The ‘codeathon’ brought event together citizens who wanted to collectively address critical challenges. The idea is to use minimal resources to compete with other teams around the world, utilizing publicly available space and data to design innovative “solutions” to a pre-determined series of global “challenges.” In NASA’s case this took part across all continents and even in space on the International Space Station.

We stopped by the San Francisco codeathon taking part at Techshop and spoke to astronaut Ron Garan, and Willow Brugh from Geeks Without Bounds - SF’s location lead, about their involvement with the project. You can check out the 200 + solutions here.

Picture a group of female lone rangers, each silhouetted against the setting sun with broad-rimmed hats tilted sideways to shadow their faces and holsters slung low around curvy waists. Then listen for that sound – you know it – the high-note whistle in American westerns that signals you’re watching a badass and something dangerous is about to happen.

This rather stereotypical representation of a rebel…is not such a terrible way to characterize the empowered and stalwart women founders in Start-Up Chile.

Start-Up Chile, or SUP as the government-backed program is called among fans, invites startup entrepreneurs from all over the world to spend six months in Chile bootstrapping their businesses with $40,000 in equity-free seed capital. In its first 3 rounds (including its pilot), SUP has welcomed almost 300 companies from over 33 countries. Yet only 26 of the 300 companies have female co-founders, and of that number, only 13 are founded solely by women. As the author of this story, I am one of those 13.

Maybe you’re not surprised. Perhaps you’ve already heard statistics like this one: Despite comprising 51% of the population, women make up only 3% of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and hold only 15% of board positions. Or like this one: of 462 venture capital firms in the U.S., only one is led by a woman.

But instead of another article rehashing those grim statistics and hypothesizing the origins, let’s look at the bright side and hear from the actual female founders who are actively working on their businesses, and as a result, helping to change the game for the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Here’s what they had to say about participating in a startup accelerator far away from home.

Do you feel nurtured in the Start-Up Chile program?

“Exceedingly so,” says Canadian Charlotte Thornton (pictured right), who is building the first all-solar-driven refinery through her company Chebel. “I don’t feel any discrimination as a woman. SUP has managed, unwittingly, to write the book on nurturing for an incubator.”

“First, SUP is staffed with many dynamic female administrators. Then, it is run like a kindergarten,” she continues. “Whatever we ask for, they seek to facilitate; they are utterly respectful of our imaginations. Plus, they expect us to ‘pivot,’ unlike other incubators that want all their answers upfront.”

“I think one of the remarkable things about SUP is that entrepreneurs are incredibly generous with their knowledge,” says Carolina Andrade, the bright and bubbly Ecuadorian founder of Antu Design, which sells handwoven hats by Ecuadorian artisans. “It is amazing to be immersed in a world where innovative ideas are constantly revolving and the hugely talented people around me are pursuing their passions and dreams.”

Jennifer Turliuk, who runs Koru, an online marketplace that allows people to learn, share and trade skills, adds, “I love being a part of SUP because it has allowed me to build an international network of entrepreneurs that I can go to for support, collaboration and community.”

But how is it being one of only a handful of female entrepreneurs?

“I feel empowered,” says Shagun Malhotra (pictured right), relaying an oft-quoted sentiment among the women entrepreneurs in SUP. Shagun, who was born in India but now lives in New York City, runs SkyStem, a financial accounting system. “Giving me an opportunity like this validates that I am going on the right path.”

“As we are really only a few women, it’s definitely more challenging for us. We are forced to work hard. But one of the things we learn when we are in SUP,” points out Anne-Sophie Dutat, the French owner of Vulevu, a Latin American Daily Candy, “is that we are onto something quite huge with our businesses, and that we should think bigger and allow ourselves to grow in that direction.”

What do the men around you think?

“I find that guys treat me with respect,” says England’s Sarah Eaglesfield (pictured right) founder of a record label called Suddenvibe that makes Latin American and European sounds. “A few are intimidated at first, but the netglow soon fades.”

Do you ever get lonely?

“I think it’s not about getting lonely,” says Elsa Chang, the Hong Kong-born, Silicon Valley-based sole founder of RideMatch Me, a company that uses mobile technology to enable people to share rides anywhere. “But it is about feeling frustrated and helpless while working alone most of the time.”

Shagun agrees, “Being alone comes with the package of being an entrepreneur. Not only physically, but in your thoughts and decisions on how to make things move forward.”

“When things are not going as well as you plan,” says Elsa, “you tend to question if you are doing the right thing, especially when others don’t believe in you. But remember you have calculated your risks and tradeoffs before jumping onto the entrepreneur pirate ship. So if all else fails, you still gain an excellent learning experience.”

Any replicable coping strategies when you do feel alone?

“I go for a run and watch the Social Network again for inspiration,” says Elsa (pictured right) with a wink.

“All sole founders have a co-founder in their families. SUP substitutes for our families right now. So, when I feel alone, I go have two or three pisco sours with ‘my family’,” jokes Anne-Sophie.

