Silicon Prairie News

Omaha When the co-founder of Turntable.fm jumped on stage on May 10 at Big Omaha 2012, he treated the room to the first listen of a yarn he'd never spun before. "I really want to put it out here and be vulnerable," Seth Goldstein said. "The strengths that I find most important in entrepreneurs are not just confidence and aggressiveness and focus; it's also vulnerability and authenticity and, importantly, emotional intelligence." So, over the … read more

Omaha These days, Jim McKelvey's best known for his work as the co-founder of Square, the mobile payments company that enables anyone with an iPhone to accept credit card transactions. But that's just the most recent chapter of the McKelvey story, which includes endeavors far more distant and varied — from his years as a glass-blower to his experience writing a college text book as a college freshman. On May 10 at Big Omaha 2012, McKelvey drew on that… read more

Omaha What Big Omaha 2012 stills and motion content partner Malone & Company does every year is easy to quantify, yet somehow still difficult to express. This year, the Malone & Company crew of Mike Malone, Patty Malone, Matt Andrews, Sally Nellson Barrett, Chris VanKat, Kate Heller-Thomas and Andrew Marinkovich joined forces with Kameron Bayne of Kameron Bayne Images plus Tyler McCarty and Matt Paddack of Bellus Films to produce: 10,707 images, 3,592 photo booth images, 186 video clips, 523 gigs of total content They collectively took 280,000 steps, walking about 122 miles during 200 production hours. … read more

Omaha Yael Cohen was floored three years ago when her mother was diagnosed with cancer, but it didn't take Cohen long to stand up and start fighting. "I'm not a researcher, so I can't contribute scientifically to the race for the cure," Cohen said on May 10 during her talk at Big Omaha 2012. "And I'm really f---ing impatient. I wanted to do something where I could see my impact and I could use the skills I had." So Cohen started what today has grown into F--- Cancer … read more

Omaha It didn't take much time teaching at an underfunded New York high school for Charles Best to realize the severity of the disparity between opportunities enjoyed by students at different schools in the U.S. "When I started teaching in the Bronx," Best said, "I saw firsthand that all schools are not created equal." Best and his fellow teachers would chat in the lunchroom about things they longed to offer their students but lacked the funds to … read more

Omaha When Sahil Lavingia turned 18, he came to an important conclusion. "I was an adult," he said, "so I decided I was going to get serious about my career." That career, in a very short span, has included stints at Pinterest, Turntable.fm and now Gumroad. Lavingia founded Gumroad, which is designed to help people share and sell their creations directly to their social network followers and friends. As a speaker at Big Omaha 2012, he discussed his path to Gumroad. … read more

Omaha As the Silicon Prairie News team pored over the Big Omaha 2012 attendee list in the days leading up to last week's conference, one thing that stood out was a spike in the number of venture capitalists attending the conference from outside SPN's three-city region of Des Moines, Kansas City and Omaha. It's one … read more

In the wake of our standard post-conference startup swag post and in my best Bill Cunningham form, I present you pictures of people in pink at Big Omaha 2012. The branding for the conference involved a lot of pink, and plenty of conference-goers donned one shade or another of the bold color. …  read more

We're thrilled to see Fast Company's "100 Most Creative People in Business" list released on Monday. This year's list features four faces familiar to the Silicon Prairie community as introduced to us through Big Omaha and Thinc Iowa over the last year. … read more