Cedar Rapids The Iowa Economic Development Authority on Friday awarded a $100,000 loan to Bandwith Pool, the Cedar Rapids startup that wants to make it easier for businesses to find reliable and affordable Internet providers. The assistance came through the state's Demonstration Fund, a fund that aims to help potential high-growth companies reach a position where they're able to attract later-stage private sector funding. When we first covered Bandwidth Pool in March, it had just released its public beta—users could sign up, pay … read more

Kansas City Sprint didn't have to call long distance to acquire app developer Handmark and its social and mobile advertising subsidiary OneLouder. The 13-year-old company is based about 20 miles north of Sprint's headquarters in Overland Park, Kan. The telecom giant today announced the move, one it says it made in an effort to boost its advertising platform, Pinsight Media+. Neither party disclosed terms of the deal, which was completed last month ... read more

Kansas City Neighbor.ly has been selected to join a community of nine other civic startups from around the country in the Points of Light Civic Accelerator. "We're getting access to the best and brightest minds of civic technology," Neighbor.ly CEO Jase Wilson on Tuesday told Silicon Prairie News. "We'll emerge with a much more polished, effective product." Points of Light, a nonprofit organization that mobilizes people to do volunteer work, joined forces with Village Capital, a firm behind 17 accelerator … read more

San Francisco For the third time, Banno founder Wade Arnold made his way to Finovate to unveil a product he hopes wows an audience filled with banking and financial industry execs. "To some extent, a lot of people who present at Finovate are here to disrupt banking," Arnold ... read more

Kansas City SparkLabKC is ready to plug in with the 11 early-stage startups—all from Kansas City—it chose for its inaugural class. The accelerator last … read more

Iowa City Just because the spring semester is coming to an end doesn't mean that Iowa City-based startup Tutor Universe is heading out on summer vacation. On the contrary, co-founder and CEO Michael Morrison says the company is busier than ever. The team of 12 just completed a $300,000 round of funding from angel investors. The Tutor Universe website, which went live for its soft launch last November, attracted roughly 1,300 users in its first two months. After the site's official launch at the end of January ... read more

Kansas City On the eve of its first Finovate appearance, Kansas City startup EyeVerify today announced it closed a $2.3 million Series A round and will begin offering its mobile authentication software to banks, investment firms, payment systems and others in the banking and financial services sectors. Investors in this round include Think Big Ventures and Nebraska Angels—both participants in the startup's $1.4 million seed round last year—along with Mid-America Angels and undisclosed individuals ... read more

Omaha If you've ever struggled to recall the name of someone you recently met, then you can relate to Sumeet Jain, the co-creator of Omawho. "When I moved to Omaha a couple years ago, I starting meeting a lot of people—and I couldn't always remember their names. So I wanted a way to put faces to names," Jain said in an email interview. "That's the first reason I had for building Omawho." The second? … read more