“Self-Employment Assistance”: How We’re Helping Americans Help Themselves

ABOUT four years ago Michael Fox and two former law-school friends sniffed around for an unfilled market niche. Shoes of Prey was the result. Old-fashioned shoemakers in shops are disappearing in Australia. Internet shoesellers are replacing them. Mr Fox’s firm goes one step further: it allows customers to design and order their own bespoke shoes online.

More American homeowners will be able to use their properties as cash machines again after real estate equity jumped last year by the most in 65 years. Property owners recaptured US$1.6 trillion as home values climbed to the highest levels since 2007. The amount by which the value of the houses exceeds their underlying mortgages rose to US$8.2 trillion last year, a gain of 25%, according to Federal Reserve data.

Skytree, a 20-employee big data startup in San Jose, has quietly amassed the biggest, brightest minds in the computer science "machine learning" industry.

Sometimes when you meet people, you know they're going to become something great. That's how it feels when you meet Ruzwana Bashir, an enthusiastic, bright-eyed, Londoner who's working on a startup, Peek.

In the tech world's startup scene, where investors gamble millions on promising ideas, accelerator programs operate as kingmakers. Get into a top one and you'll have access to seed funding, mentors and the industry's leading venture capitalists.

We expected to see a series of weak economic reports last week - falling house prices, weak auto sales, lower ISM manufacturing index, and a weak labor report - and unfortunately that is exactly what happened.The employment situation report was very disappointing. There were few jobs created (only 54,000 total and 83,000 private sector), and the unemployment rate increased from 9.0% to 9.1%, even though the participation rate was unchanged at 64.2%.