“I write long emails to friends, to strangers, to imaginary friends,” says Sarah. “Sometimes, I’ll even write a real letter, with a pen and paper. It’s more personal than being on a social network. You can really get it all out about how you’re feeling and what’s happening.”

What are the biggest challenges that you think female founders face?

“Not knowing enough about technology to talk the talk,” notes Sheryl Ryan (pictured right), the American founder of Greenopedia, which provides information on sustainability to people who want to make a difference.

“Or fighting the perception that you’re not tech-savvy, even if you are,” she continues. “It’s empowering to see the look on your programmer’s face when he tosses some technical jargon your way… and you toss it right back!”

“I would suggest every woman founder take a one-day beginner class in WordPress, HTML, CSS or SQL, or that you pick up a For Dummies book,” adds Sheryl. “It sounds intimidating, but it’s empowering to understand. Suddenly, you feel the world open up a bit more.”

“Participating in incubator programs away from home is tough on relationships and families,” states Jasmine Aarons, a Stanford University graduate who works in Southern Chile on Voz, which helps Maphuche women weavers make clothes with high-end designs.

“The only reason I was able to fully participate in Start-Up Chile is because I have intentionally chosen to put my work ahead of my personal life for quite a while. Very few women, including myself, want to stay in this position for long, though” she says, expressing a popular viewpoint about the perceived difficulty in achieving work-life balance for women entrepreneurs. “But if more incubators provided support to families, this would encourage more talented women to participate.”

What words of advice do you have for budding and currently bootstrapped female entrepreneurs?

Shagun: “Things don’t have to be perfect before action is taken. Action before clarity. Once one action is taken, the next one becomes easier.”

Sheryl: “I’m a huge fan of Meetup. When I left my very-secure job to start my business, I didn’t have a clue where to begin. So I just started attending meet-ups and asking questions. You’d be surprised how many people there are eager to help you.”

Charlotte: “Check out Astia, a community of experts committed to accelerating the funding and growth of high potential, high-growth, women-led startups. Just to know they are out there is encouraging!”

Carolina: “Research shows that only 9% of people seeking angel funding are female founders and yet the odds of receiving funding are the same irrespective of the gender. We have to start asking.”

Jennifer: “Apply to SUP – even if you are not sure that you can get in. Try taking a few initial steps towards your business idea and then submit an application. As they say, you can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket!”

The next round for SUP is open and closes April 3rd. Take Jennifer’s advice and apply, especially if you are a woman. Let’s finally balance the gender scale in at least one accelerator in the world. Go to www.startupchile.org for more details.

Full List of Start-Up Chile Women-Only Founding Teams (in alphabetical order)

• Jasmine Aarons, USA, Voz; Empowers Mapuche weavers in Southern Chile to make clothes with collaborative design innovation.
• Carolina Andrade, Ecuador, ANTU Design; Sells handwoven straw hats from Ecuador and works with artisans to develop leather and textile products.
• Krista Canellakis & Marisol Garcia, USA & Chile, Crowdplaces; Crowdsources innovation in urban community spaces.
• Elsa Chang, USA RideMatch Me; Uses mobile technology to enable people to share rides anytime, anywhere.
• Anne-Sophie Dutat, France, Vulevu; Offers lifestyle tips and deals on restaurants, romantic weekends, fashion products, etc.
• Sarah Eaglefield, England, Suddenvibe; Introduces European music to Latin America and vice versa through own record label.
• Shagun Malhotra, USA SkyStem; Develops solutions to improve the accounting ecosystem.
• Tara Roberts & Sejal Hathi, USA, girltank; Connects and supports young women social entrepreneurs and innovators.
• Sheryl Ryan, USA, Greenopedia; Provides sustainable information to people who want to make a difference.
• Charlotte M. Thornton, Canada, Chebel Companies; Builds the world´s first all-solar-driven refinery.
• Emily Toop, England, Radical Robot; Designs interactive iPad storybooks to help young children learn to read.
• Jennifer Turliuk, Canada, Koru; Helps people learn, share and trade skills.
• Rebecca West, USA, Por Mano; In stealth mode.

It’s inevitable there will be the next Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Google or Facebook, the question is; where in the world will they come from? As the cost of innovation decreases and governments all over the world invest in startups to try and create the next Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship and startup culture is now a global story where more people than ever are plugged in and switched on.

In association with our sponsors i/o Ventures, Tropo and Endeavor we are launching Startup World - a global competition to find the world’s most innovative startups. We will be holding pitching competitions in 36 cities world wide with the winners of the regional heats flying to Silicon Valley to battle it out in the grand final amongst a panel of expert judges to be crowned the world’s best startup.

Much like competing on American Idol, selling a business idea requires raw talent, mastery of the material, and command performance. So this year we’ve launched Startup World — our global answer to the hit singing competition.

Whilst there’s certainly advantages to building startups in Silicon Valley due to the sheer amount of entrepreneurs, venture capital and access to talent, startups and entrepreneurship are movements happening all over the world.

