Des Moines If, as we posited in May, Big Omaha is like Paris Fashion Week — and at this point we see no grounds for questioning that claim — then it stands to reason that Thinc Iowa is akin to a runway show in Milan. Sure, Versace and Prada are replaced by Zaarly and Dwolla. But, still, it all comes down to who you're wearing. With that in mind, Silicon Prairie News set a crack team of intrepid reporters loose on the streets of downtown Des Moines on Friday — or, more accurately, I walked around creeping … read more

Des Moines What an event! It's actually a little hard to believe all the planning, hard work and execution is over (at least for this year). First off, I want to thank everyone who made the event possible. From the speakers to the participants to the sponsors to everyone on the Silicon Prairie News team – I couldn't have asked for a better group to gather for our first big event in Iowa. We'll have the videos of each of the presentations and official photos online soon … read more

Des Moines Wearing his red, white, and blue Converse sneakers, Scott Case, took the stage Friday afternoon at the Temple for Performing Arts in Des Moines to illustrate the intersection between corporations and startups. Case started by explaining the mission and purpose of the Startup America Partnership. As Case explained, Startup America Partnership strives to offer five things for startups: expertise, support services, talent, customers and capital. …  read more

Des Moines From discussion of how to approach marketing like MacGyver to stories of stripping pizza down to its "naked" essence, Robbie Vitrano of Trumpet Group packed plenty into his time on stage Friday afternoon at Thinc Iowa. Vitrano leads New Orleans-based Trumpet, a venture marketing company with a mission focused on advocacy, optimism and socially responsible capitalism. That work shaped his talk Friday. … read more

Des Moines Douglas Olson brings almost two decades of lessons learned in the software business and entrepreneurial development to his current position as the partner director of development for Microsoft’s suite of creative design and media applications: Microsoft Expression Studio. Now the head of the Expression team, Olson manages development and user experience within Expression Studio. … read more

Des Moines Thinc Iowa's afternoon session Friday began with Ben Milne, who is (or should be) a known name to Silicon Prairie News readers. Milne is the CEO and co-founder of Dwolla. He started the company based on a problem he had with his previous startup: high interchange fees. With an understanding of interchange fees, a term used in the banking industry to describe fees paid between banks, Milne wanted to change how payments are made … read more

Des Moines That, as they say in show business, is a wrap. The nine speakers at our inaugural Thinc Iowa conference have all said their piece, and now we're just a closing party away from officially wrapping things up. If you couldn't make it to the conference and didn't catch the live stream, we have you covered; the Silicon Prairie News team wrote recaps of each one of today's talks. We've posted five already … read more

Des Moines Ben Silbermann is the co-founder of a startup, Pinterest, that just closed a $27 million round and has been heralded as the “hottest startup of late in Silicon Valley." His work led one Thinc Iowa conference-goer to suggest during a Q&A session that Silbermann's alma matter, Des Moines' Roosevelt High School, build a statue in his honor. But if Silbermann is overly impressed by any of that, it certainly … read more

Des Moines With Thinc Iowa only a few hours old, a strong theme was already emerging when Luke Vandermillen, who leads marketing for retirement and investor services at the Principal Financial Group, took the stage: the importance of listening to the customer. I think it’s a stereotype that large firms don’t listen and the small ones do. Vandermillen did a great job of dispelling that myth by focusing his … read more

Des Moines Jerri Chou, co-founder of Lovely Day, All Day Buffet, The Feast and TBD, firmly believes that we can create a better world by purpose-driven social collaboration in which people "do well by doing good." “Social enterprises are driven not by just the bottom line but by purpose and passion to make the world a better place,” Chou said this morning during the second talk of Thinc Iowa. Five T.I. Takeaways … read more