Many of you may have heard about, the region-specific and community-led newsletters highlighting the latest and greatest events and opportunities in your area. However, how many of you also know that Startup Digest has an array of, grouped according to various themes, and curated by experts in the field? Well if you didn’t know, now you do! And in this article, we’re excited to feature the Curators of the Education Reading List, highlighting the latest news and information about startups and innovations in education. Jessie Arora - Founder : Connecting educators and edtech Jessie is focused on improving educational outcomes for all types of learners and empowering educators to play a more active and meaningful role in tech adoption in our schools. She is particularly passionate about cultivating the education startup ecosystem to help create tools and services that improve teaching and learning for all students. As an angel investor she focuses on the K12 education space, applying her experiences from Google, Citizen Schools and the Stanford Graduate School of Ed. She blogs at and you can follow her . “I’ve been actively following and sharing what is going on in the edtech world over the past few years, with an emphasis on cool things students and teachers are doing, so helping curate this list was a natural fit.” Deborah Chang - Educator Entrepreneur Deborah believes in solving big problems in education through entrepreneurship. She was the Lead Organizer for Startup Weekend Education in New York City, and she currently works as a consultant to early stage education technology companies. Previously, she was a Teach For America teacher at KIPP Academy in Houston and a member of Team Talent Development at Achievement First Network Support in New York. Deborah’s passion for education stems from her belief that all children deserve an excellent education, regardless of their socioeconomic background or zip code. Deborah is a graduate of Princeton University, where she studied education policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. You can follow Deborah @Debryc. “I’ve been passionate about technology that solves problems in education ever since I was a classroom teacher and am now happy to share resources that can help this community of educators and entrepreneurs.”

- Camila Souza for the Chicago Edition Ben Huh may be best known as the cat meme magnate who is actually allergic to cats. The founder and CEO of the social humor network, Cheezburger Network, has raised over $30M in funding since it first launched in 2007. His 60 websites, including I Can Has Cheezburger, Fail Blog, The Daily What and Know Your Meme, has more… Read more » - Ronald Barba for the Chicago Edition On Wednesday, Techstars Chicago held demo day for its Summer 2014 class of startups. Managing director Troy Henikoff and cofounder Sam Yagan referred to the ten presenting startups as the “best class ever, ” according to a report by Built in Chicago. Announced in May, the Techstars Chicago Summer 2014 class is made up of six companies from Chicago, … Read more » - Ronald Barba for the Chicago Edition Back in 2012, Mobile Makers Academy launched in Chicago to offer people the opportunity to become iOS developers through its initial ten-week program offering. Since then, they’ve condensed their iOS Bootcamp to eight weeks, teach students to code in both Objective-C and Apple’s new Swift programming language, and have even launched a program that enables… Read more » If you’re a cyclist, either for your daily commute or weekend rides, you know the dangers you face when sharing the road with drivers. According to the statistics, in 2012, 726 cyclist lost their lives in bicycle/motor vehicle crashes in the United States. In that same year, bicyclists injuries caused by a motor vehicles were an… Read more » - Ronald Barba for the Chicago Edition The Chicago-based HearHere Radio – the company responsible for Rivet News Radio - announced earlier today that it has raised $1.7 million in Convertible Promissory Notes in an effort to become the the Pandora for news radio, reports Crain’s Chicago Business. Investors in this round include the Associated Press, A.H. Belo Management Services, Whittier Ventures, and… Read more » Chicago, let’s get ready to rumbleeee…well, you get the idea! Tech Cocktail is back in town and we’re very thrilled to host our 3rd 2014 Chicago Startup Showcase & Cars.com Speaker Series event. We have a special event prepared for our local entrepreneurs, which includes a chat with Ben Huh, CEO and Founder of Cheezburger, and Talia… Read more »