We have partnered with local accelerators and organizations in each city to help us put on the regional pitch events, for example in Chile, Startup Chile, the US, Startup America, the UK Seedcamp and Startup Britain, Canada Startup Canada and in Rwanda the Digital Opportunity Trust. You can see a full list of partners and advisors here: 

Why are we doing this?

Silicon Valley is the highest producer of technology companies in the world, but as the cost of innovation comes down entrepreneurs all over the planet having the tools they need to get startups off the ground and reaching a global consumer base online. While most media is currently focusing on Silicon Valley, we want to shine a light on entrepreneurs in emerging markets and give their technology a place on the world stage in front of international media.

What are the criteria for entry?

• To enter Startup World, your startup must have been launched within the last 2 years
• If your startup has received external funding, it can only be funding up to $2M USD
• You must have a demonstrable product or service
• You must be prepared to talk about your product and service in public and have it demonstrated and recorded for public broadcast
• Pitch and application documents must be in English or you must provide a translator
• The startup can be across any field; clean tech or consumer tech for example, but must be for profit

The Prizes 

Regional heat winners will receive:

• Subsidized flight to San Francisco and a chance to pitch in front of world renowned investors
• International media coverage

The Startup World champion will receive:

• Crowned as Startup World’s Global Winner
• International media coverage
• A three-month incubation period at i/o Ventures worth $30,000

If you’re in San Francisco tonight  you can come to our launch event where you will hear about the current state of startup culture globally, with a great list of speakers including author Sarah Lacy who wrote a book on global startup culture; Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit from Global Chaos. Sign up here

Coming to a city near you? To apply all you need to do is answer 10 questions about your startup. Applications will open up continent by continent, starting with South America. Check our blog to see when applications are open. Got a question or want to sponsor email info@startupworld.tv

While living in New York’s tech community this past year has been a wild ride, it’s been a ride alongside a welcoming, supportive and extraordinary group of people. We’ve seen pivots, partnerships, massive hiring, acquisitions and rapid rounds of funding. And we’ve seen more success than failures, which has inspired us to keep running.

We welcomed accelerators like the Entrepreneur Roundtable Accelerator, TechStars and DreamIt Ventures, played with new incubation models like Gramercy Labs Collective and Prehype and raised over $100,000 for local hackers through a fashion-infused tech celebration called Raise Cache. These organizations helped bring together an extraordinary group of mentors within NYC, and established a sense of camaraderie and mentorship within the community. If the years prior we’re about gathering materials and putting the pieces together, 2011 was a year to see the New York tech industry all come together.

For an end of the year, dose of nostalgia, we caught up with 13 entrepreneurs, who all launched companies this year and asked them what their most exciting moment was in 2011.

E-Commerce

Goodsie

Given Goodsie‘s long path to launch, CEO Jonathan Marcus, who also founded the all-new Flavors.me, gets nostalgic thinking of how much the company achieved in 2011. For Marcus, Goodsie’s public launch in early May 2011 was the most exciting moment of the year. He started working on Goodsie in early 2009 and just days away from launching in late 2010, he made a very difficult decision to part ways with their technical team because of personal chemistry issues, and re-write the entire code base from scratch in a different programming language.

“A core group of the Flavors team spent the next 5 months moving heaven-and-earth to finally bring Goodsie to life. There were countless times where it seemed as though Goodsie would never launch,” says Marcus. “When we launched in May, a full two years after starting this journey, I was incredibly grateful and proud to have finally achieved and realized a vision that had become a multi-year labor of love.”

Today, Goodsie has 1,000 active, paying sellers, and is growing 20% month-over-month. Over the past 30 days, Goodsie’s top 50 retailers generated half a million dollars in sales. Just this week, Goodsie launched an integration with SoundCloud for sellers to import and sell SoundCloud audio. “Given our traction in music, we expect the SoundCloud integration to be very well received,” says Marcus.

Fab

After an initial pivot or two, Jason Goldberg, the CEO of Fab.com, may have had the best year ever. Since launching in June 2011, it’s on target to hit over $20 million in revenue by the end of the year. Earlier this month, Fab announced $40 million in Series B funding led by well-known investment firm Andreessen Horowitz.

“It has been a thrill to see the Fab concept come together, and frankly the movement behind it,” says Goldberg. ”In February we shut down our former business and we were just 2 guys with a dream. Today we’re 140 people worldwide, we’ve sold 700,000 products, and we’re making 1.5 million members smile each day by providing them with fun, witty and affordable daily design inspirations. It’s just been an incredibly rewarding, humbling ride. And, it’s just the start.”

Social and mobile innovations are breathing new life into the e-commerce industry, making it more about discovery than search. For example, the Fab Live Feed enables users to quickly discover what other people are buying, what’s popular and what’s being most discussed, all in real-time.

