Innovation Toronto

photo credit: esteban
In an ominous sign for Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial machine, venture capital firms are cutting back on their investments in companies at their earliest stage of development and being forced to provide extra financing for later-stage companies that can’t leave the nest and go public.
Overall, venture capital investment remained flat at about $7.4 [...]

photo credit: Neil Hunt
WHAT if you could make fuel for your car in your backyard for less than you pay at the pump? Would you?
The first question has driven Floyd S. Butterfield for more than two decades. Mr. Butterfield, 52, is something of a legend for people who make their own ethanol. In 1982, [...]

You didn’t really think that Silicon Valley would be immune to the general convulsions in the overall economy, did you? I am not sure it is as bad as the NYT gleefully makes it out to be, but there is growing evidence of a tech slowdown, including M&A deals and IPOs drying up, slower [...]

photo credit: hira3
SAN FRANCISCO — Housing prices in Silicon Valley remain defiantly high. New BMWs and Saabs cruise Highway 101. But for the first time there are signs that the current economic downturn is taking its toll on the country’s cradle of technology and innovation.
Job growth has slowed, start-up companies are hiring and spending [...]

photo credit: blogsorbeta
SAN FRANCISCO — Compared with other forms of human interaction, online social networking is really not all that social.
People visit each other’s MySpace pages and Facebook profiles at various hours of the day, posting messages and sending e-mail back and forth across the digital void. It’s like an endless party where everybody [...]