Dream Big DSM

  • The Dream Big Central Iowa winner is … Real Estate Fan Pages

    Edging out second place by more than 500 votes, Matthew Smith of Real Estate Fan Pages is the winner of Central Iowa division of MyEntre.Net’s statewide Dream Big Grow Here contest. Smith, the owner of S&G Real Estate Investments, will take home $5,000 from the local contest facilitated by the Business Innovation Zone and move…

  • Quick Pitch: Finalize It simplifies merger and acquisition documents

    For attorneys at the heart of mergers and acquisitions or other financing transactions, paper is plentiful and tends to pile up in a hurry — hundreds of documents over the course of a deal, hundreds more emails per day in the run-up to closing. Finalize It is a cloud-based software service that aims to turn…

  • Quick Pitch: Real Estate Pages makes ‘fully customizable’ Facebook pages

    ‘Location, location, location’ is a common mantra in the real estate industry. Now with the idea for Real Estate Fan Pages, realtors can live up to the phrase, find potential home-buyers and end the hunt in house-hunting with one online location: Facebook. Real Estate Fan Pages is one of seven entries in the Dream Big…

  • Quick Pitch: SquareTap is one-stop shop for web-based mobile apps

    Already well-acquainted with the App Store? Well, now get to know the TapStore. Seeking to sidestep the hassles of creating native mobile apps for each of the different mobile platforms, SquareTap, also dubbed “the TapStore,” provides a custom home page for a smart phone’s web browser, giving users a customized, central source for their favorite…

  • Quick Pitch: Introvio looks to clean up contact cultivation

    Networking, if you ask Mike Templeton, is a dirty word. “For me it generally means standing in a room full of crowded people, blindly introducing myself and my line of work to utter strangers,” Templeton, the founder of Introvio, said of networking in a recent blog post. “There are no warnings about people you should…

  • DriveOR tries to help travelers make their dollar go further

    Whether by train or plane or automobile, travelers have their pick of transportation when it comes to cross-country trips, and now with the idea for DriveOR making the most affordable choice may become easier. DriveOR seeks to map out the most cost-efficient transportation for any traveler by comparing the routes and methods available from point…

  • Quick Pitch: Locusic is ‘like Pandora for local music’ (Video)

    There are plenty of ways to discover new music, but for Jake Kerber, who struggles with Top 40 radio and finds joy in the sounds of his community, there wasn’t an option for local music. So Kerber started Locusic to help users find the beats in their own backyard. Locusic is one of seven entries…

  • Quick Pitch: bHeroic helps volunteers ‘earn their tights’ (Video)

    The Bat-Signal is out across the state of Iowa for all types of heroes, and bHeroic is the startup behind the shining light. Born not in the streets of Gotham City but in the Des Moines community at Startup Weekend 2011, bHeroic, also known as Unleash Heroes, is a free social game that encourages ordinary…

  • Polls open in Iowa … for Dream Big Des Moines

    This isn’t the type of Iowa polling story you’ve grown accustomed to reading recently. Nope, there are no straws here — just the potential for one Iowa entrepreneur to win up to $15,000 in prizes. Online voting for the Dream Big Des Moines small business contest began Tuesday and will continue until Aug. 31. …

  • Central Iowa, submit your idea to Dream Big Des Moines today

    Today’s the day to begin submitting your business ideas to the Dream Big Des Moines contest for a chance to win up to $15,000. Dream Big Des Moines is the central Iowa portion of a state-wide contest “Dream Big Grow Here” being put on by MyEntre.Net, a program of the University of Northern Iowa. …