Kansas City On the eve of its first Finovate appearance, Kansas City startup EyeVerify today announced it closed a $2.3 million Series A round and will begin offering its mobile authentication software to banks, investment firms, payment systems and others in the banking and financial services sectors. Investors in this round include Think Big Ventures and Nebraska Angels—both participants in the startup's $1.4 million seed round last year—along with Mid-America Angels and undisclosed individuals ... read more

Omaha With the growing success of its free-to-play model, Omaha mobile games company SkyVu Entertainment reached profitability early this year and wasn't actively seeking institutional investment. But that began to change in May, over the course of a couple of tweets. "We were in a comfy position to choose whether or not we needed to pursue more investment," SkyVu co-founder and CEO Ben Vu recalled in a phone interview Monday. "And we just … read more

Austin The Nebraska Angels announced today that several of the group's members are investing a total of $450,000 into the Austin, Texas-based company VolunteerSpot, which makes an online scheduling and sign-up tool for recruiting and coordinating … read more

Lincoln When Paul Jarrett and his wife Stephanie decided to start Bulu Box last December, they could see Twitter's headquarters from their Soma, Calif., apartment. But earlier this month when they launched the startup, a monthly and annual subscription service that provides sample boxes of vitamins and supplements, it was from their office in Lincoln, Neb. "Lincoln gave Bulu Box the best odds of survival," Jarrett said in a recent interview. The company … read more

Lenexa EyeVerify has closed a $1.4 million seed round, Toby Rush, the startup's founder and CEO, said Thursday. Think Big Ventures, a Kansas City, Mo.-based venture fund, led the round with an investment of $250,000. The Nebraska Angels and Mid-America Angels also contributed, as did numerous individual investors. As we reported in February, Lenexa, Kan.-based EyeVerify is bringing to market software that would enable the use of cameras on mobile devices to verify identity through images of the blood veins in the whites of people's eyes. The patented technology behind EyeVerify came out of the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University … read more

Wichita The Nebraska Angels, a Lincoln, Neb.-based consortium of individual angel investors, have played a significant role in bringing the final portion of funds into a Series A round for Nitride Solutions, the company's CEO, Jeremy Jones said in an email today. On Monday, Wichita, Kan.-based Nitride Solutions, a developer of next‐generation nitride substrates for LEDs, lasers and power electronics, announced it closed its oversubscribed round at $2.5 million. … read more