A “startup renaissance” could finally shrink America’s record-high youth unemployment rate. At least that’s how John Harthorne, CEO of startup accelerator MassChallenge, sees it.
Harthorne is the founder and CEO of MassChallenge, a successful Boston-based competitive startup accelerator that grants $1 million to startups that have the “highest impact.”
Those high-impact startups end up growing and hiring young talent, he says.
“America has lost its creative edge. How do we restore it? It’s created by startups.”
“America has lost its creative edge,” Harthorne says. “How do we restore it? It’s created by startups. All recent net job growth has been created by companies under five years of age.”
Harthorne’s plan to ignite a worldwide rebirth of startups comes in three stages, modeled on the template of MassChallenge.
First, Harthorne calls for the design of “a massive startup accelerator based on input and support from experienced leaders.”
A startup accelerator is an organization that provides startups with early funding, office space or connections with influential people that can help bring a startup idea to fruition.
In building MassChallenge, Harthorne wanted to go big: at least 100 startups at a time. And he recognized that he didn’t have the expertise to do it alone, so he enlisted the help and advice of top entrepreneurs and startup owners in the Boston tech community.
Next, Harthorne suggests turning the accelerator into a competition. A competitive format helps MassChallenge address the challenges of attracting attention and engagement, it helps the tech community identify startups with the potential to succeed, and it celebrates and helps connect the most successful entrepreneurs with the resources they need to keep working.
Finally, Harthorne’s plan calls for celebrating startups that create something of value for everyone’s benefit rather than those that focus on maximizing profits for themselves. He says this belief will encourage startups to serve as a rising tide that that lifts all boats, helping to reduce youth unemployment in the U.S.
“Startups are vital for value creation in the economy,” he says. “They are new businesses by definition, and as innovators, startups sometimes invent or redefine whole industries. We wanted to do our part to help re-emphasize sustainable value creation. Something pretty amazing happened when we made that decision. The community rallied around our tiny, unknown organization with an overwhelming outpouring of support.”
MassChallenge accelerated 111 startups in its first year, and another 125 the next. Those first 111 startups have gone from having fewer than 300 employees to more than 800 in a year’s time. If MassChallenge’s template could be applied to other places around the U.S., it may have the potential to make a serious dent in youth unemployment.
Harthorne’s full plan will be published in the #FixYoungAmerica book, available in May.
For that book, the #FixYoungAmerica campaign has asked the top thinkers in technology, business and education to come up with ideas for alleviating youth unemployment and underemployment through entrepreneurship. Mashable has been given an inside look at some of the ideas that focus on technology’s role in helping to get more young people hired to do innovative work. For the next several weeks, Mashable will be highlighting these technology-focused ideas to create jobs for American youth.
What do you think of MassChallenge’s model as a way to help Fix Young America? Sound off in the comments below.
1. Airbnb -- Nathan Blecharczyk, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia
I moved to San Francisco in early 2007 and found an apartment and a roommate through Craigslist -- that's how I met Joe. He was a designer, and I was an engineer at another startup at the time. I later moved out, and Brian -- who knew Joe from the Rhode Island School of Design -- moved in. That was the initial connection for the three of us.
While I lived with Joe, I came to appreciate two things about him -- he worked just as hard as I did, and his skills complemented my own. I have the technical abilities, and he had the creative design skills.
In the summer of 2008, there was a design conference in San Francisco, and there was a hotel shortage. We needed to make rent and thought a good way to make a little additional cash would be to rent out our air mattresses in the apartment. We made a website and got an incredible amount of responses, and we realized we could be on to something.
TV discovery app Peel on Wednesday launched Idol Interactive Experience, a second-screen engagement platform that lets viewers “cheer” or “boo” contestants and judges in real time.
Peel data from last night’s top 12 performance show reveal which singers are most likely to be eliminated during tonight’s results show. Leading the chorus of boos were not-so-stellar performances from Heejun Han, DeAndre Brackensick and Shannon Magrane.
The graphic above depicts the intensity level of cheers (in blue) and boos (in orange) for singers as they performed, or as in Jermaine Jones’s case, as he was disqualified for his recently surfaced criminal past.