The ingenuity of entrepreneurs in Pittsburgh is changing lives, simplifying daily tasks and improving our health. The region is on the forefront of promising technologies and products, from a polka-dot robotic stroller that unfolds in a snap to apps that easily teach foreign languages to the world and surgical glues that hasten healing. These companies are growing and supplying the region with jobs. With dozens gaining traction, narrowing the list to a worthy handful was no easy feat. To assist in the selection, local business leaders and investors were asked to offer nominations. The following 14 companies were mentioned repeatedly as among the rising stars based on their successful track record in raising money, employee hires and new product launches and sales. In a two-part series, here are the Top 14 companies to watch in Pittsburgh in 2014, beginning with the first seven. Aquion Energy Industrial-strength batteries that go easy on the environment are one of the most promising areas in energy today. Aquion makes large-scale, energy storage systems so impressive that Microsoft’s Bill Gates ponied up his own funds to get the enterprise off the starting block last year. Aquion is currently ramping up production at its battery factory in the former Sony site in Westmoreland County and has raised a whopping 0 million, million in 2013 alone. The production line will be running at full capacity by later this year and will have the ability to produce over 200 megawatt-hours of storage per year. Aquion currently employs 125 people and will continue to hire throughout the year. The plant is expected to create more than 400 skilled manufacturing and engineering jobs. Its headquarters is in the old railcar building in Lawrenceville. Avere Systems Facilitating fast and seamless connections with The Cloud (aka data storage) is what Avere is all about. The company is on the forefront of data storage systems, revolutionizing the way enterprise applications interact and network within the data storage environment to provide higher capacity storage and greater flexibility at a better price point. Ron Bianchini is leading the charge from his command post on the North Shore in the Old Del Monte building. His force is 104 strong with noses-to-the-grindstone, building cutting-edge systems for some of the biggest names in the computing world, several of which are never-to-be-named.

(Note: the ratios of the lengths of blue/orange/red bars are 1:3, 1:1, and 2:1.) Observations: For great companies, the most popular languages are Javascript, Ruby, Python, and Java. For okay companies, the most popular languages are Javascript, Ruby, PHP, and Java. The likelihood that PHP is being used is strongly anti-correlated with company quality. The better the company, the more likely it is to be using modern and/or functional programming languages (i.e. Go, Scala, Haskell, Erlang, Clojure). This chart shows a combination of web frameworks (Rails, Django), Javascript Libraries, and HTML/CSS. Ruby on Rails is super popular. HTML5 is dominating HTML. CSS is still dominating CSS3. The better the company, the less likely it is to use Bootstrap. MySQL, Mongo, and Postgres dominate the database side. Redis is much more popular than memcached. The better the company, the less likely it is to build on top of Microsoft's products (SQL Server). Developing for iOS is slightly more popular than developing for Android The gap widens as company quality increases. Windows Mobile (which is not present in the chart) is 30x-50x less popular than iOS and Android among good/great companies. AWS and Heroku dominate. The better the company, the more likely it is to use IaaS (e.g. AWS) instead of PaaS (e.g. Parse) The better the company, the less likely it is to build on top of Microsoft's products (Azure). (Note: the sample size here was small because DevOps tools were rarely mentioned on AngelList profiles) Elasticsearch dominates this category. (Note: the sample size here was small because APIs were rarely mentioned on AngelList profiles - especially for good/great companies.) I was surprised that there's no clear correlation between quality of company and usage of sophisticated technologies like machine learning or computer vision.

In October 2013, the City of Philadelphia and First Round Capital announced the first investment in their matching Startup PHL seed fund. Seen here celebrating with kale smoothies are, from left, Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital, Terry Hicks of Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Lucinda Duncalfe of healthy meal subscription service Real Food Works and Mayor Michael Nutter. Photo courtesy of Real Food Works. Josh Kopelman was raising a glass to Philadelphia. It was filled with a kale smoothie. First Round Capital, Kopelman’s early-stage venture capital firm, and the City of Philadelphia had just announced the first investment from Startup PHL, their partnered $6 million seed fund, a city initiative created to keep startups in the city. They invested $200, 000 in Real Food Works, a healthy meal subscription startup founded by a local tech veteran. That’s why, on a late October morning in a Chinatown art gallery-turned-startup office, Kopelman was sipping an organic shake with Mayor Nutter and Lucinda Duncalfe, who made a career being part of the region’s suburban-ring, venture-backed, high tech companies. Now, she was moving her small team from a shared office in Conshohocken to a tiny street a short walk from Center City. The event once would have seemed unlikely but today is symbol of where the energy in innovation clustering is developing now. “It’s happening in the city, ” Duncalfe said a few days later at an Economy League event. She moved her seven-person startup to the city last summer, in part due to the requirements for accepting the seed funding, but also because the serendipity of urban density is getting better at holding on to the knowledge workers and tech talent that Duncalfe wants to hire and work with.