Chloe + Isabel

The direct sales industry is in need of a modern day makeover, and chloe + isabel is doing just that with fashion jewelry sales. The impressively backed startup is run by Chantel Waterbury, who spent 14 years in corporate merchandising working with brands like Cartier, Tiffany and Co., and Van Cleef and Arpels.

“Launching Chloe + Isabel was the defining moment of my year — and my life! It has truly been a labor of love,” says Waterbury. “In 2012, I think we will continue to see entrepreneurs look to disrupt high margin businesses. Chloe + Isabel — along with other startups like Warby Parker — has developed the ability to provide consumers with a higher quality product at a much lower price. I am also excited to see how technology continues to define and evolve the future of social selling.”

This fall, Chloe + Isabel raised $8.5 million in a Series A led by General Catalyst Partners. The company recently launched its Social Content Curator on the Merchandiser dashboard, a tool that lets merchandisers update personalized e-boutiques with their daily inspiration, news and jewelry, while engaging their social networks. In 2012, C+I will expand its engineering team to continue evolving.

Memberly

Subscription service startups were hot this year. There’s Birchbox for makeup, Lollihop for health food, Bluum for new moms, Guyhaus and Hoseanna for staples like hosiery and deodorant, BarkBox for dogs, Craft Coffee, Babbaco, Blissmobox, Put This On, Paleo Pax, Little Otsu… the list goes on. In July of this year, the folks at Disrupto, a trendy digital product agency in New York City, including co-founder Jack Cheng, launched Memberly, a platform that helps individuals and small businesses run their own subscription programs.

“Subscriptions really took off this year and it’s exciting to see,” says Cheng. “We used to have a relationship with the people we bought from–they were local storeowners, people you knew. But that loyalty all got lost when commerce moved to big retail chains. Everything was all made in one place and distributed by big companies. Now we’re starting to see a revival of consumers interacting with people they know, people that have an expertise. And that is really exciting. People are curating and selling products with their knowledge and expertise. It’s never been easier making a living doing what you love.”

To celebrate the holidays, Memberly launched a gifting feature, which hides the price and wraps the voucher in a friendly interface. There are currently 500 sellers on the wait list for Memberly; Cheng says they’ll be admitted in waves of 50 at a time, starting in 2012.

Media

Shelby.tv

At this spring’s TechStars’ Demo Day, Shelby.tv CEO Reece Pacheco took the stage to present his company to a room of 750 attendees including hundreds of investors, press and big names in the tech industry. Shelby is wicked awesome platform that helps you discover videos that your friends post on Twitter and Facebook.

“For 3 years, I was constantly panting and trying to catch up. Now, I’ve learned to go faster, while accomplishing a lot. It’s been insane,” says Pacheco. “But at the same time, I’ve learned to slow down and chill out a bit, and I think a lot of that has to do with running the NYC Marathon this year. You can’t just sprint 26 miles. You have to plan how you’re going to get through it. I’ve learned how to delegate more and execute faster. While I can still sprint, I’ve also slowed down my pace to appreciate the moments I have with my team. It’s a tough ride but it’s about striking a balance and learning to enjoy it.”

This year, Shelby released its first iPad and iPhone app, raised $1.5 million and grew from 2 to 9 employees. While Pacheco’s New Years’ Resolution is always to have better posture, he says Shelby will keep pushing the app onto new platforms and continue to release new features to help inspire people through video.

Percolate

Percolate is one of New York’s freshest, new media companies. The news curation startup works with individuals and brands by scraping your RSS and Twitter feeds based on who you follow and who you subscribe to. It then looks at the sites people are linking to and runs it through an algorithmic filter which applies 10 factors such as your personal preferences, how popular it is within your network, how old it is, and then a few ‘secret sauce’ algorithms. Co-founder James Gross tell us about his most exciting moment this year with his co-founder Noah Brier:

“We were passionate about bootstrapping the company for the entire year. I was most grateful and proud when I looked at the books in July and knew we could make payroll for the rest of the year and give our employees healthcare. Noah and I had a moment at that point when we realized we were building a real company. It felt good.”

“To be a great content creator, you have to be a great content consumer,” says Gross. “This year we saw brands struggling to create content even while they were building massive audiences on channels like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. We realized that brands struggle to create content because they don’t consume anything. As individuals, we are constantly consuming and therefore always have something to curate and Tumble, Tweet and Facebook share to our audiences.”

Brier and Gross (pictured right) built Percolate to help brands build an interest graph that would allow them to consume content they were interested and then have a more natural curation process. “It’s all about stock and flow,” says Gross. “Stock brings in audience, flow keeps them coming back.” All of Percolate’s 2011 clients renewed for 2012 and the company is looking to double its client base in Q1 of next year. This December, Percolate raised a $1.5 million seed round.

