Tomas Tungaz has nine books every entrepreneur needs to read… I'd add three more: Brad Feld, Venture Deals–explains all you need to now about raising money legally, and not getting screwed by investors Matt Blumberg, Startup CEO–a field guide to scaling up your business, and avoiding failure Neil Schaffer, Maximizing Your Social–no business can survive…

According to Fortune, Instacart, a San Francisco-based same-day grocery delivery startup, is raising a new round of funding that could value the company at upwards of $400 million, according to TechCrunch. The company previously raised around $11 million, from firms like Sequoia Capital, Canaan Partners, Khosla Ventures and SV Angel. The round's lead may be  "no-VC…

According to bizjournal, Robert DeDomenico, of Pittsgrove, New Jersey, created the idea of a physical, underground network capable of transporting physical objects on demand to and from any other place. He calls it a "physical Internet for the delivery and movement of parcels," which could drastically save energy. "We've become so used to using our cars…

Timothy Ferriss (Photo credit: Wikipedia) According to Venture Beat, Shyp has raised $1 million of a $2.1  million round to make shipping easier. You take a photo of whatever it is you want to “Shyp Hero” will come pick up your unpackaged items; package it off-site; and mail it for you. You only pay the…

Maxwell Mellow (Photo credit: dannyman) According to Ben Fidler of Xconomy, It’s the time of year that makes employees’ skin crawl—the moment you know you have to re-enroll for health insurance. A clunky, time-consuming, headache-inducing search between various plans ensues. Maxwell Health is trying to make it easier—and reward you for staying healthy to boot.…

Stich Labs Update–doing well! Stich Labs, a San Francisco-based maker of a business and order management suite for product-based businesses, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding. Costanoa Ventures led the round, and was joined by Greg Waldorf and return backer True Ventures. www.stitchlabs.com

According to Business Insider, a startup named Clutter just officially launched in Los Angeles to make the storage process as seamless as possible.  In fact, it pegs itself as the Uber for self-storage. (Uber being the trendy car service app that's competing with on-street taxis in many cities now.) Here's how it works. Open up…

Factory Automation with industrial robots for palletizing food products like bread and toast at a bakery in Germany, robotics (Photo credit: Wikipedia) For all those logistics geeks out there, here is a very complete historical timeline of warehouse automation, thanks to Symbotic.

Interesting Q & A site for entrepreneurs evaluating prior art before they file a patent application… http://patents.stackexchange.com/

The same day delivery space keeps on growing, now in the grocery space… San Francisco-based same-day grocery delivery startup Instacart raised a $8.5 million series A round led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Canaan Partners, Khosla Ventures, Paul Buchheit, and SV Angel. Instacart plans to expand outside of San Francisco by the end of…