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Omaha ad agency, VC firm launch “idea incubator” Drop Kick Ventures
Omaha digital advertising agency Phenomblue and venture capital firm Dundee Venture Capital today unveiled Drop Kick Ventures, an “idea incubator” that aims to commercialize products developed inside creative, marketing and communication agencies. Its model brings together three entities – agencies, investors and entrepreneurs – to launch startups. “We were brainstorming one …
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Omaha startups set out to raise $2,000 for nearby shelter
About five blocks from The Mastercraft, a building that houses more than a half-dozen Omaha startups, sits the Siena/Francis House, Nebraska’s largest homeless shelter. In an effort to lend a hand to their neighbor, several companies based in The Mastercraft – and a handful of companies located elsewhere – are aiming to raise $2,000 for…
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CrowdSavings snaps up Midwest daily deal network Deal Garden
Omaha-based daily deal network Deal Garden has been acquired by CrowdSavings, a Tampa, Fla. company that operates more than 60 local daily deal sites. With the purchase, CrowdSavings adds six Midwestern cities, including Sioux City, Iowa and Lawrence, Kan., along with a regionally-focused vacation deals site. “We are extremely pleased with the success …
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Bootstrapping is about balancing scarce resources
(Guest post by Pat Lazure.) Simply put, bootstrapping is about balancing scarce resources. A neophyte entrepreneur may believe that he understands what bootstrapping is all about. In fact, it wasn’t until recently that I understood it myself. The common perception is that bootstrapping is all about juggling financial expenses – but really, there’s a whole…
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Prairie Moves: Bryan Roth, Kaylin Brabec, Electric Pulp and more
Published every Tuesday, Prairie Moves keeps our readers informed about career moves, media coverage, product development, and more from the companies and individuals we cover on Silicon Prairie News. If you or your company would like to submit one of the items below for our next Prairie Moves post, please email editor@siliconprairienews.com. And if you…
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How does Deal Garden grow? With Midwest Getaways and new cities
The folks at Deal Garden are putting out a bumper crop this summer (sorry, couldn’t resist the horticulture joke) with a recent expansion into travel via Midwest Getaways. They launched it earlier this week and, as of Thursday afternoon, already had more than 500 buyers on their first deal, a two-day getaway to Omaha. There…
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30 days after launch, Deal Garden sees profit, opportunity
Pat Lazure, co-founder of one of Omaha’s youngest startups, Deal Garden, didn’t hesitate to point out the obvious. “We’re unapologetic about being a daily deal site,” said Lazure during our conversation over dinner last night at Petrow’s. Launched December 17, 2010, with Deal Garden Topeka (Kansas), Deal Garden is now a three-person, profitable daily deal…
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Big Omaha: An attendee’s ‘personal diary’ of the event
Thanks to a media sponsorship from Andrew Warner of Mixergy, we had the pleasure of meeting Mixergy’s producer, Giang Biscan. After her experience at Big Omaha, she wrote about it on her blog, AsAble.com: My personal diary of #BigOmaha. Since publishing it on May 18, she’s given us permission to re-post it on Silicon Prairie…