Lincoln Hurrdat founder and CEO Blake Lawrence on Tuesday received the "New Company Entrepreneur Award" at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Distinguished Entrepreneur Awards, part of the EntrepreneuringDays@UNL event. Lawrence graduated from UNL in 2009 and went on to … read more

Austin You just spent hours at a rally getting fired up about a cause you believe in. The speeches, music and camaraderie with fellow supporters has you ready to act. Now what? Kansas City, Mo. startup Phone2Action took the South by Southwest Interactive Accelerator stage today to convince the audience its toolbox of mobile advocacy engagement is the answer. The startup's co-founders, Jeb Ory and Ximena Hartsock, used Startup Act 3.0 … read more

Omaha A LinkedIn message between two Omahans nine months ago resulted in an announcement today of an $11.2 million acquisition. The company making the acquisition, Scottsdale, Ariz.-based … read more

Kansas City It's been nothing but "research and listening and learning" during the first four weeks of the partnership between Code for America and the Kansas Cities, said Ariel Kennan, one of the three fellows assigned to Kansas City, Kan. and Kansas City, Mo. Code for America is a non-profit organization that partners with local leaders to change the way cities work through technology and public service. … read more

Prairie Village After more than a year in development and a seed round of $1.5 million, AgLocal last week launched into private beta with 20 notable New York City chefs. The Kansas City area startup aims to improve its restaurant industry offering as it recruits top-tier chefs from the coasts—San Francisco is next—to test … read more

Des Moines Cloud computing infrastructure provider Appcore, which earned the top spot last year on Five Elms Capital's list of "fastest-growing companies in the middle of the country," announced today in a press release that it closed a $6 million Series B round. The new capital comes from private investors and existing investor Telephone Acquisition Company, an investment company owned by a group of Midwest-based telephone companies. The five-year-old … read more

Office furniture company turnstone on Friday handed out its third $20,000 office makeover in three days to wrap up the Silicon Prairie leg of Culture@Work in the Heartland competition. Traveling in a turnstone branded-bus, company representatives made stops at Des Moines startup Goodsmiths, Omaha ad agency Baily Lauerman and Kansas City, Mo. web design and development firm CremaLab to personally congratulate … read more

Pella With the help of a group of dedicated professional mentors and educators, 15 students will continue their entrepreneurship studies at Central College through a new "Startup Semester." The private college, located about an hour southeast of Des Moines, has offered courses in entrepreneurship for a few years now, but this semester the professors and students are stepping even further away from textbooks … read more