ARPA-E – a new federal agency created to fund research of promising, but unproven, energy technologies

ARPA-E: A Good Beginning for U.S. Energy Innovation By Bill Gates Clean energy and innovation are two areas that I’m passionate about, so I’ve been looking forward to investigating some interesting new energy technologies at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit this week. ARPA-E is a new federal agency—the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy—created in 2009 to fund …

Environmentalist, and wealthy cofounder of Burt’s Bees, fights to create America’s next National Park

Burt’s Bees cofounder Roxanne Quimby wants to hand the government a new national park in northern Maine—election-year politics and residents’ NIMBYism be damned. Brian Kevin investigates the boldest conservation plan in decades. Technically, this Idaho-shaped chunk of land, which contains a 30-mile stretch of the International Appalachian Trail, is known as the East Branch Sanctuary. …

Switzerland – Silicon Alps – joins the start-up ecosystem

Ah, Switzerland. The land of chocolate, cow-bells, skiing and prices that make you want to cry. A place that has built a global brand on providing a safe, risk-free haven for other people’s money and not being disruptive or belligerent. Clean, orderly and wonderfully peaceful — yes, the clichés are true. Not then, you might …

Bill Gates invests in the future of electricity storage – Liquid Metal Batteries

Liquid Metal Battery Corporation, an MIT spin out that’s developing new technologies for electricity storage, has raised $15 million in funding from Khosla Ventures, Total and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. The technology behind the company was developed by Dr. Donald Sadoway (his famous TED Talk), a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was …

Etsy raises $40 million funding – giving craftrepreneurs an international marketplace

Etsy has closed $40 million of funding from a roster of investors who have been believers in Etsy for a long time. I couldn’t be happier to have such a committed set of partners who “get it” along for the next stage. What do we plan to do with the money we’ve raised? Two simple …

President, Congress pass bill to allow venture capital funding via crowd sourcing

Earlier this month, President Obama sign the JOBS bill into law with strong bipartisan support, and no this isn’t the one you’re thinking of. This one is designed specifically for funding start-ups with a particular focus on crowd funding (i.e. Kickstarter). Explained by author and professor, Jeff Jarvis: The JOBS bill being signed by President Obama today …

Venture capitalists invested $5.8 billion in the first quarter of 2012

Venture capitalists invested $5.8 billion in 758 deals in the first quarter of 2012. The report shows that after a strong fourth quarter 2011, VC investment activity for the quarter fell 19 percent in terms of dollars and 15 percent in the number of deals compared to the fourth quarter of 2011 when $7.1 billion …

Profiles on the million dollar projects of Kickstarter

Idea Lab: On Monday, Kickstarter saw the third project in its short history, a Web comic book, raise over $1 million. Before that, the first two projects to cross the million dollar mark — a computer adventure game and a fetching American-made iPhone dock — did so just days prior, on February 10, and both …

Kickstarter to provide more funding for arts than NEA

Kickstarter is having an amazing year, even by the standards of other white hot Web startup companies, and more is yet to come. (The Start-up) is on track to distribute over $150 million dollars to its users’ projects in 2012, or more than entire fiscal year 2012 budget for the National Endowment of the Arts …