Peel users pressed buttons on their iOS devices to express how they felt about the performances and judges’ comments. And before host Ryan Seacrest even opened voting to the masses, users got to see the sentiment results from other Idol viewers.
For example, the results updated in real time as the contestants sang and the judges gave their critiques. Hollie Cavanagh topped the Idol Interactive Experience’s leaderboard for her rendition of Celine Dion’s “The Power of Love” (pictured left).
Front-runner Jessica Sanchez — who wooed America last week with Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” — didn’t impress the judges this week with “Turn the Beat Around,” but the Peel community still put her in third place just behind Cavanagh and Joshua Ledet.
Interestingly, judge Jennifer Lopez garnered the most cheers of the night but also the most boos out of the three judges.
Fellow judge Randy Jackson got the most love with 70% positive rating.
“We think we’re still just in the first inning here as far as what social TV is capable of,” Peel’s vice president of marketing Scott Ellis recently told Mashable.
Mashable will be bringing you Peel data every week until a winner is announced, but do you think a tool like this can accurately predict who will be eliminated? Sound off in the comments.
Watch the March 14 Performances and Judge for Yourself
We knew it'd be arriving on April 1st, but now we're actually longing for it. HBO has just released a half-minute teaser propping up the impending release of HBO GO on Xbox 360, and while it's available on a plethora of other platforms, being able to verbally command HBO (through Kinect, of course) to play your favorite shows just takes the enticement up another level. Care to see for yourself? Tap that video just after the jump.
This is a video of two Tesla coils going at it hillbilly backwoods style and performing 'Dueling Banjos'. Which one wins? Neither, they were both unplugged immediately afterward and spent the next four months collecting dust in the corner of some dude's garage. Not gonna lie, I probably would have thrown the competition and made a run for it. "Tesla coils can't run." But they can dance. "Let me guess -- the electric slide?" The electri-- YOU. RUIN. EVERYTHING.
Hit the jump for the zip-zapping like a pig.
from Geekologie - Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome http://www.geekologie.com/2012/03/dueling-banjos-performed-by-two-tesla-co.php
Jeff Tinsley is the founder and CEO of MyLife.com, the leading social service for connecting your social networks and email services all in one place.
Every other week, it seems a new stat pops up, released to prove that social network X is more popular than social network Y. Whether it’s Facebook dominating the market, Google+ adding users fast, or newcomer Pinterest grabbing 11 million visits in one month, the battle of the social networks shows no sign of letting up. Many ask, “Who will be the ultimate winner?” But perhaps this is the wrong question.
Mounting evidence suggests that the battle of the social networks isn’t a zero sum game. Both Facebook and Google+ are growing in popularity and activity. Tumblr continues to demonstrate it’s more than a fad for millennials. And let’s face it, Twitter is a mainstay.
The staying power of social networks — big and small — proves that there needn’t be a “best” social network, or even a “most popular.” Instead, there ought to be a bit more social networking diplomacy. While the public battle for “most liked” social network carries on, trends point to a far more satisfying outcome: diversity of choice.
The truth is, people aren’t using just one social networking site — they are embracing a dozen. ComScore’s latest digital usage study, 2012 U.S. Digital Future in Focus, found that social networking accounted for 16.6% of time spent online in 2011. In December alone, Twitter drew 37.5 million uniques, while LinkedIn and Google+ drew 33.5 million and 20.7 million, respectively. In that same month, the average user spent 151 minutes on Tumblr, 80 minutes on Pinterest, and 423 minutes on Facebook. Oh, and MySpace just gained one million users — in a month.
The true focus of social networking sites should be less about seeking popularity, and more about helping a user live his life.
People have proven that they will access multiple social network sites, if they have good uses for them. The top sites have already proven themselves worthy. Twitter broke the news of Whitney Houston’s death 27 minutes before the press. Pinterest users are showcasing and caching items collected across the web. Facebook users are posting family photos. Google+ users are learning to play guitar via video hangouts.
