Mobile Internet exits via IPO and acquisition skyrocketed to $94 billion in the last 12 months, according to a new Digi-Capital report (free summary; full version) led by the hottest sectors: messaging, games, and social networking.

Image: http://venturebeat.com

I settled into a chair recently at UC San Diego and thought, “I”m going to hate what’s coming next.”

A young designer was preparing to talk about how consumers had reacted to changes in some computer games. Interesting topic. But academia doesn’t teach or encourage scientists to speak clearly. I expected an onslaught of jargon.

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Eric Hippeau is a venture capitalist and former CEO of the Huffington Post who, together with his partners at Lerer Hippeau Ventures, invests in and supports consumer technology startups. Based in New York City, Hippeau sees the Big Apple as a wonderful and resourceful hub for software and applied technology. He discusses the major similarities and differences between New York and Silicon Valley in the following clip from his recent Big Think interview: 

Image: http://bigthink.com

Chicago-based Jail Education Solutions launched a pilot program in an almost untouched market: the Philadelphia prison system. 

Prisons may seem like an odd market for a Chicago tech startup focused on education, but founder Brian Hill sees a lot of potential, for both doing good and making money. Over the next few months, the soft-launch pilot program will bring several hundred tablets full of educational programs to the Philadelphia correctional system. The goal is to help reduce the recidivism rates by giving inmates the tools and education they need to survive on the outside. It’s a serious problem – about half the people in American jails will return.

Image: http://www.builtinchicago.org

Have you heard about the importance of journaling lately?

Sure you have. It’s all the rage in every entrepreneur’s morning routine. There are apps and software popping up all over the place to help promote the habit.

The practice of journaling or expressive writing is not something novel, but it is definitely getting some extra promotion in many entrepreneurial communities.

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Whether or not the votes go your party’s way, election night always captures the feeling of progress. Part of that is because every two years, the media gets a little bit better at covering the event, treating us to better data science and visual journalism.

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It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. The usual justification is that your goal is to uncover the details of your potential customers’ lives and pain-points, whereas a mention of price turns attention away from that topic, diverting the discussion to budgets and comparative value.

But I disagree. Price is as important as any other feature to determine product/market “fit.”

We’ve seen how modern dance can explain key concepts in statistics (e.g. correlation and sampling error). So why couldn’t dance also illustrate the conclusions of a plant biology doctoral dissertation?

Uma Nagendra, a graduate student at the University of Georgia, has just won the 2014 edition of the “Dance Your Ph.D.” contest. Sponsored by Science and HighWire Press, the contest asks grad students to “explain their Ph.D. research in the most jargon-free medium of all: dance.”

Image: http://www.openculture.com

Each year around this time, I’ve been running a post with twenty-five lessons learned from the past year away from full-time corporate life. With prompting from a Brainzooming blog reader who is a long-time friend and incredibly kind supporter, here’s this year’s edition of lessons from another year away from corporate life.

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ROI, customer churn, growth margins—these are all fairly standard metrics to track while you're building your company. But there are so many more numbers to be aware of as you try to build a profitable business.

To find out which underrated startup metrics entrepreneurs should be measuring, I asked 10 founders with growing companies from YEC what they were keeping tabs on now.

Runners, rejoice! LifeBeam sells a $99 hat that will track your heart rate, steps, calories and more. It’s on sale now and will ship before the holidays. I like the look of the hat, and imagine most consumers will appreciate the friendly approach to data — namely, instead of just counting steps, it offers advice and insights via a companion app. LifeBeam already offers similar tech inside a bike helmet.

We’ve just had a nonsense midterm election. Never has more money been spent to think so little about a future so in flux. What would we have discussed if we’d had a serious election? How about the biggest challenge we’re facing today: The resilience of our workers, environment and institutions.

The consumer has always been right, but now they are so informed by their peers that they are savvier than ever when it comes to choosing between products, services, and brands. A few years ago, ‘social’ meant Facebook pages and Twitter profiles; today, it’s about involving others in the shopping experience – whether they be friends, family, part of an extended social community, or complete strangers.

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According to CB Insights, who analyzed 101 failed startup businesses, the top ten reason that new businesses fail, are:

An innovative network of public- and private-sector groups are working together to transfer federal research out of the lab and into the marketplace—where it can not only solve important agricultural problems, but also serve as an economic accelerator. Such is the Agricultural Research Partnerships (ARP) Network, a program created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, (ARS) Office of Technology Transfer.

Both the White House and congressional leaders have been vocal in their support for reforming the US patent system to rein in “patent trolls.” Trolls are firms with no interest in innovation or technology transfer; they hold patents to assert them against innocent businesses to extract some of the profit from genuine innovators.

Image: Free Digital Photos

I recently had the pleasure to speak to several hundred high school students at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio about the challenges and opportunities in today’s Innovation Economy. I explained that we live in a knowledge-based economy driven by science and technology; an economy that is about disruptive ideas and taking risks; one shaped by the democratization of information and exponential growth of entrepreneurship.

Humans are great at coming up with excuses—you don’t have the time, you don’t have the skills (yet), you’re short on cash. These are all great reasons to balk on the path to entrepreneurship, but they should be seen as obstacles to tackle, not a reason to give up all together. If you dream of owning your own business, it’s going to take a lot of work, sweat, tears and cash to make it happen, but if you give more weight to your excuses than your dreams, they might hold you back for good.

SANTA CLARA -- Last December, seventh-grader Shubham Banerjee asked his parents how blind people read.

A Silicon Valley tech professional, dad Neil Banerjee told his son to "Google it."

So Shubham did, and with a few Internet searches he learned about Braille, the tactile writing system used by the blind, and Braille printers, which, to the 12-year-old's shock, cost thousands of dollars. One school science fair victory, a few national accolades, $35,000 of his parents' savings and a visit to the White House later, Shubham today is the founder of Palo Alto startup Braigo Labs, which aims to become the first purveyor of low-cost, compact Braille printers.

Image: Shubham Banerjee assembles the Braille printer he built out of Legos in his San Jose, Calif., Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014. (Patrick Tehan/Staff)

Watching momentum go to waste is not pleasant. Having been an advisor to many startup companies in Israel, I can say that it is very difficult to watch startup companies finish accelerator programmes and fail to utilise the various programmes’ assets.

Several easy steps will allow you to take advantage of the experience, knowledge and connections the accelerator programmes provide.

Image: Free Digital Photos