Urbana Clickstop founders Tim Guenther and Shaun Linderbaum were a couple of typical Iowa college kids back in the late 90s, at a time when Wade Arnold of T8 was also bumming around the hallowed entrepreneurial grounds of the University of Northern Iowa. Incidentally, yours truly was also a “typical college kid” at that time. Sadly, the extent of my entrepreneurial talents was charging $3 for keg beer to pay our heating bill. What was I thinking? Anyway, things all started for Clickstop, which is now based… read more

Des Moines Whether you call it group-buying, online coupons or simply daily deals, the industry popularized on an international scale by Groupon and LivingSocial is getting more and more entrants every week. In the past few months on Silicon Prairie News, we’ve written about local services like Deal Garden out of Omaha and DSM Daily in Urbandale. Adding to that group today is a new player … read more

Omaha Omaha mayor Jim Suttle today announced the launch of EngageOmaha.com, one of the nation’s first city-wide, virtual town hall websites. The city launched the site in collaboration with Omaha-based startup MindMixer, which offers web-based idea generation and concept prioritization services. Together, the mayor’s office and MindMixer aim to … read more

Omaha Since DocLanding made Silicon Prairie News' headlines in September 2008 with its launch at the DEMO conference, we hadn't heard too much about them in recent years. Earlier this month, however, the online document management provider fired up its Twitter account again and gave a preview of what came this week. "Watch for big news from DocLanding," @doclanding tweeted on April 7. The big news, as summarized with another tweet, came on April 15: "DocLanding relaunch! everything new - CEO, website … read more

Des Moines Over the weekend, details began to emerge of a new ticketing startup, Tikly, planning to launch out of Des Moines in the next 30 or so days. The service will be unique to the current marketplace as it will have Dwolla as a payment option from the start. Emma Peterson, a marketer with significant experience in the local music scene (left, photo from facebook.com), is behind the idea and is working with Ben Milne of Dwolla to execute it. I caught up with Milne on Sunday night via instant message… read more

Kansas City Zaarly, the proximity-based, real-time, buyer-powered marketplace born out of Startup Weekend Los Angeles this past February and now with significant offices in Kansas City, released a new and enhanced web presence on Friday. Previously, the startup was collecting emails for future launches in a series of city-specific standard LaunchRock … read more

Des Moines The Greater Des Moines Partnership, an economic and community development organization serving Greater Des Moines, released its latest promotional video on YouTube. Clocking in at 1:37, the video features interviews with Dwolla co-founder and CEO Ben Milne as well as the startup's COO, Charise Flynn. In addition to Dwolla… read more

Wichita A startup with ties to Wichita, Kan. received a great round of press at the close of March. Boxcar, a notification dashboard previously only found on iOS devices and the web, was released as an app for Mac. On the day of the release, March 31, Boxcar was covered by TechCrunch, Read Write Web, Business Insider and Macworld. Interested to learn about the story behind the startup, I set out to learn more about what Boxcar does. While other applications make it easier for you to check… read more