March 10, 2011 by Christopher New
Des Moines (SmartyPig CEO Bob Weinschenk, middle, poses with co-founders Jon Gaskell, left, and Michael Ferrari pose for a picture at Finovate 2009. Photo by Christophe Langlois of Visible Banking, from clanglois.blogs.com.) When you're in the air as much as Bob Weinschenk, you should know where you're headed – even if the route is winding and long. But even the CEO of Des Moines-based SmartyPig, who commutes over 2,000 miles a week for his job… read more
March 10, 2011 by Danny Schreiber
Austin (Photo from Seth and Alexa Andrzejewski via Flickr.) South by Southwest Interactive isn't a conference. It isn't a summit. It isn't a networking event. And it certainly isn't a party. Nope, it's all of those things, and because of that, it makes it one of the best places for a startup to launch or market its product, whether that's in a large, public way or one-to-one. Last year's event brought in over 14,000 attendees to Austin… read more
March 10, 2011 by Geoff Wood
Des Moines As someone who participated in the first Startup Weekend Des Moines (see my Silicon Prairie News guest post at the time: "Startup Weekend Des Moines is a success") back in July 2009 and had the chance to spend several hours at this past weekend's event… read more
March 9, 2011 by Danny Schreiber
Kansas City Remember that startup we first wrote about less than two weeks ago? The one that launched at Startup Weekend Los Angeles on February 20 with a pitch by Kansas Citian Bo Fishback? The one that had celebrities Demi Moore and LeVar Burton tweeting about it the night it launched? Yeah, that one: Zaarly. Earlier today, TechCrunch broke the story that Zaarly had raised a $1 million seed round from a slate of notable investors: Ashton Kutcher, Naval… read more
March 9, 2011 by Kate Ellingson
Lincoln When I arrived at SitStay’s warehouse to interview owner Darcie Krueger, she was finishing up the hiring process with her new customer-service employee. She told me that while I waited for them to wrap up I could play catch with her dog Gibbs. As I was throwing the ball down the office hallway, I could tell that SitStay’s culture was laid back, pet-friendly and really fun. During our interview, Krueger confirmed what I had guessed about SitStay. read more
March 9, 2011 by Danny Schreiber
In our Tools for the Trade post yesterday we featured LaunchRock, a website that makes it easy for startups to put up a page prior to launch in order to capture leads for alpha or beta users. One startup that has, in the opinion of LaunchRock's founder Jameson Detweiler, used LaunchRock effectively is Zaarly, a proximity-based, real-time buyer powered market that launched their site… read more
March 9, 2011 by Danny Schreiber
Published every Tuesday (one day late this week), Prairie Moves keeps our readers informed about career moves, media coverage, product development, and more from the companies and individuals we cover on Silicon Prairie News. If you or your company would like to submit one of the items below for our next Prairie Moves post, please email info@siliconprairienews.com. And if you have suggestions on how we could improve these posts or any… read more
March 8, 2011 by Michael Stacy
Omaha Do something. The message Newark, N.J. mayor Cory Booker gave as the keynote speaker at the Omaha Young Professionals Summit on Thursday was the same message he got from a neighbor after one particularly difficult day early in his political career, when Booker was on the Newark city council. Feeling deflated because of political infighting and the perception that his efforts as a councilman weren't making a difference in his… read more
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