When it comes to venture capital activity, you can look at the Midwest in two ways. On one hand, the region lags significantly behind the East and West Coasts in total VC investment. On the other hand, this presents a real opportunity for significant growth, particularly given the region’s strong national (and international) standing in university-based research. 

An unlikely source is revealing some secretive habits of whales: the group tasked with monitoring nuclear weapons testing. The underwater hydrophone network of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) was designed to listen for massive explosions, but its sonic sensors more often pick up the peaceful rumblings of the world’s largest animals. Now scientists are exploiting this unique data set to estimate fin whale population sizes and movements, which could improve the species’ uncertain conservation prospects.

In addition to our own funds, we are investors in a number of other early-stage VC funds as part of our Foundry Group Next strategy. Yesterday, in one of the quarterly updates that we get, I saw the following paragraph.

“Historically, the $10 million valuation mark has been somewhat of a ceiling for seed stage startups. But so far this year, we’ve seen that a number of companies, often times with nothing more than a team and a Powerpoint presentation, have had great success raising capital north of that $10 million level. Furthermore, round sizes continue to tick up, with many seed rounds now in the $2.5 million to $4.0 million range.”

The Ohio Chamber of Commerce Research Foundation Inc. has released recommendations to jump-start the state's innovation economy.

Image: BRUCE WORKS

There's been more venture capital invested through the first six months of 2018 in the US than any six-month period in recent history, which highlights the new normal in the industry: more capital concentrated into fewer, larger deals. On the exit end of the spectrum, there's been improved access to the IPO market, particularly for enterprise tech companies.

Image: https://pitchbook.com

I’m sure you know a few people at work who are always “too busy,” but never seem to get much done. For many of these, it’s an excuse to decline new work, impress others, or gain sympathy. For others, it’s a legitimate complaint, indicative of being out of control or not managing their time. If you find yourself in this category, you need to focus on techniques to improve your productivity

People are always characterising themselves and each other into groups. One of the most popular and generalising personality labels is whether you're type A or type B.

Typically, type A people are perfectionists, highly organised, and competitive. They can also be impatient, hostile, and sometimes neurotic. Type B people, on the other hand, are considered more laid back, less easily stressed, and messy.

While the five West Coast states (Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington) continue to dominate the VC landscape with approximately $17 billion invested over 751 deals in Q2 of 2018, the New York City MSA has seen an increase in its share of VC deals (12.8 percent through Q2 of 2018) – up from 11.4 percent for 2017, according to the 2Q 2018 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor. These findings highlight the long-standing trend that the U.S. VC market remains concentrated on the coasts with approximately 71 percent of deals and nearly 88 percent of VC dollars going to the West Coast states, the Mid-Atlantic states, and the New England states. The map below from the 2Q 2018 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor provides a regional breakdown of both deals and dollars.   Read more  |   

Architects of a new plan to accelerate Ohio’s economic growth point to work being done in the Youngstown area as an example of something that should be scaled up statewide.

The Ohio Chamber of Commerce Research Foundation today unveiled Ohio BOLD, what it calls “a blueprint for accelerating the innovation economy.”

The report, the nonprofit organization’s first large-scale research project, identifies innovation as the key to catching up Ohio’s economic growth to the national average.

A typical bike sold in a U.S. bike shop today was made in China and shipped thousands of miles to the store. But a new bike-building robot makes it possible to make bikes locally–perhaps even in the shop itself, on demand–at roughly the same cost.

Image: Arevo

A picture is worth a thousand words but a pie chart may be more eloquent, especially when it comes to sizing up the giants of the tech industry.

Michael Batnick, director of research at Ritholtz Wealth Management, on Wednesday tweeted out a chart that underscored how absolutely dominant tech companies have become in a world where size seems to increasingly matter. (See an enlarged version of the chart here.)

Image: https://www.marketwatch.com

Appealing to people’s emotions helps new ideas cut through the clutter.

