Startups

  • Swineguard protects piglets from being crushed to death

    Swineguard protects piglets from being crushed to death

    Matt Rooda was working as an assistant farm manager at Schneider Pork Farms in Waterloo, Iowa, when he realized that in order to increase pork production, he needed to stop piglet deaths. “I walked in one day, and there was a mom that laid on nine of her babies,” Rooda said. “I was super frustrated,…

  • Can 3D printing save the world’s oceans? Tethon 3D hopes to find out

    Can 3D printing save the world’s oceans? Tethon 3D hopes to find out

    Nebraska’s Tethon 3D and a Massachusetts oyster farmer are testing ceramic platforms that can reboot oyster populations in Cape Cod. The partnership began when Patrick Woodbury, founder of the Woodbury Shellfish Company in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, found Karen Linder from Omaha-based Tethon 3D online. Out of that conversation, Tethon 3D agreed to fabricate Woodbury’s design. The two companies hope that…

  • D3 Banking’s Mike Carter on millennials and the future of banking

    D3 Banking’s Mike Carter on millennials and the future of banking

    Mike Carter is Chief Marketing Officer of D3 Banking, a digital banking startup based in Omaha. He recently spoke at the FinovateFall conference in New York. He will be presenting on millennials and banking at the Digital Economy Conference on October 2nd. SPN caught up with Carter by phone. SPN: How was New York? It…

  • 11 questions with PopBookings co-founder Erika Klotz

    11 questions with PopBookings co-founder Erika Klotz

    PopBookings is a startup based in Kansas City, Missouri, who recently received a $50K LaunchKC grant by winning the People’s Choice at Techweek KC. SPN caught up with Co-founder Erika Klotz over the phone. SPN: Can you tell us a little bit about PopBookings? EK: We’re basically Uber for event staffing. PopBookings is a platform designed to help…

  • Goquets joins Iowa accelerator to gain national traction

    Goquets joins Iowa accelerator to gain national traction

    Goquets co-founders Shawn Harrington and Lyndsay Horgan want to improve the experience of purchasing flowers online. The company, founded during Ames Startup Weekend in 2013, exists to remove “guesswork” from the process by allowing purchasers to share their preferences, instead of pointing to a static photo, when placing their orders via the web or mobile devices.…

  • Why Viirt left Omaha

    Why Viirt left Omaha

    On September 7th, the up and coming roofing startup Viirt said goodbye to Omaha and moved their team of three to the Pacific Northwest. Viirt graduated from the Omaha based Straight Shot accelerator program in 2014 and has been growing in leaps and bounds ever since. In March 2015 they announced a raise of $900,000 with…

  • Discontent with the industry, StoryHook aims to tell unique stories for startups

    Discontent with the industry, StoryHook aims to tell unique stories for startups

    Announcing on September 4th the launch of their new Lincoln based “nontraditional marketing and advertising startup”, StoryHook, Erik Miller and his team are planning to do what he believes many agencies are claiming to do but are failing miserably at, telling stories. “A lot of groups say that their focus is on stories, but they…

  • 9 questions with the intrapreneurs of ES&S

    9 questions with the intrapreneurs of ES&S

    One of the most unique teams in this year’s Straight Shot accelerator began as a nagging idea in an established company that couldn’t quite get off the starting line. Election management company ES&S partnered with the Omaha accelerator this summer to validate if this idea was worth investing company time and resources. ES&S identified Shari Little…

  • 7 questions with Paige Technologies’ Jonathan Mills on APIs

    7 questions with Paige Technologies’ Jonathan Mills on APIs

    Jonathan Mills is Director of Research and Development at Paige Technologies in Overland Park, Kansas. He will be giving a workshop at AIM HDC on AngularJS and a presentation on Node.js. SPN spoke with Mills over the phone. SPN: Tell us a bit about Paige Technologies and what you do there. JM: I work in…

  • ClusterFlunk co-founders start new service geared for professors

    Getting an entire college class on the same page is often an arduous task. Some people prefer communication through email, others prefer text. Some people set up Facebook groups, and others use Dropbox and Google Drive. It would be easier to get everyone using the same service, wouldn’t it? Enter Pi, based in Chicago. Pi…