The 2013 edition of our list shows many things, but perhaps the most important is which cities have momentum in the job creation sweepstakes. Right now the biggest winners are the metro areas that are adding higher-wage jobs thanks to America’s two big boom sectors: technology and energy.

Our rankings are based on short, medium and long-term employment performance, and take into account both growth and momentum — whether growth is slowing or accelerating. (For a detailed description of our methodology, click here.) Consequently, areas that have made the strongest recoveries from deep setbacks often do well. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of the San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City metropolitan division, our top-ranked large metro area (urban regions with more than 450,000 jobs). Over the last year, employment in the San Francisco area expanded a remarkable 4.1%, and is up 3.3% since 2008.

Some advice is good enough to repeat and repeat and repeat. Marti Nyman is managing director of Altavail Partners, LLC, an innovation, strategy and business acceleration consultancy. He also writes at Think. Act. Grow. He recently spoke at a meet up of Healthcare.mn to share advice about building a new company. The advice is not new but it’s easy to forget when you are focused on tactics and details of your unique company. These are my favorites from his list. Visit his blog to read all 10.

1. Talk more, share more – One of the challenges I see in the entrepreneurial community in healthcare is there’s a lack of robust conversations going on between the startups and the rest of the industry (including doctors, insurers, other startups). As a result, we see a TON of early stage healthcare startups who don’t appear to have a full understanding of the industry they’re seeking to win in. Talk. Reach out. Converse. Make sure you’re connecting to a LOT of people in the industry.

The three laws of getting a meeting with a VC: 1) If you don’t know somebody who can provide a referral, don’t even try. 2) Start about four months in advance. 3) Once the meeting is on the books, assume that it will be rescheduled at least twice, and probably again on the day of the meeting.

Venture capital partners, in short, are busy people. Every entrepreneur with a business plan wants to meet with them—and that’s to say nothing of all the meetings they have to attend at their existing portfolio companies. So their calendars are always full, and always shifting.

The mission of the Economic Development Administration (EDA) is to lead the federal economic development agenda by promoting innovation and competitiveness, preparing American regions for growth and success in the worldwide economy. The agency has a competitive grant process and has established the following investment priorities as criteria: collaborative regional innovation, public/private partnerships, national strategic priorities, global competitiveness, environmentally sustainable development, and economically distressed and underserved communities.

The White House Champions of Change program highlights the stories of people across the country who are strengthening their communities and moving America forward.

In just a few weeks, the White House Office of Public Engagement will host a Champions of Change event focused on immigrant innovators and entrepreneurs – the best and brightest from around the world who are helping create American jobs, grow our economy, and make our nation more competitive.

At first glance you might not think there is much in common between the film industry and tech startups. I’m here to tell you differently. Both industries have their own set of challenges, whether you’re starting out, or refining your craft/company down the line. I’m not here to tell you that one is tougher than the other, but rather that startups can learn from the parallels between them. Each member must know their ‘craft’ In the film industry you have to know your craft. Whether you’re a scriptwriter, cinematographer, director or simply a gaffer or runner, you have a set of skills that are integral to the quality of the finished product – the commercial, film, music video or television show.

Having a reputation as an innovator is the ‘holy grail’ in business today. Leaders and companies want to be seen as innovative, and be tied to the many associations that come with it: creative, marketing leading, cutting edge. Leading business publications including Forbes, Fortune and Fast Company celebrate and publish an annual list of companies they consider innovative.But what is it to be innovative, and how do leaders foster it within their company culture?

In sports, mental toughness is defined as the ability to focus on and execute solutions, especially in the face of adversity. If anyone in business ever needed mental toughness, it’s an entrepreneur. Investors tell me that startup success is all about execution, all while facing determined competitors and overcoming customers’ resistance to change.

Dr. Jason Selk, in his book “Executive Toughness,” talks about mental toughness with analogies between sports and business, but he never takes it all the way to entrepreneurs, where I believe it can have the most impact. So here is my interpretation of the fundamentals he outlines, adapted to the language of a startup:

At a computer in her office at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, epidemiologist Caroline Buckee points to a dot on a map of Kenya’s western highlands, representing one of the nation’s thousands of cell-phone towers. In the fight against malaria, Buckee explains, the data transmitted from this tower near the town of Kericho has been epidemiological gold.

When she and her colleagues studied the data, she found that people making calls or sending text messages originating at the Kericho tower were making 16 times more trips away from the area than the regional average. What’s more, they were three times more likely to visit a region northeast of Lake Victoria that records from the health ministry identified as a malaria hot spot. The tower’s signal radius thus covered a significant waypoint for transmission of malaria, which can jump from human to human via mosquitoes. Satellite images revealed the likely culprit: a busy tea plantation that was probably full of migrant workers. The implication was clear, Buckee says. “There will be a ton of infected (people) there.”

Struggling entrepreneurs around the world are in deep envy of Nick D’Aloisio’s business acumen. Last month, the 17-year-old sold Summly, his news-aggregation app, to Yahoo for a reported $30 million! If and when D’Aloisio starts another company, it will certainly be, to put it mildly, well-funded.