Among corporate innovators, the travails of James Dyson and the unlikely insight of Art Fry are iconic. Dyson’s bagless vacuum cleaner was perfected only after a staggering 5,127 tries. Fry’s inspiration, interestingly enough, came during a church service. Pieces of paper he had used to mark hymns kept falling out of his choir book, which led the 3M scientist to think about the materials chemistry that eventually produced Post-it Notes. World-changing products, yes, but also great stories.

From their diet to their diseases, koalas are pretty special. Now researchers have sequenced the koala’s genome, unlocking the secrets that make these fuzzy fellas so unique.

This video was reproduced with permission and was first published on July 2, 2018. It is a Nature Video production.

The First Coast Innovator’s Gathering on Day 1 is focused on tech hubs and companies from the First Coast: DC, MD, PA, NJ, NY, RI, CT, and MA. We encourage all global tech hubs and their constituents to attend.

Tech hubs and global attendees will be able to sign up for partnering meetings ahead of the conference, making sure they setup ideal meetings with global investors and strategic partners that are a fit for their technology and stage of development. Tech hub members are also eligible to apply for free to the First Coast Innovation Challenge to pitch in front of a panel of investors. The deadline to apply for the Innovation Challenge is July 27, 2018.

When Mari Kuraishi and Dennis Whittle, 57, launched what became GlobalGiving back in the late 1990s, the term “crowdfunding” was not in use—and wouldn’t come into vogue for nearly a decade. These two are clearly on the short list of candidates for those who can credibly make the claim to have invented internet-based crowdfunding.

Synonymous with professionalism, it's widely accepted that ties are a mandatory (if not slightly uncomfortable) component of workplace attire.

Many — like Richard Branson, who described the suit and tie as an " anachronism"— can attest to the fact that ties serve little functional purpose, but few would think a seemingly innocuous item of clothing could damage your health, until now.

There is a version of me who spends her free time reading books about physics, and does yoga before bed, and bakes banana bread on Sunday afternoons.

There is another version of me who decides that physics is hard, as are yoga and baking, and instead spends her free time browsing social media.

(Bloomberg) -- Among the world’s top innovating economies, quite a few aren’t getting enough bang for their buck.

That’s the lesson from the latest annual Global Innovation Index release, which measures the most innovative economies and then, separately, calculates an “Innovation Efficiency Ratio.”

Among the top-10 innovators, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands were the only countries that also ranked in the top-10 for innovation efficiency.

Image: The Armar-6 humanoid robot, developed by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, hands a bottle of cleaning fluid to an employee during a warehouse assistant demonstration at the CeBIT 2018 tech fair in Hanover, Germany, on Monday, June 11, 2018. CeBIT, Europe's business festival for innovation and digitization, runs June 11 - 15. Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg (bloomberg)

The final prototype, in the shape of a magnifying glass, stands tall in a 10th-floor conference room at real estate startup Compass, emitting a gentle glow from the inner rim of its ringed frame. At first glance, the matte-black material and minimalist shape would appear destined for a patio, or inside a home. In fact, if it weren’t for the real estate agent contact information in the center of the glowing ring, it would be hard to call this a “for sale” sign. But that is exactly its purpose: to broadcast to buyers that a home is on the market, and, thanks to embedded technology, to give them access to a far richer set of information than a standard printed sign can contain.

Image: courtesy Compass

Today’s young professionals grew up in an age of mind-boggling technological change, seeing the growth of the internet, the invention of the smartphone, and the development of machine-learning systems. These advances all point toward the total automation of our lives, including the way we work and do business. It’s no wonder, then, that young people are anxious about their ability to compete in the job market. As executives who have spent our lives assessing and implementing digital technology in every type of organization, we often get asked by them: “What should I learn today so that I’ll have a job in the future?” In what follows we’ll share seven skills that can not only make you unable to be automated, but will make you employable no matter what the future holds.