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Funding Round Up: Week of September 30
The funding round up is an aggregation of a variety of sources, including Pitchbook, Form Ds, and Crunchbase. After building a list from these sources, we look for press releases and other mechanisms to provide more information. If you are would like to appear in the funding round up next week, please email us at…
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Big Round for Spear Power Systems
Spear Power Systems filed paperwork with the SEC and announced that it had raised a round of outside capital this week. In its Form D filing, the company identified that it had raised more than $14.5 million dollars in an external financing round. Spear Power Systems designs and manufactures lithium ion battery storage systems for…
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Meet a VC: Firebrand Ventures from Kansas City
In August of 2016, John Fein started the process of raising a venture capital fund in Kansas City. He had a target of $7 million as his fund size and as he describes – “zero connections” to the high net worth community in Kansas City. However, he had a mission to raise and invest the…
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Research: State Funding Report for the Silicon Prairie
2018 was a terrific year for the Silicon Prairie regarding venture dollars deployed. More than $6.1B was deployed in the region. While the number of companies receiving funds was about 8% lower (approximately 1450 companies were venture backed in the region), the amount of funding was up more than 34.5% from 2017 to 2018. Thus,…
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Sidewalk Labs Spins Out Replica, Announces Series A
On Thursday, Kansas City based Replica announced via blog post that it had moved from a product of Sidewalk Labs (in the Model Lab) to a separate company, called Replica. The company also announced that it had raised $11 million in venture funding. In the blog post, Nick Bowden, Replica’s CEO and co-founder explained how…
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Big Round for KC Based Bungii
Have you ever needed to move a couch and realized that your friend with the truck just moved? If so, Bungii is for you. Bungii is an Uber-like service for people seeking to use a pickup truck. The long-haul trucking business is big business at nearly $71B per year, but very little information is available…
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Join Pipeline, Change Your Entrepreneurial Trajectory
Today, August 28th, the Pipeline Entrepreneurial Fellowship is opening its application for 2020 fellows. Pipeline is the premier networking, mentoring, and entrepreneurial encouragement program in the Midwest. It has effectively helped build a network throughout Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. In so doing, Pipeline has helped, inspired, networked, and shaped individual entrepreneurs that have collectively created…
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C2FO raises another big round of capital
Leawood, Kansas based C2FO raised $200 million last week from a variety of investors, including SoftBank. This fundraising caused the valuation of the company to move over $1B – making it a Silicon Prairie unicorn.[1] C2FO is a payment management platform that helps small businesses received payment on contracts on expedited terms. Essentially, small businesses…
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Opportunity Hub (OHUB) is breaking down barriers for starting high growth businesses
On Friday, August 16th, the Opportunity Hub in Kansas City will be welcoming Keisha Knight Pulliam and Arian Simone (Fearless Fund), Brian Brackeen (Lightship Capital), and Candice Matthews Brackeen (NewMe and Hillman Accelerator) to Belger Crane Yard Studios at 6pm. This event is part of a series of events that takes place on the 3rd…
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First fundings research report
In talking to Jessica Straus, Dundee Venture Capital’s new Venture Partner, it occurred to me that we should write an update on first fundings in what Straus called the “mighty middle”. This paper describes first fundings. First fundings are a recordation of companies that raise capital for the first time. This paper uses Pitchbook data…