January 19, 2011 by Geoff Wood
Des Moines This week on PrairieCast, our guests discussed the proposed Angel Investment Income Tax Credit in Nebraska, similar resources available in Iowa, the one year anniversary of Silicon Prairie News in Des Moines, Proxibid, Xuba, Jeff Slobotski's post on Wild, Naive Ambition as well as the 8/7 Central article in Juice. Guests this week were Zach Cox, co-founder of Pongr and Drew Larson, an… read more
January 18, 2011 by Geoff Wood
Des Moines (Simon Mingay, Research Vice President at Gartner Research, presents virtually at the 2010 Heartland Greenup. Image from TheHeartlandGreenup.com.) The Technology Association of Iowa recently released a call for speakers for their upcoming Heartland Greenup event to be held June 2, 2011 at the Meadows Conference Center in Altoona. Speaker abstracts will be accepted through… read more
Des Moines Update: Due to technical difficulties at the studio, PrairieCast will be filmed and then posted later this week. It won't be live-streamed as usual. – Tune in at 1:30 p.m. today for Episode 21 of Silicon Prairie News' weekly podcast, PrairieCast. Now streaming with live video… read more
January 12, 2011 by Danny Schreiber
Des Moines On yesterday's PrairieCast, Nathan T. Wright of Lava Row and Uppward and Ben Milne of Dwolla joined hosts Andy Brudtkuhl and Geoff Wood. In addition to talking about their own startups, the four of them discussed the startups and events covered on Silicon Prairie News this past week. These include: Hudl, Hollrback, SmartyPig, Xuba, and Christian Renaud's blog post titled "Des Moines." read more
January 11, 2011 by Geoff Wood
Des Moines (Zach, left, and Ben Anderson of 8/7 Central. Photo courtesy of Eric Rowley/Juice.) Custom-designed T-shirts are a hot commodity among tech startups, and custom screenprinting and design studio 8/7 Central (87c) has positioned itself as the provider of choice for the local entrepreneurial community. "I'm not smart enough to be an engineer or developer, but I always thought it would be awesome if I was," said Ben Anderson, 25, co-owner… read more
January 11, 2011 by Danny Schreiber
Des Moines Dwolla founder Ben Milne calls it "a workaround for a problem we've been trying to solve for a few years," I'd call it another easy way to transfer money at a rate of $0.25 per transaction. Cash transfer startup Dwolla… read more
January 11, 2011 by Geoff Wood
Des Moines Tune in at 1:30 p.m. today for the return of the Silicon Prairie News' weekly podcast, PrairieCast. Now streaming with live video, PrairieCast is part of the lineup at Webcast One Live and will be available each week here on Silicon Prairie News. This week we feature discussion about new companies, new product launches, and a new venture fund… read more
January 11, 2011 by Danny Schreiber
Des Moines (Photo by Finovate Conferences via Flickr) For our article last week covering the launch of SmartyPig's iPhone app, I asked SmartyPig co-founder Michael Ferrari five questions via email. His answers to the first four made it in our post, "SmartyPig just got smarter, now offering iPhone app," but I held out his answer to the last, a simple "Anything else to add?" questions, for a separate post. read more
January 11, 2011 by Geoff Wood
Des Moines More evidence that online cash transfer startup, Dwolla, is picking up steam: they announced today that Dan Young has joined the team as Operations Manager and they recently previewed a Windows Phone 7 mobile app. I tracked down Dwolla CEO and founder Ben Milne, which was easy to do since I hang out at their office most days, to ask him about these developments. Silicon Prairie News: Young is your first "Operations"-specific hire, what does that involve? Ben Milne: Essentially Dan's role at Dwolla is two-fold. 1) Develop scalable systems for customer service and client support. 2) Facilitate and nurture large-scale business and merchant relationships. Dan has a lot of experience in growing organizations and in setting up client support systems. read more
January 10, 2011 by Danny Schreiber
Des Moines Silicon Prairie News' Geoff Wood (right) and 48Web's Andy Brudtkuhl (left, photo courtesy of Brudtkuhl) will be bringing back the weekly PrairieCast podcast tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. CST. The show, which used to be filmed from Brudtkuhl's home studio, has a new home, itself. Starting tomorrow, it willl be a part of the Webcast One Live lineup, where it's filmed in their studio in downtown Des Moines. Going forward, the show will be held every Tuesday… read more
Through August 22, help us decide the winners of our inaugural Silicon Prairie Awards, which will recognize 12
companies and individuals. You can vote once per day per category.
Winners will be announced live on stage at
our August 30 event.