The corporate real estate veteran picked to lead a groundbreaking state program says START-UP NY will do exactly that for the state’s economy. An important provision of the STARTUP-NY program is that “businesses that might compete unfairly with other local businesses outside the tax-free area would be ineligible to participate.” Here are some of the program’s other parameters, as it begins to ramp up for a January 1, 2014, start: Tax-Free: In addition to the lack of taxes on businesses, employees in participating companies will pay no income taxes for the first five years. For the second five years, employees will pay no taxes on income up to $200, 000 of wages for individuals, $250, 000 for a head of household, and $300, 000 for taxpayers filing a joint return. The number of net new jobs eligible for personal income tax benefits will not exceed 10, 000 new jobs per year. Eligibility: In order to locate into a START-UP NY tax-free community, a business needs to be aligned with or further the academic mission of the sponsoring campus, college or university. Every business must create and maintain net new jobs in order to participate. Businesses must be a new start-up company; a company from out-of-state that is relocating to New York State; or an expansion of an existing New York company — as long as it can demonstrate that it is creating new jobs and not moving existing jobs. Start-ups from New York State incubators will be eligible to enter tax-free communities and be eligible for the benefits under the program. In New York City, Long Island and Westchester County, businesses must be start-ups or high-tech companies. Statewide, certain types of businesses are excluded from the program, including retail and wholesale businesses; restaurants and hospitality; professional practices like law firms and medical practices; and energy production and distribution companies. Every SUNY community college and four-year college/university can establish a tax-free community using vacant land or vacant building space on campus (for those outside New York City); any business incubator with a bona fide affiliation to the campus, university or college; and up to 200, 000 sq. ft. (18, 580 sq. m.) within one mile of a campus (for every campus north or west of Westchester County), or further with approval from Empire State Development (ESD). The City University of New York (CUNY) will be able to establish a tax-free community on a campus in each borough — Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island — in an area of economic distress. “As the corporate real estate person, I’d be looking at the numbers.” — Leslie Whatley, executive vice president, START-UP NY

This week’s poll was possibly our most controversial to date. We saw extensive and heated discussions cross the VC4Africa community, Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook. It is not easy to make generalizations and clearly each country, sector and business case is unique. If anything, we facilitate this conversation because we hope to identify trends, help document and learn from what hasn’t worked in the past. Building a successful business is one of the hardest things to do. For many entrepreneurs building companies in different parts of Africa assumes extra challenges. But from all of the different reasons that might cause an African based startup to fail respondents selected poor execution as the leading cause. This point was followed by lack of finance and an unwillingness to adapt to changing market conditions. So despite often times a challenging business climate i.e. lack of infrastructure, difficulty attracting qualified staff, poor legislation, unfavorable tax climate, etc…. respondents suggested the failure of most startups rested solely on the shoulders of the entrepreneur and their poor performance. This result reflects the findings of a recent study published by the Startup Genome project. Their recently published report found that 90 percent of startups failed primarily because of ‘self-destruction rather than competition.’ The study looked at 3, 200 high-growth technology startups and pinpointed ‘premature scaling’ as a key trend. Specifically this idea that the entrepreneur is getting ahead of the game before they actually have the necessary foundations in place first. This ‘skipping’ of steps might give the impression the startup is finding success early, but lacking key pieces in the business model creates much bigger problems later in the business lifecycle. And given these are fundamental building blocks the startup is too often unable to recuperate and is forced to fold the business completely. There are many ways this occurs i.e. possibly spending money on unnecessary things like an expensive office, hiring too many employees too early, not spending time on proper market research, running expensive customer acquisition or launching the product before it is ready. According to the Startup Genome report bout 74 percent of Internet startups fail because of premature scaling, while those who scale properly typically see growth that’s 20 times faster. Those companies that scale properly end up attracting more capital and servicing more customers. They are also the businesses that end up hiring more employees. But in how far can we compare this study focused on startups in Silicon Valley with the startups in Africa? Growing too fast was also an option in this weeks survey but surprisingly the option only received a single vote. The results of this week’s poll seem to place more emphasis on the inadequate abilities of the entrepreneur (poor implementation) than on their efforts to grow the business too fast.

