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Annual report revised
Last November we announced that we’d be putting together the inaugural Silicon Prairie Annual Report to “serve as a recorded benchmark for our entrepreneurial ecosystem for 2010 as well as an annual measurement of our progress in the future.” We undertook this project with the best of intentions, planning to tabulate analytical information on the six tenets of an entrepreneurial…
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Annual Report: Wild, Almost Naive Ambition
Over the next several weeks, we’ll expand on each of the items that are to be included in the inaugural “Silicon Prairie Annual Report,” which we’ve described as a “look back at the previous year in the Silicon Prairie region, taking into account such metrics as company formations, product releases and developments, investment and M&A activity, and community building.” Today,…
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Business Record finds increased interest in entrepreneurial education
I love that our friends in the larger publications in Des Moines are writing more and more about the startup community in the area (did you see Juice just highlighted “The Startup Scene” as part of their “Hot in Des Moines” issue?), and I was especially excited to see that the Business Record ran a story on entrepreneurial education in…
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Continuing the discussion on ‘starting a business in Iowa’
Last month, the Des Moines Register ran an article titled “Why is it so hard to start a business in Iowa?” in which the writer, Lynn Hicks, asked several entrepreneurs and community members, “What can state or local officials do to help startups and create an innovative culture?” In the article, four main ideas were discussed. Things like, “create …
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Where do the entrepreneurs hang out? In Des Moines, it’s at Amici.
A mentor or professor from my past — I don’t even remember who at this point — mentioned to me that upon moving to a new city the first thing he did was seek out the coffee shops where the local tech entrepreneurs hang out. That, in his opinion, was the best way to get the vibe of the startup…
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SPN Out & About: Startup Storm at Simpson College on Saturday
Our team at Silicon Prairie News is often invited to speak at community events and entrepreneurial conferences about either our organization or the geographic and industry areas we cover. We’re starting a new series “SPN Out & About” to document those experiences, and next up is Startup Storm, a student entrepreneurship conference taking place …
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Annual Report: Big Companies Techies Can Spin Off From
(Photo by Ernest Semerda via Flickr) Over this next month, we’ll continue to expand on each of the items that are to be included in the upcoming “Silicon Prairie Annual Report,” which we’ve described as a “look back at the previous year in the Silicon Prairie region, taking into account such metrics as company formations, product releases and developments, investment…
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Annual Report: Culture of Risk Taking
Over the next several weeks, we’ll expand on each of the items that are to be included in the inaugural “Silicon Prairie Annual Report,” which we’ve described as a “look back at the previous year in the Silicon Prairie region, taking into account such metrics as company formations, product releases and developments, investment and M&A activity, and community building.” Today,…
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Announcing the ‘Silicon Prairie Annual Report’
We’re very excited to announce our first-ever “Silicon Prairie Annual Report,” an annual look back at the previous year in the Silicon Prairie region, taking into account such metrics as company formations, product releases and developments, investment and M&A activity, and community building. The “Silicon Prairie Annual Report” will serve as a recorded benchmark for our entrepreneurial ecosystem for 2010…
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O’Brien challenges entrepreneurs to ‘be brave’ in Summit keynote
Long before Mary Ann O’Brien actually was a CEO, she signed her name like one. Today, O’Brien is the CEO of Omaha-based OBI Creative, an ad agency that, per company literature “is hard-wired for innovation.” But O’Brien has harbored big ambitions since she was a little girl growing up in rural Spencer, Iowa. “I’ve been signing my name: ‘Mary Ann…