Lincoln Almost 10 years ago to this day, a Silicon Prairie-based ecommerce startup, SitStay, was featured by Inc., a print and online magazine featuring stories and tips for small business owners. At the time the article was published, SitStay was in its fourth year of operation, and while the previous year saw the iconic dot-com failure of Pets.com, the Lincoln-based startup was recording its fourth year of profits. Today… read more

Lincoln During a recent interview with Green Bein' president & CEO Collin Caneva – see: Kid Command adds 56k users in Jan., Aaron Davis joins Green Bein’ team" – I saw that he is not only motivated by his business, but also by his team at Green Bein’. I wanted to learn more about their culture so I stopped by the Green Bein' office to capture a video… read more

Westwood Red Nova Labs takes its name and mission from "luminous red nova," the label applied to a new class of stellar explosions. Just as these astronomical phenomena are thought to occur when two stars merge, Red Nova Labs set out in similar fashion in 2009 "to merge business and customers via the web." Red Nova Labs is a web think-tank that transforms ideas into profitable web products. If you’re not familiar… read more

Urbandale Ryan Parlee has a knack for managing several enterprises concurrently, and has a diverse resume of interests that he attends to, but he says the two keys to working that way are creating strong partnerships with trusted associates, and "knowing when to say no." He notes that his daily priority is on Flying Hippo Web Technologies, described as a "web strategies company." "One of the lessons I've learned along the way is that of focus," said Parlee. "Realizing that with what we're doing… read more

Urbandale If Ryan Parlee started one company at a time, you might call him a serial entrepreneur. But the 30-year-old Altoona resident juggles multiple endeavors at a time, so perhaps "parallel entrepreneur" is a more fitting moniker for the father of four (soon to be six). "My dad owned a construction company. I was just around that and knew what it took and what it was like to run your own business," Parlee said. "And I knew it was a lot of work." Parlee's big jump into entrepreneurship came… read more

Cedar Falls When you walk into the HQ for T8 Webware and its sister companies at Barmuda Companies, you know you’ve reached the heart of the Cedar Valley’s innovation district. As Wade Arnold likes to say, "Some firms are on the cutting edge, we’re at the bleeding edge." For Arnold, a gifted PHP and Adobe coder, that’s exactly where he wants to stay. T8 is his baby, make no mistake. And although he has attracted… read more

Omaha When I stopped by Benaissance on January 4th to take pictures for our feature piece on the company – "Benaissance reaches profitability in under two years" – I also grabbed a short video interview with Benaissance vice president Mark Waterstraat. In the first 30 seconds, Waterstraat gives a brief overview of Benaissance. He then provides a short backstory of how he came to partner with John Jenkins… read more