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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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WalkWise Helps Seniors Walk…Wisely
WalkWise Helping Seniors Walk…Wisely Last month, on August 21, World Senior Citizen Day was celebrated to not only honor elderly adults but to also raise awareness of issues affecting this growing demographic. According to the 2019 revision of the UN DESA World Population Prospects, 21.4 % of the world’s population will be 60 years and…
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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…
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Your guide to the Heartland’s 1 Million Cups events
1 Million Cups was developed in Kansas City, MO in 2012 by Co-Founders Cameron Cushman and Nate Olson who were working at the time on the Entrepreneurship Team at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. What began as an experiment to bring entrepreneurs in one city together over a cup of coffee towards a goal of…
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Major Midwest HIT merger positions Sioux Falls as leading startup/health tech hub
Sioux Falls-based DocuTAP and Illinois-based Practice Velocity – two of the biggest names in EHR/on-demand healthcare – just announced their official merger this morning to become newly formed company Experity. Warburg Pincus, a leading global private equity firm focused on growth investing, has merged DocuTAP and Practice Velocity— the two leaders and innovators in the…
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What is an ecosystem: A Sioux Falls ecosystem report
“Ecosystem” and “ecosystem building” have been hot terms in the world of entrepreneurial development lately. As cities begin to realize that fostering entrepreneurship is a great economic tool for growth; new strategies are being developed to make cities more “entrepreneur-friendly.” One of the first questions community builders should be asking is how they can assess…
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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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Fargo based c2renew raises round
On March 28, c2renew announced that it raised $150k from undisclosed investors. This fundraising was done in the form of SAFE notes (simple agreement for future equity). The company helps clients build custom bio-composite materials for their applications. For example, the company works with locally sourced waste in Fargo to make “stuff”. On the company’s…
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Inanovate proving that bioscience lives in Sioux Falls
Inanovate raised more than three million dollars in mid-February to continue its efforts to build better tools for identifying genetic markers with smaller blood samples. Inanovate is a hardware device that sits on a table top. This device takes small sample sizes (usually blood) and puts them through the proprietary testing elements. It is fast…
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Embrace the rural…
Silicon Prairie News writes most of its stories about companies from cities or small towns, rarely do we write articles about rural areas. Being in the Midwest, we strongly believe in rural America. As such, we watch stories in rural America closely. However, writing stories regularly about the rural parts of our states can be…