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Camera icon Smack Innovations Gregory Hanuschak showed off his “after-market” SafeConnect car-smartening device in the Philly zone at the SXSW trade show in Austin, Texas.

Entrepreneurship is on the rise in Pennsylvania, cites a new report from Gust, a popular funding platform for the sourcing and management of early-stage investments. Hardly on their radar screen in 2015, Pennsylvania rose to fifth place on Gust’s top 10 list of start-up fund seekers in the second half of 2016.

Still, local entrepreneurs caution that it’s not time to start popping the champagne corks just yet.

For starters, a perusal of the top 10 list shows a huge gap between the front-running states — California and New York — and the rest of the pack.

Start Me Up: California, New York, and Florida continued to lead with the highest number of funding applications, representing close to half of all U.S. applications. Massachusetts has steadily climbed the ranks from 2.6 percent of U.S. funding applications in the last half of 2015 to 4.5 percent in the last half of 2016. Pennsylvania has also continued to rise; from not breaking the top 10 in the last half of 2015, it rose to fifth place with 4.4% in the last half of 2016.

Cali-Techsters claimed 20.6 percent of the bright-idea ventures posted on Gust (down from 22.1 percent in the first half of the year); New York brainstormers held firm with its 17.2 percent market share.

Florida came in third with 9.8 percent (up from 8.8), followed by Massachusetts with 4.5 percent, and then Pennsylvania with a 4.4 percentage share, up significantly from the prior, six-month representation of just 2.5 percent.

Also, being in the upper echelon of start-ups seeking funding (Gust’s barometer in this report) should not be confused with those ventures that actually get funded. Gust helped fund more than 1,800 start-ups globally last year, but lists for free (and doesn’t curate) tens of thousands of profiles on its website. With that kind of competition, it’s easy to get lost in the…