-
Coolfire Solutions Lands Big Round
St. Louis startup Coolfire Solutions raised $11.5 million dollars last week from Clayton Capital, a firm closely tied to Enterprise Rent-a-Car, and IrishAngels. The firm, which provides real-time situational awareness via their Ronin Platform helps customers understand the environment in which they find themselves. Specifically, Ronin provides an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that can…
-
Understory continues to grow
On October 10, 2018, Understory, the Madison, Wisconsin based weather company, filed paperwork with the SEC recording a $6.5 million dollar raise. The company which relocated from Somerville, Massachusetts in 2016 provides real-time weather microgrids that help provide accurate information for geo-specific places. This technology can be used by insurance carriers to better understand localized…
-
Total Expert closes $20 million Series B deal led by Emergence Capital
Minneapolis-based Total Expert announced today that the firm has raised $20 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Emergence Capital with participation from Rally Ventures and Arthur Ventures, bringing Total Expert’s total funding to $34 million. The six-year old company is a marketing platform for the mortgage industry, but the firm plans…
-
Beauty appointment app Booksy raises $13.2M in deal with Piton Capital
Des Plaines, Illinois startup Booksy, Inc. has raised $13.2 million in early-stage venture funding in a deal lead by Piton Capital in July 2018. Other investors in the deal include Enern Sebastian Kulczyk, Zach Coelius, Vostok New Ventures, OpenOcean and other undisclosed investors. The company plans to use the funds to accelerate global growth, new…
-
Novel Growth Partners Announces First Major Investment in DivvyHQ
Private equity firm Novel Growth Partners of Kansas City made its first major investment of an undisclosed amount in startup DivvyHQ in August 2018. DivvyHQ specializes in software for content creation and management. Novel Growth Partners, co-founded by Keith Harrington and Carlos Antequera provides companies up to $500K in growth capital and does not take equity…
-
Our 10 favorite investment stories of 2016
Silicon Prairie News covers the tech startup scene across Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri. Here are our most popular investment stories this year: 1. Flywheel raises $4 million in Series A, led by Five Elms (Omaha) In April Dusty Davidson’s Flywheel announced the close of a $4 million fundraising round led by Kansas-City based Five Elms Capital.…
-
QA with Kauffman’s Victor Hwang on entrepreneurship in the heartland
Earlier this month Victor Hwang, Vice President of Entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation, and Phil Wickham, Executive Chairman of Kauffman Fellows, set out on a road trip to take the pulse of entrepreneurship in America’s “middle.” Starting in Kansas City, the pair traveled to Omaha, Neb.; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Columbus Junction, Iowa; Peoria. Ill., St. Louis,…
-
Prairie Crest: The Midwest lacks large venture capital firms
The statistics are all too familiar to those involved in the Midwestern venture ecosystem. The Midwest is home to over 20% of the nations’ top research universities, research and development expenditures, defined benefit pension fund assets, and GDP. Its undergraduate programs graduate 20% of the founders backed by venture capital investments that attract almost 20%…
-
Kauffman announces $960,000 in scholarships to solve Midwest capital gap
Most of the scholarships will be awarded to VC fund managers in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri. This week the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and Kauffman Fellows announced $960,000 in scholarships for emerging venture capitalists in the middle of the country. The goal, according to a press release, will be “to enhance capital-formation expertise across the…
-
Why Mark Hasebroock is optimistic about the Silicon Prairie
Mark Hasebroock is the founder of Omaha-based Dundee Venture Capital, which announced today their new $20 million Fund III, focusing on e-commerce, B2B SaaS and consumer-network startups. They also announced a strategic partnership with Lakewest Venture Partners in Chicago. SPN caught up with Hasebroock over the phone. SPN: The big news last week was EyeVerify’s acqusition by Ant Financial.…