Is the startup accelerator bubble ready to burst in India? That’s the question several VCs, entrepreneurs and early to late stage investors have started asking in the country’s fledgling startup ecosystem. Their concerns don’t look unfounded, especially after India’s oldest startup accelerator, The Morpheus, said it’s planning to move away from the existing model, and even stopped taking applications for next batches. Founded by Sameer Guglani and Nandini Hirianniah in 2008, Morpheus is shifting away from incubating startups over 4-month long batches. It will now work with startups that are anywhere between 2-5 years old, or even up to 10 years in existence. Last year, The Hatch, an 18-months old accelerator in Mumbai, shut down fueling speculations about the uncertain future faced by many startup accelerators in the country. Guglani told me that Morpheus is not shutting down completely as is being speculated. “We’ve been feeling the need to evolve and it could involve fading away the current accelerator model. We would be launching a new avatar, ” he said. Founders these days are a lot more mature when they get started. Also a 0-2 year old startup has many good sources of support / advice & money. Lots of accelerators, incubators, hackathons, events, demo pitches, blogs, videos and a lot more. Indeed, for entrepreneurs, it’s better to build their startups outside incubators if a longer gestation period is what it takes. Amarpreet Kalkat, who graduated from Microsoft Accelerator last year and founded big data startup Frrole, told me it’s getting tougher in India. “An Indian startup would have a longer gestation period, so more time, and resources, are needed. My vote is for outside, because the battleplace is the market, how long can u keep fighting a proxy battle from inside a fenced garden, ” Kalkat said. Morpheus’ journey so far, and its future path going forward offer crucial lessons for anybody looking to get involved with the Indian accelerator ecosystem.

I moved to Berlin in January this year and lived there for eight months, in which I gained and lost three jobs, two boyfriends, and one flat. Clearly, I had a whale of a time. Nonetheless, it's not quite as wonderful as the media would have you believe. Here's what I wish someone had told me beforehand: 1. The Berlin startup scene is a total bubble It is without a doubt a 'scene': people value being part of it, they socialise within it, use startup buzzwords like UX and MVP, and in the process they cut off access to outsiders. Some people don't actually know what startups are. Seriously. When I first got a whiff of the startup scene, I was intrigued, and I think I started emitting some kind of hormone and was quickly dragged into its orbit. 2. Wearing a tiger onesie to work isn't necessarily a smart plan This one I should have been able to work out for myself. Morale was low in the office as the future of our startup (Gidsy) was uncertain, and a tiger suit seemed like an excellent idea at the time. As it turns out, that was the day I was made redundant. So that was awkward. Lesson learned. 3. Nobody has a real job Admittedly, people tried to warn me. Like a relationship with a dodgy new boyfriend, I said: "Oh but it'll be different with me". It's not different. Proper, full-time jobs are few and far between, everybody else works weird hours for low pay, has various "projects" on the go which never materialise, and goes out on Sunday nights until 5am. It's a totally unsustainable (if highly enjoyable) lifestyle. 4. It's possible to fall down the party hole Clubs stay open from Friday until Monday, so it's no wonder that people don't have real jobs. In fact, from my tireless field research, I've concluded that clubs are open all week too. Sometimes you find yourself coming home at 7am on a Wednesday, wondering what you're doing with your life. Spotting a man with a syringe doesn't help.

“It’s year one for solar in India, ” says Alan Rosling, the chairman and executive director of Kiran Energy, a solar developer startup based in Mumbai. But despite the early stage and small size of the crew at Kiran Energy — the company is two years old and has 25 employees and $50 million in funding from U.S. private equity firms — Kiran is determined to play a significant role in financing, owning and developing large-scale solar panel farms in India. Kiran hits it big During an interview this week in Kiran Energy’s Mumbai office, Rosling told me how Kiran has for the moment become “the biggest focused solar power developer” in terms of contracts in India. There are other large conglomerates or power companies that have potentially larger portfolios, but Kiran is currently the leader in terms of the solar-specific folks, says Rosling. Kiran has 75 MW’s worth of solar contracts, including 50 MW that the company won just weeks ago in the latest Indian government solar auction (which Rosling called “nail-biting” and “exciting.”) The government has been bidding out projects under a goal to deliver 3 percent of the country’s power via solar by 2022: That could eventually be 25 GW. Individual states also have their own solar plans, and Kiran has a 5 MW project with the state of Rajasthan. Kiran is just starting to hit it big. The company will open its first plant this month, and it has also managed to score a joint venture with Indian conglomerate Mahindra called Mahindra Solar One, of which Kiran is a majority owner. “When we signed the contract for the JV with Mahindra we were just two guys, ” says Rosling. Rosling’s counterpart is founder Ardeshir Contractor, formerly the head of KPMG’s Investment Banking business in India. Rosling, a former executive director of Tata Sons, tells me that Contractor came to him with the idea for Kiran and persuaded him with the pitch about the business model and the potentially massive size of the Indian solar market.