Software and online services are in a period of dizzying growth. Year-old companies are turning down billion-dollar buyouts in the hopes of multibillions in a few months. But we have seen similar industry phases before, and they have often ended with growth and valuations fizzling out. The industry’s booms and busts make growth, an essential ingredient in value creation, difficult to understand. To date, little empirical work has been done on the importance of revenue growth for software and Internet-services companies or how to find new sources of growth when old ones run out.

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YCombinator’s move on Tuesday to increase their investment size to $120K — effectively a sixfold increase in the entry valuation for all YC companies — has big implications for the global accelerator market and hastens the dawn of a world with far fewer such programs.

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Last year, we here at Vator did a round up of accelerators and incubators from around the country, including Austin, Chicago, and Boston, as well as some international cities including London, as well as some of the smaller countries in Europe.

It was a good way to see which cities both at home, and abroad, were becoming tech hubs, with their own ecosystems and startup communities to rival Silicon Valley.

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If you want to hit up the crowd for equity capital under Michigan’s new crowdfunding law, you’ll probably have to do it without Tweeting, Facebooking or Linking In details of your deal.

Newly issued U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission guidance makes it clear that the social media tactics companies have used to raise billions of dollars on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter or Indiegogo won’t be allowed for Michigan companies trying to sell stock via crowdfunding, according to West Michigan securities experts.

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As part of a scheduled series of cross country events designed to spread the gospel of crowdfunding, the Equity Crowdfunding Alliance of Canada (ECFA Canada) hosted their inaugural conference in the financial district of Toronto to a packed crowd.  Tickets quickly sold out for the popular gathering as many of the big names in Canadian crowdfunding world showed up to show their support and share insight into the future of investment crowdfunding.

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For decades, large companies have gone shopping in Silicon Valley for startups. Lately, the pressure of continuous disruption has forced them to step up the pace.

More often than not, the results of these acquisitions are disappointing.

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Entrepreneurship is more about building a business than inventing a product. It’s more about the quality of the execution, rather than the quality of the idea. Most importantly, it’s more about being a proactive leader who connects to customers and the team deeply, rather than a bright light that struggles to be seen amidst the glare of a million other bright lights.

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Print's not dead yet, and now one company wants to make it mobile.

An Israeli team has developed a simple, softball-sized printer that is compatible with any electronic device and can be used anytime, anywhere.

The ZUtA Pocket Printer has broken printing down to its core. It does away with almost every component of a traditional printer and keeps only the most important part — the printhead.

Image: IMAGE: ZUTA LABS   

When tablets appeared on the market, there were expectations that they would be laptop computers’ greatest competition. That has not turned out to be true at Ball State University, where students see tablets as a form of entertainment—as essentially a bigger and more expensive smartphone, according to a recent study.

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Soft or hard, have you ever wondered where the idea for a twisted pretzel was first born? Here is a little background on the first soft pretzel:

The most widespread story is that the first pretzels were invented by a monk in 610 A.D. During the season of Lent in northern Italy, the monk is said to have been baking unleavened bread, when he thought of a way to reward children for memorizing prayers. He twisted the dough, so it resembled arms crossed in prayer and named his creation “pretiola,” which means “little reward” in Latin. Other sources say that something similar occurred, but in a monastery in southern France.

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Predicting that your city will be the next Silicon Valley is simple. But actually making it the next Silicon Valley is something else entirely — as New York is slowly finding out.

A few years ago, officials and executives in New York proclaimed their ambition: to build the city into a powerful hotbed for tech innovation. Officials funneled money into start-up incubators and approved a bid from Cornell University to transform Roosevelt Island into a two-million-square-foot, next-generation technology campus to rival Stanford’s. Social media darlings like Foursquare, in downtown Manhattan, and the crafts retailer Etsy, in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, were hailed as surefire breakouts.

Image: No New York start-up has been a breakout hit, the sort of blockbuster with a multibillion-dollar valuation that has become so commonplace in Silicon Valley. Credit Anna Parini 

Sramana Mitra: You were doing college level courses?