Of course, most entrepreneurs do not have access to that kind of cash. The average business takes years to break even, let alone post a profit. Two-time entrepreneur Jordan Eisenberg, founder of UrgentRX warns that, “Few things in a start up are more important than carefully managing cash. At the beginning, before you have investors, it is not unusual for you (and possibly employees) to forego salary for extended periods of time. Do whatever it takes to build your product and get it to market.”

A digital map of Connecticut startups and service providers is now available online.

CT Next, a statewide network established to support the state’s Innovation Ecosystem, launched the tool May 2 to highlight the state’s startup companies, investors and network of mentors.

The Innovation Ecosystem, launched in 2012, is a public-private partnership to help create and accelerate the growth of new businesses and industries in Connecticut.

This week President Obama nominated billionaire hotel magnate Penny Pritzker (pictured, right) to be the next Commerce Secretary.  He als0 nominated longtime Obama confidant Michael Froman (left) as U.S. Trade Representative.

Given these two nominations, some observers are suggesting that the President’s proposal to reorganize several government agencies under one umbrella is just not going to happen.  In January 2012 President Obama had announced plans to consolidate  the Commerce Department, U.S. Trade Representative, the Export Import Bank and the Small Business Administration, among others.  Then during the 2012 presidential election a variation of this proposal was floated that suggested creating a new Secretary of Business.

Is there a shortage of VC and angel funding in Africa? Pose the question to entrepreneurs and the answer is bound to be yes. Omidyar’s latest report on African entrepreneurship found that 71% of respondents surveyed in South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania believe that there is a shortage of equity capital to start new firms. African financiers disagree, simply saying that many projects are not fundable. Whatever the case may be, the International Finance Corporation estimates that up to 84% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Africa are either un-served or underserved, representing a value gap in credit financing of US$140-billion to US$170-billion. So, what’s a startup to do?

As Millennials, America’s largest generation, enter their thirties in ever greater numbers, their beliefs about how and where to raise a family will have as much impact on the nation’s housing market. This follows as their media and political preferences have helped shape how we entertain ourselves and who is the president of the United States.   A 2012 survey indicated that seventy percent of Millennials would prefer to own a home in the suburbs if they can “afford it and maintain their lifestyle.” Now a new survey of 1000 18-35 year olds conducted for Better Homes and Garden Real Estate (BHGRE) by Wakefield Research provides a much more detailed picture of the type of home Millennials believe best fits their needs and desires.  

Citi and the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University (IVMF) today announced the launch of the Citi Salutes: Realizing Your Dream Business Competition, a call for veterans who are established or aspiring entrepreneurs to submit formal small business plans in hopes of receiving a share of $130,000 in available seed funding. The announcement was made during the Chicago offering of the IVMF's Veteran Women Igniting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship (V-WISE) program, a three-day conference and collaborative partnership between the IVMF and U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) that is anchoring IVMF Women Veterans Week Chicago. Citi is a co-sponsor of V-WISE Chicago.

"In the coming years, an estimated one million service members will leave the military and most will look to transition to the civilian workplace, including nearly 20 percent who will start their own business," said Jerome Byers, Head of Citi Small Business, who officially launched the program at today's conference. "Citi is pleased to support a program that encourages entrepreneurship as a pathway to post-service success for our nation's troops."

Internet giant Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) last week announced that it was buying a stake in peer-to-peer financing platform Lending Club.

The transaction, which effectively values Lending Club at around $1.55 billion, validates much of the thinking around crowdfunding.

The central premise of crowdfunding is that a large group of people, with access to transparent information and the ability to communicate in real time, will make efficient decisions with their own money. It was for this reason that Congress amended the Securities Act of 1933 in the 2012 JOBS Act to open the doors to crowdfunding in the U.S.

Having read through the hundreds of applications for YC's Work At A Startup event, I have a few tips for programmers who are applying to work at a startup. Here they are:

Keep it short. At the early stage, your resume is probably being read by someone who doesn't read resumes as their full time job. Help them save time by limiting what you write down.

Traveling can be risky business. The sights and sounds of a new or foreign city can be as distracting as they can be exciting.

It’s easy to get caught up in the moment and forget the risks and dangers that come with being an outsider in an unfamiliar place. Leaving a familiar environment for the unfamiliar is when travelers need to be the most vigilant in terms of keeping themselves and their possessions safe.

Selling technology to schools is still a formidable task, but it’s a far less expensive and extended process than it used to be.

And because of this friendlier climate, we’re seeing the second wave of education technology tools and a surge in interest from businesspeople and entrepreneurs. But the education field only received 1 percent of venture capital funding between 1995 and 2011 — and educational startups still face a critical shortage of resources.

IN AN effort to grow the moribund start-up and small business sector in South Africa, the first operational venture capital fund incorporated under section 12J of the Income Tax Act begins to raise capital on Monday.

Venture capital funds have grown to become a successful multimillion-pound industry in the UK as high-income earners look to reduce their tax bills and a similar result is expected in South Africa. South Africa lost 440,000 small businesses in the five years to 2012, with start-up activity hitting a record low despite government ambitions to create millions of jobs.