Onswipe

I first met with Jason L. Baptiste and Andres Barreto, the founders of Onswipe on a snowy day in late January for an interview titled, Forget apps, Onswipe is the future of publishing. The two entrepreneurs were poised for the age of the tablet, both passionate writers who wanted to make their content look beautiful on the iPad. Besides their first TNW interview, Baptiste says their launch event on June 21st, 2011 was the most exciting moment of the year:

“Less than six months before launch, we were a little side project and here we stood with a talented team and product launching with a slew of great partners like Ziff Davis, New York Times, and Sprint. It is still the most exciting and proudest moment of my life.”

This year, Onswipe watched as publishers began to prefer HTML5 apps over native apps on the tablet. Companies like Onswipe, Pressly and individual publishers like the Financial Times have shown what is possible in this realm. “If the tablet is the TV of this generation, building for the touch web is the way to get a channel on it,” says Baptiste. Onswipe will be releasing a new product the first week of January, stay tuned.

Education

Skillshare

Skillshare is a community marketplace that enables users to learn anything from anyone, thereby democratizing learning. “I’m extremely proud of the team we’ve built at Skillshare,” says CEO Michael Karnjanaprakorn. “One of my goals was to build a company that would attract the most talented people across all industries to make our world a sustainably, better place. I believe that when you have the world’s most talented people working together to disrupt an industry – true innovation can happen. I hope that Skillshare inspires other entrepreneurs and startups to do the same.”

“This year, we saw the rise of collaborative consumption and the move from hyper-consumption to hyper-sharing. People are sharing (skills), swapping, bartering, and renting access to products as opposed to owning physical things. Companies like Kickstarter (unleashing creativity in the world), Airbnb (sharing space), and TaskRabbit (time) are paving the way for this new world,” says Karnjanaprakorn. “If you told me two years ago that I would be letting complete strangers into my home, I would have laughed. Or, if you told me I could learn something valuable from someone I pass on the street. But, what you see today is a unique trust between complete strangers that didn’t exist before. I think that’s the most exciting thing about collaborative consumption – believing that people are inherently good.”

This past year, Skillshare racked up 15,000 hours of teaching on its platform. Today, the number of students in the Skillshare community equals the size of New York University. In addition to some exciting announcements next year, Karnjanaprakorn will be speaking about Skillshare at TED 2012, something he’s been dreaming about since watching Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk , in which he encouraged everyone to start a learning revolution.

Codecademy

We first wrote about Codecademy in October, while in the midst of a fascinating wave of disruption in online education. The Y-Combinator bred, New York City based company teaches people to code through free interactive instruction online. Of the company’s August launch, co-founder Zachary Sims says, “Our launch was incredibly exhilarating and super exciting. I’m constantly amazed by the number of people who have been through our lessons and by the ability of the web to spread ideas and education.”

“I think education is finally having its moment,” continues Sims, “It’s been awesome to see other cool startups like Tutorspree launch, and nonprofits/institutions like MIT and Stanford trying their hand with online courses and certificate programs as well.”

In 2012, Sims plans to continue building his product, and his team. He’s released a few new features just before the holidays including Labs, a web-based code editor and will have new courses coming in 2012.

Also…

Fitocracy

We first wrote about Fitocracy in our recent report on The Future of Fitness, in which we interviewed founders Brian Wang and Richard Talens, who used to be “really out of shape, video game addicts”. Talens was “super fat” and Wang was “super skinny”. While in college, they realized they had to make a lifestyle change and thus became “addicted to fitness”. Inspired by their experience, the two built a platform that tracks workouts and turns personal fitness into a social game. Since then the company has moved west to take part in Dave McClure’s 500 Startups accelerator.

Wang says, “I’ll never forget the morning I woke up to find that XKCD drew a comic about us. Aside from the fact that we were being featured on a comic I’d been reading for a long time, my inbox was filled to the brim with new user notifications and would continue to get flooded throughout the week.”

This past year, Wang has noticed a lot of myth debunking and overturning of preconceived notions around fitness: “For the longest while, the industry has been plagued by misinformation and anecdotal nonsense, and while they continue to persist, I think people are starting to take a much more empirical, science-based approach to their health and fitness.” Fitocracy won’t release any new numbers but we know that even before the boys opened up in beta, they had close to 100,000 members. And this just in: Fitocracy has passed 1,000,000 logged workouts on its platform.

Nestio

No startup could be more essential to a city than Nestio is to New Yorkers as apartment hunting here is one of the most grueling life experiences. The three founders, CEO Caren Maio, CCO Matthew Raoul and CTO Michael O’Toole launched a social apartment hunting platform in April of this year to disrupt the online real estate industry.

“The moment we first came across people we didn’t know using our product was one of the most exciting of the year,” says Maio. “We were working on the beta version of the site and pushing updates quietly – just alerting our fellow TechStars companies and mentors to solicit feedback. All of a sudden, we started to see real renters on the site, using our service to help with their apartment hunt. Talking to our earliest users and receiving validation that we were on the right track and solving a pain point for people was beyond exciting.”