Andrew Grauer: Yes, we focused on US colleges. Then, we expanded internationally as well and now we’re just starting to go into high school.

Sramana Mitra: Within those colleges, was there any bias in terms of courses?

Andrew Grauer: It seems like there’s a lot more engagements per piece of content in STEM courses. Then, probably the revenue is higher for business or marketing related programs.

Sramana Mitra: You keep referring to tutoring. Talk to me a little about what is the kind of content that has been accumulated in the site and explain why you use the tutoring metaphor.

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The National Science Board (NSB) appreciates the historic strong commitment of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and to the research that NSF supports. In the face of global challenges to our Nation's scientific leadership, NSF must maintain an unwavering focus on enabling scientific breakthroughs and on supporting the next generation of scientists. These scientists' discoveries will underpin the health of the United States long into the future, especially with respect to its economic growth, prosperity, and security.

I had just finished a talk on Systematic Inventive Thinking in which I had stressed the usefulness of the Subtraction technique. Just then, a group of seven men approached the stage. They introduced themselves as the management board of Standard Bank of South Africa. They liked the idea that innovation is something that can be learned and applied. They were especially interested in Subtraction. “Do you think it would help us with our problem?” asked one of the delegates.

Legend has it that notorious American hold-up man Willie Sutton, who netted an estimated $2 million between the late 1920s and his final arrest in 1952, was once asked why he robbed banks. His reply: "Because that's where the money is."

It's perfectly understandable that such ice-cold logic should also dictate the ambitions of most business school students. The majority dream of working in blue-chip companies that will reward them as handsomely as possible. They can hardly be faulted for aiming high.

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When David Einhorn speaks, the world usually listens. That doesn't mean what he says is particularly new or even insightful.

"Now there is a clear consensus that we are witnessing our second tech bubble in 15 years," the founder of hedge fund Greenlight Capital wrote last week to his investors. "What is uncertain is how much further the bubble can expand and what might pop it."

Image: David Einhorn (right), president of hedge fund Greenlight Capital, here on Bloomberg Television last year, is already warning of a bubble because of so much money being poured into tech. Photo: Scott Eells, Bloomberg 

Hiring the wrong person for a position is an expensive mistake for a company to make. In a recent Career Builder survey 42% of companies reported that a bad hire cost them at least $25,000 in the past year, and 25% reported a loss of at least $50,000. But for small companies, where every employee often juggles many important responsibilities, the cost of a bad hire can be even more devastating – up to $190,000 according to a report by Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced a $150 million fund the agency will use to invest in small rural businesses. The fund establishes a new Rural Business Investment Program with a new wrinkle for investment in rural ag-related companies.

The new investment fund was announced as part of the Obama administration’s “Made in Rural America” initiative. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the money will go to “innovative” rural small businesses with an emphasis on those with job creating potential.

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When Bryan Sivak joined then D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty’s administration as chief technology officer, he was fresh from building his own business. Five years later, Sivak has become something of a government-embedded entrepreneur. He left the District to become Maryland’s first chief innovation officer in 2011. He is now chief technology officer at the Department of Health and Human Services. There, he manages the IDEA Lab, a series of programs that reward innovation, bring private sector leaders into the agency, and provide employees with time and money to pursue ideas. The effort aims to infuse a sense of entre­pre­neur­ship in the risk-adverse temperament of government.

Image: Illustration by Lennart Andresen/Illustration by Lennart Andresen - Bryan Sivak. 

Founded in Boulder, Colo., in 2006, Techstars now claims to be the number-one startup accelerator in the world. With offices in six U.S. cities and London, Techstars runs three-month-long, mentor-driven accelerator programs.

Those who are interested in a spot, however, will have to compete with a large applicant pool. According to Katie Rae, the managing director of Techstars in Boston, for every ten slots available, Techstars gets more than 1,500 startup applicants.

Image: TechStars managing director Katie Rae Image Credit: TechStars