St. Louis and Missouri
The Silicon Prairie had an excellent week as deals appear to be closing before the holiday rush. St. Louis and Minneapolis had strong weeks. And we had a big round in Oklahoma. The Zero Card of Tulsa which provides an interesting software solution to healthcare costs received significant outside funding – including participation from the…
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This week we are writing a funding roundup that really covers one and ½ weeks to cover Thanksgiving week plus the week previous. During this time period, Chicago received a disproportionate amount of the funding dollars in the region. However, Omaha and Oklahoma City both had companies close out fund raising campaigns. Also, the region…
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According to SEC filings, St. Louis based FinLocker has raised a $10.389 million round from the St. Louis Arch Angels and other undisclosed investors. FinLocker is a software tool for individual consumers seeking to improve their financial position and literacy. The company specifically helps aggregate a consumer’s financial data and then analyzes and recommends mortgage…
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Two Silicon Prairie companies will be moving to Buffalo in the upcoming weeks, thanks to a program created by 43North. The program announced seven winning companies last week – including Strayos (St. Louis) and Peanut Butter (Chicago). As part of the program, both companies must move their CEO and a majority of staff to Buffalo.…
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Last summer, the Aksarben Foundation approached Chapman and Company about creating a landscape analysis on talent for Nebraska. While this analysis is about Nebraska, there are many lessons for communities throughout the Silicon Prairie region. Here are some broad stroke lessons from the report: The United States is WAY behind on technology talent. This is…
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One of the major problems in the construction industry is that information must be entered into multiple platforms. So, for example, contact information must be entered into an enterprise resource management (ERM) platform as well as a customer relationship management platform (CRM). This makes the construction industry one of the least efficient in the world.…
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It was a strong week for Minnesota. Between Total Expert and ShiraTronics, Minnesota based companies brought in more than $85 million in Venture Funding. There was a little more diversity than in previous weeks with companies in Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, and Wisconsin also raising substantial funds. These fundings are aggregate lists created from Crunchbase, SEC…
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In a phone interview with Seth Derner, the founder of Vivayic, I discovered something that is truly out of the ordinary. It wasn’t the fact that Vivayic was ranked exactly number 5000 on the Inc. 5000 list for 2019. It wasn’t that a rancher’s kid from Wheeler County, Nebraska had started a customized skill assessment/training…
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St. Louis continues to have strong biotechnology startup fundings. The most recent funded company is PierianDx, a clinical genomic informatics company. This week the company announced that it has raised $27 million from ATW Partners and SJF Ventures. In addition to these funders, other existing investors participated in the round, including Health Catalyst Capital, Inova…
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In early October, ZAF Energy Systems of Joplin, Missouri announced an agreement to deploy their next generation nickel-zinc (NiZn) battery system in a United States Air Force’s intercontinental ballistic missile ground facility. This was a significant achievement. However, it was just the beginning of a big month for ZAF. This week, the company announced a…
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