The fact is, no matter how great, no one network is able to deliver on every front. For instance, can any platform match Twitter when it comes to short, instant global communication? Or will any network ever equal Facebook when it comes to making and sustaining connections the world over? Users will embrace a variety of sites, each of which excels at its unique method of connecting, sharing and more.
For the future of social networking, that means tolerance is key, and integration and management tools will have essential roles to play. Those that succeed will offer users simple, comprehensive solutions to maintain their connections and make new ones.
Sure, users recognize that a definitive, end-all platform to communicate may be ideal. But it isn’t essential. People will share, friend, link, circle, pin, like, tweet and post — and they’ll do it happily. They know that when it comes to making quality connections, “more” is always better. Social networking, it turns out, isn’t a zero sum game after all.
The U.S. was all ears and eyes last week, tuning in as more election results streamed in on Tuesday, March 6. Each presidential election cycle has a Super Tuesday, the day during which the most states nominate their presidential favorites for the primary election.
This year, candidates campaigned for the attention of 419 delegates across 10 states. And they also jockeyed for viewership, which you can see proved heavily social. In the end, Mitt Romney won 6 out of the 10 states, but his victory hasn’t elbowed candidates like Rick Santorum out of the race just yet.
In other news, My Crazy Obsession snuck up on the social TV chart this week. The show documents people who maintain rare infatuations with objects, foods and lifestyles outside the norms of society. Last Wednesday was the show’s season premiere, which profiled two households: a couple who collects Cabbage Patch dolls (5,000 to be exact) and has built a custom “fortress” to house their “babies,” and a woman who maintains an “all-pink” lifestyle (complete with a pink dog). Yep.
The data below is compliments of our friends at Trendrr, who measure specific TV show activity (mentions, likes, checkins) across Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue and Miso. To see daily rankings, check out Trendrr.TV.
One of the more exciting developments in entrepreneurship is the rise of angel investors, however good data on that subject can be hard to come by. To remedy that, The Angel Resource Institute (ARI), Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and CB Insights last week published the first ever Halo Report, based on data from 573 deals totaling $873.3 million dollars.
Here are the top findings from the report:
California leads in deals and dollars among individual states
79% of angel group investments were in companies outside of California
70% of total funding was invested outside of California
Median angel group rounds size grew to $700,000, an increase of 40% over 2010
58% of angel group investments were in healthcare and internet companies
There are a few other items of local interest in the report, including that New England deals were more diverse across sectors than national and California deals (though 45% were still in healthcare and internet.) And you can see from the map above that 14% of deals were in New England, third behind California (21%) and the Great Lakes (15.9%).
Thanks to the efforts of 13,000 volunteers worldwide, Twitter is now available in Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu, according to a company blog post. Twitter had been working on translating and localizing these right-to-left languages since January 25.
These languages posed unique challenges for Twitter. To overcome technical barriers, Twitter’s engineering team had to build a new set of special tools to ensure that these tweets, hashtags and numbers would behave as their counterparts in left-to-right languages.
Not only that, but some of these languages are spoken — and therefore will be tweeted — in locations where Twitter is officially blocked.
Twitter was a recognizable force in the Arab Spring — but given that there wasn’t yet an Arabic interface, most of the users who tweeted from those regions did so in non-native languages.
And Twitter’s numerous volunteer translators for these right-to-left languages —from Lebanese teenagers to Egyptian college students to IT professionals in Iran and Pakistan, among others — live in these areas as well. “Their efforts speak volumes about the lengths that people will go to make Twitter accessible and understandable for their communities,” the company said in its blog post.
Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu join Thai as the only right-to-left languages in Twitter’s translation center. Their incorporation means the service is now available in 28 languages.
What do you think of the addition of these languages? Do you think more people from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia will start tweeting? Let us know in the comments.
TED -- it's exclusive, endlessly fascinating, pretentious and addictive as hell. Sadly, for those of you out there rocking Android devices, getting your fix on the go required you download the talks as podcasts or use one of many unofficial and highly unreliable apps from the market. That source of frustration comes to an end now, though, with the launch of the official TED app for Android. It's free, it works on tablets and phones and it's available now -- what more could you ask for? Hit up the source link to download it and fire up one of the 1,200-plus TEDTalks available.