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

Des Moines The Des Moines Register on Sunday published six stories to kick off its new "Starting Up Iowa" series that focuses on startup communities throughout the state of Iowa. The first package of stories took a close look at a northeast Iowa startup community defined by Waterloo and Cedar Falls. "The Cedar Valley has some key ingredients for a vibrant technology and startup scene: UNI's incubator programs; new and advanced-stage … read more

Lincoln Pulling together a hotel reservation, affordable flight and list of activities for a vacation can be daunting. Getting a whole group to agree on travel plans is an entirely different beast. David Chait, a Columbia University graduate student in New York, faced that problem when coordinating a trip for a friend's bachelor party. "We were literally 78 emails … read more