Omaha 2009: "You live in Omaha? When are you going to move away?" 2013: "Oh yeah, Omaha. I hear that's a pretty cool place." When I used to travel for business, my industry peers would always force themselves to feign interest in my answer to the usual first question: "Where are you from?" Oh, I'm from Omaha, I'd say. I love it there. It's a pretty exciting place to live right now and there's an awesome community … read more

Kansas City I'm not an expert. Honestly, I've only been to a single startup conference in my entire life: Thinc Iowa 2012 organized by Silicon Prairie News. Even so, that single conference changed the course of my life in several ways, many that I'm still discovering. With Silicon Prairie News' next conference Big Kansas City just a few short weeks away, here's what you should expect from it: 1. You will meet people that … read more

Las Vegas The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is the largest gathering of technology suppliers, buyers and techno-nerds possibly in the world. I attended CES for three full days in hopes of getting new leads for my startup, Bawte. Bawte is a consumer-facing app that allows our users to tag the products they buy to create a custom product catalog consisting of only the products they own. When Bawte partners with brands, we can offer a much richer … read more

Kansas City (Guest post by Matthew Marcus.) During one of his more memorable speeches, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs told his employees, "We're here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?" At first glance, one might presume Jobs was simply telling his minions that he wanted Apple to change the world. But, I believe Jobs had a deeper meaning in mind. I think he used the word "here" not … read more

San Francisco (Guest post by Philip Rosedale.) I recently posted on the Coffee & Power blog about Silicon Valley's amazing lead in startups, and our analysis of why it is both so strong and growing. The summary is that Silicon Valley has more tech people per capita (and per square mile) than anywhere else in the world, making it a very safe place for startups and software development, and also that when you run into tech people in San Francisco, they tend to be unusually open and helpful. The new version of Coffee & Power … read more

Des Moines Reports of our economic demise have been greatly exaggerated | History can be a crafty fox. It’s misleading because it likes phases and doesn’t often spend time looking back at how silly its old hairstyles once were. In the 1970s, history was wearing bell-bottoms and snorting coke at Studio 54. It opted for hammer pants and a boombox on its shoulder in the 1980s. Today it hasn’t shaved for two months and sports a tank top and skinny jeans as if those hammer pants never happened. The idea that the Midwest in the Twentieth century is divided into a rising phase before 1950 and a falling phase after is an easy arc to get your mind … read more

Omaha (Guest post by Heath Mello.) As local and state governments continue to wrestle with a wide range of ongoing policy challenges, one issue continues to stand out as an opportunity to help solve many problems with a simple stroke of the keyboard: releasing usable government data. Transparency in government continues to be an ongoing issue facing not just the state government, but also city and county governments. Yes, budgets are sent to the Nebraska Auditor of Public Accounts every year and some Nebraska cities and counties provide more budgetary information on their websites to give the public more detail of where their tax dollars are currently being spent. However, why isn't that information in a usable-data format like Microsoft Excel? As part of my interim study … read more

Lincoln (Guest post by Bart Dillashaw.) The topic of Form D filings has come up a few times in recent weeks in conversations with clients and in a few blog posts by folks like Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson of Foundry Group, so I thought this might be a topic worth providing a little more background about. This may get a little deeper into legal nuances than the average post, but I'm a lawyer, so indulge me. There is a basic premise underlying the laws and regulations covering the purchase and sale of interests in companies that states that you should not sell these interests, or securities, without telling the truth about your business and disclosing all of the risks involved with investing in your company. In order to ensure that appropriate disclosure is provided, these … read more