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Entrepreneurs

  • Cohesive Creative and Code creates home-grown success story

    With appreciation to my loyal following (thanks, family) and Silicon Prairie News’ inability to recruit a decent writer from the Cedar Valley, I’m back for another go-round of what’s happening in eastern Iowa. Much of my focus will be on bringing awareness to some of the firms that make up the growing tech scene that…

  • SitStay stands test of time through 15 years of growth, change

    When I arrived at SitStay’s warehouse to interview owner Darcie Krueger, she was finishing up the hiring process with her new customer-service employee. She told me that while I waited for them to wrap up I could play catch with her dog Gibbs. As I was throwing the ball down the office hallway, I could…

  • Charise Flynn steps out from behind the scenes in new role at Dwolla

    One would think that with more than 100 programmers and tech entrepreneurs crammed into Cabaret in West Glen on Wednesday, March 2, all eyes would have been on the TVs showing Steve Jobs introducing the iPad 2. Instead, they were fixed on founder Ben Milne and the rest of the Dwolla team as the social…

  • 10 years ago in Inc. magazine, tomorrow on Silicon Prairie News

    Almost 10 years ago to this day, a Silicon Prairie-based ecommerce startup, SitStay, was featured by Inc., a print and online magazine featuring stories and tips for small business owners. At the time the article was published, SitStay was in its fourth year of operation, and while the previous year saw the iconic dot-com failure…

  • Caneva discusses Green Bein’ culture – ‘coffee shop atmosphere’ (Video)

    During a recent interview with Green Bein’ president & CEO Collin Caneva – see: Kid Command adds 56k users in Jan., Aaron Davis joins Green Bein’ team” – I saw that he is not only motivated by his business, but also by his team at Green Bein’. I wanted to learn more about their culture…

  • Dan Miller: From Intel to angel investor to Red Nova Labs

    Red Nova Labs takes its name and mission from “luminous red nova,” the label applied to a new class of stellar explosions. Just as these astronomical phenomena are thought to occur when two stars merge, Red Nova Labs set out in similar fashion in 2009 “to merge business and customers via the web.” Red Nova…

  • Ryan Parlee targets web development using lessons from the past

    Ryan Parlee has a knack for managing several enterprises concurrently, and has a diverse resume of interests that he attends to, but he says the two keys to working that way are creating strong partnerships with trusted associates, and “knowing when to say no.” He notes that his daily priority is on Flying Hippo Web…

  • Ryan Parlee of Flying Hippo: A ‘parallel entrepreneur’

    If Ryan Parlee started one company at a time, you might call him a serial entrepreneur. But the 30-year-old Altoona resident juggles multiple endeavors at a time, so perhaps “parallel entrepreneur” is a more fitting moniker for the father of four (soon to be six). “My dad owned a construction company. I was just around…

  • Wade Arnold and T8 Webware: From dorm room to board room

    When you walk into the HQ for T8 Webware and its sister companies at Barmuda Companies, you know you’ve reached the heart of the Cedar Valley’s innovation district. As Wade Arnold likes to say, “Some firms are on the cutting edge, we’re at the bleeding edge.” For Arnold, a gifted PHP and Adobe coder, that’s…

  • Mark Waterstraat of Benaissance: ‘Our revenue simply layers’ (Video)

    When I stopped by Benaissance on January 4th to take pictures for our feature piece on the company – “Benaissance reaches profitability in under two years” – I also grabbed a short video interview with Benaissance vice president Mark Waterstraat. In the first 30 seconds, Waterstraat gives a brief overview of Benaissance. He then provides…