Silicon Prairie Built features a counter of how many companies display the “Silicon Prairie Built” badge.
A pair of Silicon Prairie companies this week introduced easy ways to help their neighbors tout their Midwestern roots.
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Goodtwin, an Omaha digital agency, today launched Silicon Prairie Built (above), a site that encourages startups in and around Omaha, Des Moines and Kansas City to identify themselves as Silicon Prairie shops. Silicon Prairie Built offers badges that companies can add to their websites. It also lists the companies that have done so.
“We think there’s a lot of products out there that people probably don’t even realize are coming from the Midwest, so (we’re) just giving people an opportunity to do something that’s extremely simple to be able to showcase that a little bit,” GoodTwin partner Andrew Wirick said Wednesday.
Wirick’s partner Adam Nielsen said the idea came about earlier this month in collaboration with the team at Silicon Prairie News. GoodTwin devoted time to it as an in-house project led by its newest employees, Clay Wiese and Greg Thompson.
To add your company to Silicon Prairie Built, visit siliconprairiebuilt.com. Nielsen said GoodTwin approves each addition to the site.
Built in Kansas City lists companies on its homepage that have joined the campaign.
Meanwhile, Local Ruckus, a Kansas City, Kan. startup, on Tuesday took a saying it has touted on its site since summer – “Built in Kansas City” – and launched a site to encourage others to do the same.
“This is just a way that kind of shows some unity in Kansas City, that we’re excited about what we’re doing and we’re all pulling in the same direction,” Local Ruckus co-founder Adam Arredondo said today.
Jake Johnson, a web designer who did consulting work for Local Ruckus over the summer, initially added it to the startup’s site. “Of course, I loved it,” Arredondo said.
After Arredondo received compliments on it in recent months and thought about the Kansas City-focused mission of Kansas City Startup Village, another of his efforts, Arredondo and his Local Ruckus co-founder, Matthew Marcus, teamed up to create the campaign.
To add your company to Built in Kansas City, visit builtinkc.com. Tech and non-tech companies alike are invited join the movement, Arredondo said.
Silicon Prairie Built and Built in Kansas City are part of a wave of campaigns that show pride in the city or region where a startup is based. Built in Boston, for example, served as inspiration for GoodTwin. Examples elsewhere include Made in New York and Colorado: Entrepreneurial by Nature. In the region, similar campaigns include I Live in Omaha, DesMob (Des Moines) and ICCReatives (Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, Iowa).
Note: Silicon Prairie News collaborated with GoodTwin to launch Silicon Prairie Built.
Credits: Screenshot from siliconprairiebuilt.com.
