Kansas City Following Wednesday's news that Brad Feld purchased a home in Kansas City's first "Fiberhood," we reached out to the notable venture capitalist to learn more about the backstory of his purchase and his interest in Google Fiber. "I met Ben Barreth at Thinc Iowa. I loved his story and the Hacker House idea," Feld said in our email interview, referring to his appearance at our event last October and a project by Barreth … read more

Omaha If you're in Omaha, you may have noticed roadside billboards or coffee shop handouts promoting a new crowd-funding site called Red Basket. The effort isn't some new startup, instead it's a new approach to giving back by a 122-year-old Omaha insurance company, Woodmen of the World. Red Basket, a person-to-person giving site, launched in select … read more

Lincoln A group led by Lincoln, Neb.-based NUtech Ventures today announced its next move to support the state's entrepreneurial ecosystem: an early stage startup accelerator it calls NMotion. "We looked at where NUtech could play a role, and obviously not driving it as a university accelerator, but just as a catalyst to help," said NMotion director Brian Ardinger. "And my role of actually just taking the reigns and push this through and marshal some muscle behind this whole thing." Since coming on board a… read more

Des Moines StartupCity Des Moines, an early stage tech startup incubator in its second year, announced today the addition of two Des Moines startups to its group of residents. PosterZen, a web-based tool to create and order custom posters, came on board in November and PhoneBank.org … read more

Lincoln Invest Nebraska Corporation, a state-funded venture capital organization, recently announced it participated in a bridge financing round of Lincoln, Neb.-based Virtual Incision. Though the terms of the round were undisclosed, Invest Nebraska analyst Adam Hunke told Silicon Prairie News the organization contributed $500,000 (investments made by Invest Nebraska must be matched or exceeded by another capital … read more

Lincoln Lawyer Brett Stohs is walking a mile in his clients' shoes this spring, launching the Entrepreneurship Legal Clinic at the University of Nebraska College of Law last month. "Within the legal construct, this feels about as entrepreneurial as it gets. It's incredibly exciting and incredibly terrifying," he said. "This is a beta semester." His "beta" test involves eight third-year law students who will each spend about … read more

Des Moines The Plains Angels, a Des Moines-based consortium of angel investors that came together in June last year, announced today … read more

Iowa City ActiveGrade, a startup established to help educators better track pupils' development, announced today it has signed an agreement to be acquired by Goshen, Ind.-based Haiku Learning Systems, a cloud-based learning management system. "With the incredible talent behind Haiku, we'll be able to take standards-based grading to new places that we simply didn't have the resources for until now," the company said in a written … read more