Omaha If you underwent triple bypass heart surgery, you wouldn’t want your doctor’s hands to cramp, or lose his grip of an instrument. During an average surgery lasting two to four hours, surgeons not only suffer the consequences of standing in one place for an extended time, but also the occasional slippery scalpel handle. Guru Instruments was created to solve this problem through ergonomic medical devices. Company founder Dr. Sam Bhatia said the idea for ergonomic instruments was a no-brainer. Born in Omaha, Bhatia studied medicine at the Dayanand Medical College and Hospital in India.  read more

Omaha (Left: Proxibid CEO Bruce Hoberman and co-founder and CFO Joe Petsick.) Last November, while hundreds of bidders gathered at the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan for the auction of Bernard Madoff, the man behind a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme, thousands of bidders flocked to Proxibid.com, a website allowing bidders unable… read more

Des Moines One of the latest interactive media startups to launch on the Silicon Prairie was founded by a pair of unlikely Iowans: Stefan and Thomas Hansen. The pair are sons of Danish citizens, were born and raised in Germany and now choose to live in Des Moines. While school initially attracted each of them to Iowa they founded their business here… read more

Des Moines Earlier this summer, Shayne Huston and Nabeel Meghji sat down with me to discuss their Des Moines-based startup Geosync Global. Huston, the company's CEO, describes Geosync as an "innovation group-for-hire." They fill the void of identifying, researching, and vetting emerging technologies that can be beneficial to companies who may not have… read more

Omaha I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Adrian Blake, CEO of Omaha-based TownCommons.com. Adrian comes from an interesting background of management consulting with a history of working with large organizations, and he brings a unique and fresh perspective to the his startup. Simply put, Town Commons is a website that aggregates… read more

"The first deal we ran we started in just one city – in Washington D.C., our home base – and we sold 53 vouchers to a local sushi restaurant," said Aaron Batalion, co-founder of LivingSocial. "On our one-year anniversary we were live in 53 markets. So, it's been a pretty exciting year in launching this product." LivingSocial Deals, one of three products LivingSocial has released, reached the Omaha market on July 13, two weeks before its one-year anniversary. Today, deals are offered in 58 cities, including four cities outside of the U.S., two in the United Kingdom… read more

Sioux Falls I witnessed the power of Big Omaha this past May when I traveled all the way down to Omaha from Sioux Falls and then met an incredible designer, Carla White, who lives in my own backyard. Not literally, but in the community of Sioux Falls which doesn't have a big yard. Carla and I kept in touch and I recently sat down with Carla to talk about… read more

Omaha Before starting a tropical clothing line in a state with no palm trees, Greg Chambers worked as a regional sales manager looking to get in touch with his inner “mad gringo.” Chambers, employed with First National Bank of Omaha at the time, was far from tropical as he adorned himself in a suit and tie everyday, making his inner “mad gringo” go loco. “It was great, but at the same time, it was not exactly what I was hoping to do with the rest of my life… read more