Maio says that the real estate industry as a whole is recognizing the increased importance of a strong mobile strategy. “The accuracy and timeliness of data has the potential to be exponentially improved and everyone is really excited about that – both real estate professionals and consumers,” she says. “Everyone’s testing the waters, and I think we’ll see the home hunting process come a long way, with more and more people embracing mobile.” [Check out Nestio's mobile app here.]

Nestio recently launched nationwide and is planning to unveil some significant developments in 2012 on both the mobile front as well as improvements around listing discovery. Stay tuned!

Now, once you’ve got your apartment sorted, where will you work?

Coworking Campuses

2011 was an exciting, if not exhausting year for the New York City startup scene with hundreds of companies launching out of coffee shops and studio apartments. And we can thank coworking spaces like WeWork Labs, General Assembly, Projective Space and Dogpatch, who sprung up to house them all.

Coworking spaces operate like startup campuses, providing eager minds with outlets and WiFi, as well as access to angel investors and VCs, serial entrepreneurs who act like mentors, and a fertile breeding ground for collaboration between entrepreneurs, designers and developers. Let’s take a look at two of the top coworking companies that launched this year.

General Assembly

General Assembly is New York City’s most impressive coworking space, located just around the corner from a number of notable investors at 902 Broadway in the Flatiron. The 20,000-sq ft campus, which opened in January 2011, was immediately booked to its 100-seat capacity. It now has 350 members, representing 100+ early-stage startups, selected through an application and interview process. ”There were so many exciting and inspiring moments this past year — too many to count,” says GA co-founder Matthew Brimer. “Though if I had to choose, it’s probably when we graduated the first class of students from our 10-week Front-End Web Development course. It was very inspiring to know that we helped empower a group of people with a new set of skills that they’ll be able to immediately put to use in their careers.”

“One of the biggest ideas I’ve seen in education this year is the increasing gap between where a collegiate liberal arts education leaves off and where the 21st century begins. Traditional academic institutions can provide a solid intellectual and social foundation, but typically don’t touch all the requisite skills to succeed in the new economy. I’ve encountered all sorts of amazing education startups tackling this issue in interesting ways, and it’s fascinating to watch entrepreneurship start to become a powerful force in a meaningful arena like education, an industry that hasn’t changed much in centuries yet is now increasingly in need of overhaul.”

-Matthew Brimer, Co-Founder of General Assembly

General Assembly now has 3,000 attendees each month for classes, events, and other programs and is producing 2-4 classes and workshops on technology, design, and entrepreneurship every day. GA has built 5 long-form courses, taught by top practitioners, offering robust skills in front-end web development, Ruby on Rails, user experience design, as well as business development and sales. In addition, GA launched its first two hybrid (online+offline) courses: “Forming Your Startup” and “Introduction to Web APIs” (with more on the way). And perhaps its biggest news of the year? General Assembly will cross the pond in 2012 to open up its first London campus.

WeWork Labs

WeWork Labs is a co-working hybrid founded in April 2011 by Adam Neumann (Egg-Baby), Jesse Middleton (Guy Haus), and Matt Shampine (Onepager), located in the heart of Soho at 154 Grand Street. Since April, 77 entrepreneurs that comprise over 40 companies have called or currently call WeWork Labs home, including startups such as Consmr, CityPockets, Fitocracy, Handshake and Turf. And WeWork Labs has 300 more entrepreneurs on the wait list.

“Teaching others was a big trend this year,” says Shampine. “We’ve hosted a number of Skillshare classes in WeWork Labs and quite a lot of my friends took the time to put together an agenda to teach a class. The trend isn’t just limited to Skillshare classes. I remember a recent town hall meeting at WeWork Labs where I loved seeing just how adamant the group was on setting up classes to teach each other.”

Since April, over $3 million dollars has been raised by WeWork Labs startups and with more to be announced in the near future. Startups in WeWork Labs have made their way to great accelerator programs such as AngelPad, 500 Startups, and TechStars. Just this month, the team announced the expansion of WeWork Labs, so in addition to its offices in Midtown, Soho and Meatpacking, WeWork will occupy 75,000 square feet, offering up 700 desks in Tribeca at 175 Varick Street starting in February 2012.

There were dozens of other companies that launched this year that we’d like to mention like SideTour, a peer-to-peer marketplace of marketable serendipity; Sonar, the hyperlocal, networking app of the year; Piictu, which bills its photo sharing app as a new kind of visual network; Coursekit, a social network for education; Quickish, Dan Shanoff’s sports site; Hatch, a new iOS app for making plans with friends; Uncram, a social media extension and content platform; TheHappyCloud, a cloud gaming startup; Dispatch, a service for cloud file sharing, movement, and management; social network Subjot, Everything Butt Art, a children’s iPad app; online education startupVeri; and Timehop, the ultimate daily email for life loggers.

Did we miss you? Let us know and we’ll be sure to keep up with you in 2012.

Technology, especially in New York, is more of a meta-industry and than it is an industry. Startups are building and leveraging technology to transform all manner of existing industries, from music to art to journalism to fashion to advertising to retail. There’s so much opportunity ahead — we should always strive to broaden our horizons and push ourselves as entrepreneurs to explore new frontiers.

