October 21, 2011

  • Thinc Iowa: That’s a wrap for Friday

    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;…

  • Thinc Iowa: Ben Silbermann on inspiring ‘the confidence to do things that you would never do’

    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…

  • Thinc Iowa: Paige Craig – ‘Pitch the massive, disruptive thing’

    As the morning moved along at the inaugural Thinc Iowa conference today at the Temple for Performing Arts in Des Moines, attendees began to think about lunch, but Paige Craig showed up to shake things up. Craig is the CEO and co-founder of BetterWorks, a company committed to finding a better way to manage employee…

  • Thinc Iowa: Luke Vandermillen – ‘You listen, you evolve and you innovate’

    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.…

  • Thinc Iowa: Jerri Chou on ‘passion to make the world a better place’

    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…

  • Thinc Iowa: Andy Murray on overcoming ‘poverty of creativity’

    Andy Murray, the founder and chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi X, kicked off Thinc Iowa as the first speaker today at the Temple for Performing Arts in Des Moines. Murray discussed the common challenges that both corporations and startups share and focused the rest of his talk on the five themes that make entrepreneurship in…

  • Thinc Iowa: Photo booth fun from the opening party

    Give the photos from Thinc Iowa’s opening party a once-over and you might mistake our conference on the common ground between corporations and startups for an event focused on the place where Clark Kent and Superman meet. That is to say, the phone booth was a busy spot at last night’s opening bash. An estimated…

  • Tune in here: Thinc Iowa live-streaming all day

    Thanks to the support of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City-based foundation that works to harness the power of entrepreneurship and innovation, we’ll be live-streaming all nine speaker presentations of our Thinc Iowa conference at no charge and ad-free. With this awesome opportunity in mind, we’d ask that you take part …