We certainly couldn’t spend a month focusing on online education and not include Lynda.com. The 17-year-old company grabbed the Valley’s attention when it raised a whopping $103 million series A deal lead by Accel Partners in January– a hefty series A by any standards and the most ever raised in a single round by an edtech company, according to...

I don’t think there’s anything more interesting than an entire PandoList dedicated to companies making cool robots. Based on the interviews we did this week, I’d say we’re making huge strides towards a world where we’re interacting with robots in our day to day activities. We interviewed Keller Rinaudo from Romotive, Charles Grinnell from Harvest Automation, Garratt Gallagher of Bilibot, Paul…

When you hear the term “Mad Scientist,” what do you think? Personally, I think of “Pinky and the Brain,” the genetically enhanced laboratory mice who are constantly scheming about the best way to take over the world. This week we had the chance to interview five mad scientists. Chances are they’re each trying to take over the world in their own…

Australia is over 9,000 miles from the United States, and yet it still has a strong entrepreneurial presence here in Silicon Valley. In fact, after you take a look at our interviews, you’ll see that Australian innovation is just beginning. We had the chance to interview CEO and co-founder of software development company Atlassian Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEO and co-founder of Halfbrick…

You often hear about great CEO’s and their successful companies, but not all CEOs were nearly as impressive when they first began their careers. In fact, like most things, it takes a lot of experience, work, coaching, mentoring, and guidance before anyone gets good. A CEO coach may not be a profession, but, this week we featured five amazing entrepreneurs…

Many Silicon Valley startups today are all about user acquisition and scale. Business model-shmisiness shmodel. But for every Twitter or Facebook that’s made it, there are plenty of other quiet revenue-generating machines dotting the landscape of Silicon Valley. Some are even profitable, or at least, have the ability to be profitable. They’re not highly publicized, so don’t be surprised if…

Last week we had the chance to go beyond the limits of Silicon Valley, off the Bay Area grid, and into Chico, California. Yep, there’s tech happening in Chico, a lot of it, and it’s innovative, interesting, and useful. The Sierra Nevada Innovation Challenge was last Thursday, and we got to pick out companies that would probably never get a…

It’s a little bit funny that this list is on extremely stylish and trendy people in the tech world because a) that seems a little bit like an oxymoron and b) I’m probably one of the least trendy people on staff. Regardless, we put together quite the impressive list, and I also tried to get as much fashion advice as…

This week we checked out the LAUNCH Education and Kids conference, where we had the chance to listen to lots of amazing companies pitch ideas that showcase the way they’re using technology to improve education. You can imagine how difficult it was to pick only five to profile. Nonetheless five were picked. You may have heard of Launchpad Toys, the…

It’s that time of the week, and for your viewing pleasure we’ve profiled some serious geniuses. Today’s list is on teenage entrepreneurs, and these kids are so amazingly smart that it gave me a little bit of an inferiority complex. Seriously. It’s one thing to hear about the engineers and founders behind successful companies, it’s another thing entirely to hear…

We’re back with our traditional PandoList this week, profiling the earliest engineer hires at some of the most successful companies in the country. Too often, we hear about these engineers’ products and very rarely do we hear about what it was like when these companies first began. Who were the original hires, and what the heck was it like when…

We had the chance to attend Stanford’s BASES Product Showcase this week and check out all the amazing products. For those of you who are not familiar with the Business Association for Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Students, it is one of the largest student entrepreneurship groups in the world. And BASES competition did not disappoint. We saw projects ranging from automated venipuncture…

It’s Maker Faire time, and we had the chance to get the early bird special. We went to check out the grounds a few days early while everyone was setting up and saw some amazing projects. In fact, I’m going to need to go back and see what it looks like completely set up, just because Thursday was…

What’s better than a really funny YouTube video? Pretty much nothing. (That’s a screenshot of “David After Dentist” to the left, one of the funniest there is.) But have you ever wondered what goes into making a video go viral? Well, we wanted to know, so we interviewed five of the best producers of viral videos from the…

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of MIT? I took a poll and got “techy,” “nerd,” “pocket protector,” “book worm,” and “indoor nerd.” Well, based on our list of MIT graduates, the responses should have been more along the lines of “roboticist,” “inventor,” “venture capitalist,” “computer scientist,” and “geolocation expert.” We spoke with Brad…

We’re back with another balls-to-the wall edition of the PandoList, and this time we spoke to some politically-minded techies, aka “Webizens.” Where political change used to be brought about through sheer force of will and stodgy old men wearing wigs, the new landscape is as much about properly utilizing the Web, as it is about lobbying Washington. We spoke with…