered coupons. The museum is using Wifarer technology to create an object-aware virtual guide to its exhibits. Read more »
What can a 153-year-old news publisher teach five tech startups? Digital expertise may flow both ways as Ireland’s newspaper of record offers desk space and funding to new companies whose products it hopes to adopt. Read more at paidContent »
The 125 MassChallenge finalists gathered in South Boston Tuesday night to show off their ideas to media and techies. The array of products and creativity on display was exciting and ran the gamut from smartphone apps to a glycerine polymerization process. Read more »
Mobile analytics companies provide app publishers with data about their users. Hiptype, a Y Combinator startup, wants to do the same thing for ebooks. That could be huge for data-starved book publishers — except that for now, Hiptype only works on platforms that support HTML5. Read more at paidContent »
European startups love to analyze their failures and look for reasons the continent finds it hard to build huge new businesses. Now a great, comprehensive piece in The Economist manages to show how the problems are deep, dangerous — and go back at least 50 years. Read more »
New York-based SecondMarket Thursday announced that the company was adding former U.S. Congressman Scott Murphy to its board of directors. Murphy, an entrepreneur, was previously managing director at Advantage Capital, a venture capital and small business financing firm. Read more »
Apigee, a company that helps manage and monitor APIs, snagged a $20 million round of funding led by new investor Focus Ventures, with participation from current investors Bay Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, SAP Ventures and Third Point Ventures. Read more »
Blueprint Health, a startup accelerator and co-working space based in New York, is announcing Thursday its ten picks for the accelerator’s latest class of startups. Read more »
The Silicon Strip is coming along nicely, and although they’re mostly young and relatively unknown, Las Vegas’s startups aren’t hurting for good ideas. Some are even growing beyond their wildest dreams. Here are five of the city’s most-promising. Read more »
![By United States Congress [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AScott_Murphy_official_photo.jpg){kind=link}