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More than 600 attend Heartland Shark Tank casting call
The first step in getting on Shark Tank, the reality TV startup pitch competition, is a casting call. On April 6, 150 teams got their chance to pitch to one of five casting producers in Lincoln. The event was organized by the Engler Entrepreneurship Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “This is the time of…
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8QS With a Silicon Prairie Founder: Maggie Schoonover
Maggie Schoonover calls herself “an introverted science nerd.” We call her an inspiring Silicon Prairie Founder, and we’re pleased she chose to share her co-founding story with SPN and our readers. Here’s what she had to say…. My educational background is heavily focused in the sciences – I earned a B.S. in Meteorology from…
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Why recruitment alone is a weak talent strategy
Richard Florida authored a piece entitled “America’s Looming Creativity Crisis” in the Harvard Business Review (https://miscsf.typepad.com/miscblog/files/CreativityCrisis.pdf) published In October 2004. He presciently identified a challenge that was facing and continues to face the United States – the inability to find the “creative class”. In the article, Florida writes, “Today, virtually the entire public dialogue about…
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New companies and an accelerator are tackling transportation and logistics in the Silicon Prairie
Virtually every community in the Silicon Prairie advertises that it is in the middle of the country, and thus it is a good location for transportation, logistics, and warehousing. It should come as no surprise then, that many regional communities have a significant employment level in transportation and warehousing. According to the United States Cluster…
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Kauffman provides a grant to the Startup Champions Network
The Startup Champions Network, a national organization of entrepreneurial ecosystem builders with a strong Silicon Prairie presence, announced on October 29 that it received a planning grant from the Kansas City, Missouri-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. An entrepreneurial ecosystem builder is a person who helps facilitate the multi-faceted creation and improvement of the components of…
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SPN Top 10: Things you should know about OKC’s startup ecosystem
Oklahoma City’s ecosystem had a rough week from the outside looking in. Silicon Prairie News ran a story where the community underperformed its expected venture investment. The Brookings Institute and Walton Family Foundation produced an article suggesting that the community was having waning investment. But frankly, this is pretty misleading. OKC is going through a…
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Follow-up report: State Expected Venture Values in the Midwest
Following the publication of our article on Tuesday regarding expected values in cities, Silicon Prairie News received multiple requests for more information. There were three primary questions regarding the data. The first question is where and how did you get this information. Silicon Prairie News and its partner organizations use Pitchbook and FormDs.com to identify…
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Paul Singh visits Lincoln’s startup week, offers advice to startups and entrepreneurs
Lincoln Startup Week is taking place this week in Lincoln, Nebraska, including visits and contributions from Paul Singh of Results Junkies. Singh has made over 2000 investments and is a nationally recognized speaker on investing, early-stage companies, and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Singh’s basic approach is to travel around the country and speak in places that are…
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Why Silicon Prairie communities need to be thinking about where they should be, not just where others are
In doing the research for the Silicon Prairie Annual Report, slated for a November release, Chapman and Company noticed an interesting trend when comparing venture activity (as identified in Pitchbook) in the Midwest. As can be seen in the below graph (which includes Midwest communities that received venture investment in 2017), the order of investment…
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Whiteboard Technologies raises $2.5 million
Whiteboard Technologies recently announced that it has completed a raise of $2.5 million, led by i2e, an Oklahoma based venture entity. Whiteboard Technologies, creator of Whiteboard Mortgage CRM, provides customer relationship management (CRM) software for mortgage professionals – with a focus on keeping everyone in the loop during the mortgage underwriting process. The company has…