-Matthew Brimer, Co-Founder of General Assembly

And what about companies that turned 1 year old in 2011? Check out: Lessons from 12 New York Entrepreneurs After a Year in the Biz.

Image: Songquan Deng via Shutterstock

One of the most brilliant minds in consumer internet today is Bing Gordon, partner at VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He joined the firm in 2008, and watches over the sFund, which is dedicated to all things social.

Gordon currently serves on the board for Zynga and Klout, and draws from many years of experience as an executive at Electronic Arts (EA). He was the driving force behind the branding of EA Sports, which is arguably the company’s best known brand.

In the video below, Bing Gordon discusses his thoughts on how to be a CEO in the era of the “consumer internet”, which is a completely different era than the first big Dot Com boom. Everything is social these days by default, and Bing Gordon is a master in the field. This is a keynote address from the 2011 Endeavor Entrepreneur Summit.

Listen and learn.

Over $15,000 dollars worth of prizes were given out to startups created at the 24-hour hackathon Angelhack this weekend. The hackathon was organized by Greg Gopman who arrived in Silicon Valley just four months ago from Miami. Gopman had the idea for a new kind of  hackathon where instead of being lumped in an unknown team, hackers were networked and ‘speed dated’ for the first few hours of the event.

Adobe sponsored the event by giving hackers access to their office space in SOMA. Over 300 people took part in the event, hacking together over 30 startups in teams from two to eight people and yours truly judged and moderated the final pitches where entrepreneurs had two minutes to pitch and one minute’s feedback from judges.

Below are some of the startups that emerged from Angelhack 2011.

GoonBuggy – your liver’s best friend. An app that helps keep track of alcohol consumption.

D2020 – an initiative to help people learn to make games, through games.

SwingDaddy – an app giving you professional golfing advice through video

In a 2009 talk, here’s what he has to say about what it’s really like to start a tech company. Watch the whole thing, especially for the part about his conversation with Michael Jackson on a specific moment in the movie “The Wiz”.

Horowitz also discusses what it was like during the dot-com bubble and eventual burst, blaming it on technology not being quite there yet to support all of the great ieas.

It’s a fascinating must-watch for entrepreneurs at any stage of their career.

With roughly one-third the budget of MIT, the University of Utah was named the number 1 school in the U.S. for creating startup companies. It’s the second year in a row that the University claimed the top spot.

When thinking about startups and technology, MIT and Harvard immediately come to mind, but The University of Utah spun out 18 startups out of its program. The rankings are published yearly by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM).

According to the University of Utah, the startups spawn off from the university have created 15,767 jobs, $755 million in personal revenue, and $76.6 million in tax revenue for the state of Utah.

The survey covers the fiscal year of 2010, and other top schools included Brigham Young University, Columbia, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Purdue, Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Michigan. The top schools are ranked based on the number of companies that are started due to research and work done at its school.

Here’s what A. Lorris Betz, interim President of the University of Utah had to say about the accomplishment:

This achievement is again a testament not only to our world-class researchers and their innovative discoveries, but also to the university’s unique ability to deliver that life-changing technology to the people who need it most. In addition, the companies we produce give our community a much-needed economic boost, create jobs and grow Utah’s reputation as an innovations hub in the nation and world.

I certainly didn’t know that Utah was such a tech hub. Jack Brittain, VP for Technology Venture Development for the school, attributes the startup success to the school’s culture and strong sense of community:

We have a tremendous culture of innovation that makes Utah one of the friendliest places for inventors and entrepreneurs, and everyone in the state benefits from the resulting economic growth. We are also fortunate to have state and university programs that support technology development so we can create companies in Utah.

The University of Utah spent $450 million on research in 2010, while the number two University when it comes to startup creation, MIT, spent $1.4 billion on research and development.

Here are some more details that may surprise you about The University of Utah when it comes to startups and technology:

• The University of Utah reported 287 active technology licenses in 2010. A technology license is required each time a company or individual wants to use a university technology. The national average was 210 for all institutions.
• The University of Utah collected 208 invention disclosures in 2010. An invention disclosure occurs when a faculty member reports an invention to the university. The national average was 113.
• The University of Utah secured 41 U.S. patents in 2010. The national average was 24.

200 Amazon fulfillment centers are supported by Amazon’s own cloud storage services. Its engineers are focused on supporting big issues and problems, and the Amazon S3 service has benefited from this internal usage.

The heavy usage comes from companies like SmugMug, Dropbox, Sonian, and even parts of NASA.

One of the larger companies using Amazon AWS services is Yelp, which stores 18 million customer reviews. Yelp uses AWS to figure out how to do auto-corrections on the fly for users searching for restaurants or establishments. All of Yelp’s data is stored on S3.

Amazon says that a process like this can be spun up and down for only $1,300 an hour for a company like Yelp, said S3 Storage General Manager Alyssa Henry at the Web 2.0 conference today. This is an amazing cost savings for a big data company.

