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Retail Aware shows no signs of slowing growth despite pandemic
Keith Fix, co-founder and CEO of Retail Aware, learned to code during a brief stay with his mother at a homeless shelter. The 10-year-old aspiring entrepreneur’s parents had recently separated, and young Fix needed money for clothes and the after school programs he wanted to attend. A family friend needed a website built. Fix convinced…
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UNeTech levels the playing field for high-risk, high-reward tech startups
The “valley of death” is a term used in the startup community to refer to the dreaded gap between the discovery of promising new technologies and the bringing to market of commercially viable new products based on those technologies. It is the badlands where risky and possibly disruptive tech goes to die. Put more formally,…
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HTI Labs fights human trafficking through research, technology, policy
An Omaha-based company using a data-driven approach to combat human trafficking recently raised funding to expand its crucially needed work to support law enforcement, victims and survivors of the practice. HTI Labs, a social enterprise corporation combating human trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault through data-driven research and tech, has grown far larger than CEO…
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Is it over yet? A look back at 2020
We have yet to meet anyone who wishes this year would last longer. From COVID-19 to civil unrest to political and economic turmoil, 2020 brought us a number of challenges and tragedies beyond the scope of this article. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that December is almost over. So while it might seem premature…
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Karen Borchert on Flywheel: Building something big, in the middle of somewhere small
This guest post written by Karen Borchert, COO of Flywheel, originally appeared in Medium. This March, I was planning to give a speech at SaaStr US, about how our company, Flywheel, built something big, right in the middle of Omaha, Nebraska. This week is my last week at Flywheel, and while the pandemic prevented me from…
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Corn pollinating drone technology earns Iowa City agtech firm $7.5 million investment
On its own, a corn plant will pollinate itself: the golden tassels topping the slender green shoots that comprise nearly one-third of U.S. cropland naturally release pollen that fertilizes the silky portion of the plant below. This natural process is critical to the country’s number-one feed crop, but experts say fertilization must be facilitated to…
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Virtual awards ceremony a first for Omaha’s tech community
Last night, members of Omaha’s tech and startup communities attended the first-ever virtual version of the AIM Tech Awards, a celebration of local innovators and changemakers in the technology sector. A prerecorded ceremony streamed on a virtual stage, accompanied by a live chat constantly scrolling with affirmations, congratulations and commentary from attendees. Traditionally held in…
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After selling Omaha startup Median, co-founders set aim on their next idea
Two Omaha entrepreneurs are celebrating the sale of their first start-up, Median, while looking ahead to the next endeavor. Derek Homann and Ben Stevinson recently announced that Dallas-based telecommunications company Loup had acquired the co-browsing startup in late October. The sale, for an undisclosed amount, comes more than three years after the duo left their…
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On Nebraska Innovation Campus, The Combine incubator hatches new agtech startups
Before Seattle-based Costco broke ground on its $280 million poultry operation in Fremont in 2017, Scott Niewohner remembers a conversation with his cousin about the pros and cons of building barns to raise chickens to supply the plant. Chief among the cons, according to Niewohner’s cousin: daily retrieval of the dead birds scattered throughout the…
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IO2020: the New Innovators’ Summit connects entrepreneurial community (and tickets are free this year)
Great ideas start with curiosity. Bringing those ideas to life is its own challenge. That’s what longtime entrepreneur Brian Ardinger believes, and that’s why he’s made it his mission to help Nebraska startup founders, business leaders and innovators solve those challenges. Ardinger is cofounder of InsideOutside.io, an innovation-focused resource network for startups, entrepreneurs, investors, enterprises,…