In January of this year, the company announced that it was storing 262 billion objects on its S3 service. With today’s announcement of 566 billion objects stored, S3 could potentially grow 3 times over by the end of this year, from what it announced in January.

Companies can now focus on bigger and more data intensive problems, without worrying about server and data storage costs thanks to Amazon’s S3 service. More and more, Amazon is growing outside of the E-Commerce beginnings we all know them from.

Photos, Photos, Photos. Now that photography is all digital, we’ve got hundreds of them, sometimes thousands of them. With the iPhone, we’re taking pictures of meals, our cats and dogs, our feet, a funny sign, and pretty much anything else you can think of.

Taking photos has never been easier. Furthermore, photo sharing has never been easier thanks to services like Facebook, Google, Flickr, Instagram, and the list goes on and on.

Everyone is a photographer now, which is fantastic because moments that have never been captured before, are.

But what are we going to do with all of these photos? It’s an area ripe for innovation where I’m personally seeing little or none.

Photo Hosting

Photo hosting is somewhat easy for startups to get into, since cloud storage has become so cheap on services like Amazon EC2. Facebook has developed amazing technology to host photos for over 800 million users, with next to zero downtime. Google, with its infinite server farms, can host photos for every person in the world. Apple has gotten into the game as well with iCloud, sending photos that you take from your iPhone or iPad and sending it to the sky forevermore. Shoot, even Twitter will host your photos now. These services let you host them there and maybe let you categorize them into albums, but that’s about it.

As far as I’m concerned, the best photo feature I’ve seen in years comes from photo host Snapjoy. They let you see a random photo, and give you simple shuffle button.

But so what? You’re storing our photos. That’s just not enough anymore. What’s next?

Photo Sharing

Photo sharing is something that most of us do with the really great photos that we’re proud of. Be it an artistic shot, or a photo of a street sign that says something ridiculous, we’re posting them on the internet for the world to see. The thing with photo sharing though, is that they’re sent into a stream of a zillion other posts.

When I post a photo on Twitter or even Google+, perhaps 50 of my 15,000+ followers are paying attention at any given second.

Twitter now shares the photos that you’ve posted recently in a place that gets the least amount of traffic, your profile. How much time do you spend on someones profile on Twitter? Not a lot. So that’s just not going to cut it. Google+ has photo albums using its Picasa platform, but it still feels disconnected from the overall experience.

Facebook lets you tag people in photos, which is very social, and even has facial recognition software behind it now. This still feels like a utility sharing overall, but maybe Timeline will bring older photos back to life.

Flickr was the absolute best place to share photos, because the community that used Flickr really used Flickr. We used to spend hours pouring through photos, commenting on them, and marking favorites. And then Yahoo! bought them, and the innovation, heart, and soul died.

Instagram has picked up the slack for Flickr by letting you share a photo, slap a filter on it, and post it to a…stream. Mind you, Instagram has done a wonderful job with its “Popular” feature, which lets you see the photos that have been liked the most on the platform. A real community is building there, and since it’s completely mobile, people are interacting there a lot. It still needs work though.

What’s next for photo sharing?

Photo Editing

Photoshop is great, but requires a lot of attention to detail that most normal folks just don’t have. Editing a single photo requires time and passion. A lot of the photos are tossing into a stream don’t feel like there’s enough passion behind them to spend a half hour making them pretty using Photoshop. It’s also expensive software.

I’m excited that Google purchased Picnik, because it’s a nice editing tool that should evolve under Google’s wing, but as we know with Google, products sometimes get purchased and die. I’d hate to see that happen to a product like Picnik.

You could count Instagram as a photo editor, because of its filters and effects, but it’s a bit of a stretch.

Photo editing just isn’t something that has been innovated on enough to make the average Joe and Jill want to do it. But why not? Hosting is bountiful, and sharing is simple!

Photo cards and postcards

Now we’re getting somewhere. We have a ton of photos, putting them on postcards or greeting cards is a perfect way to bring moments to life in a new and physical way.

Apple Card launched, Postagram is doing well, so that’s a space I’d like to see evolve as well. Surely cards and postcards aren’t the only ways to bring a photo to life in a unique way. Digital prints are just boring, so I won’t even spend time on them.

My point is, photos have been around for a long time. It used to be really expensive and time-consuming to get photos taken and developed. You don’t have to do those things anymore, so we’re taking and taking photos, storing them all over the world, and we’re doing nothing with them other than share them briefly, get a comment or ten, and forget about them. I’m seeing some interesting things starting to happen with Instagram’s API, which is a step in the right direction.

Startups, it’s time to start innovating in photography. Fast. It’s a golden opportunity to give us something to do with amazing moments taken and shared in real-time. It’s the day after we take the photos though that the real innovation can begin. Even further innovation can take place on photos we took years ago. Yes, years. Remember those?

If you’ve seen great apps and companies doing new and cool things with Photos, drop them in the comments!