Startups

  • Grasshorse Studios finds its groove with character animation and local talent

    Grasshorse Studios finds its groove with character animation and local talent

    Grasshorse Studios founder and director Steve Jennings said carving out a niche in the field of character animation is driving the Winfield-based company forward as it draws artistic talent from Southeastern Community College in West Burlington, Iowa. The Great Recession and September 2009 freeze on Iowa’s film tax-credit program helped Grasshorse Studios to refocus its…

  • The ultimate urban e-scooter started as a conversation in Nebraska

    The ultimate urban e-scooter started as a conversation in Nebraska

    A chance meeting in California connected a Holdrege, Nebraska, entrepreneur with an innovator from China. The result is a battery-powered, portable adult electric scooter that is catching on among urban commuters worldwide. Two of the partners in Probity Cell, LLC, are Robert McCormick of Holdrege, Nebraska, and Jeff Kong, who now lives in Chicago but…

  • 10 questions with WorkHound’s Andrew Kirpalani and Max Farrell

    10 questions with WorkHound’s Andrew Kirpalani and Max Farrell

    WorkHound is a software platform attacking the alarming 97 percent turnover rate within the trucking industry. Using WorkHound, trucking companies can retain their drivers by improving driver experience. The mobile application enables truck drivers to share feedback—praise, problems and ideas—directly with carriers in real-time. That feedback is turned into actionable insights truck carriers can use to enact…

  • CompanyCam solves contractors’ problems with project management app

    CompanyCam solves contractors’ problems with project management app

    Luke Hansen, founder and CEO of CompanyCam, didn’t set out to create a startup. He just wanted to find an application that would help his family’s roofing business. “I built this as a solution for a problem we were having at White Castle Roofing,” said Hansen. “I had searched on and off for months, trying to find…

  • Zinnia makes buying flowers online easy and affordable

    Zinnia makes buying flowers online easy and affordable

    “We want to be the Chipotle of the flower-buying industry,” said Nathan Bliss, Co-founder of Zinnia. Bliss explained that people usually buy flowers one of two ways in places like Omaha. There are relatively low-quality grocery store flowers (the Taco Bell of flowers) and there are overpriced online retailers (the Kobe Steakhouse of flowers). “We want to be somewhere in the middle.…

  • 9 questions with Assortify’s Marcus Goedeker

    9 questions with Assortify’s Marcus Goedeker

    Assortify is an ecommerce platform’s dream merchandiser. The algorithm, developed by Marcus Goedeker, Jacob Messerly and Jeremy Vlcan (all Hayneedle veterans), measures the effectiveness of a retailer’s product assortment by comparing it to their competitors and analyzing trends in the online marketplace. Assortify can then identify opportunities for new product assortment as well as provide…

  • With COMP’D, you can subscribe to unlimited concerts

    With COMP’D, you can subscribe to unlimited concerts

    Every great rock ’n’ roll story starts with a man living in his parents’ basement. For Dustin Trauernicht, the founder of the online platform COMP’D, his journey into the music industry began selling t-shirts out of his parents basement for a music blog based in Nashville, Tennessee. “I started out marketing for a t-shirt company,…

  • Why sports app Spectator decided to pivot

    Why sports app Spectator decided to pivot

    Two weeks after arriving at the NMotion Accelerator in Lincoln, Nebraska, Jon Myers of Spectator realized that in order to survive, his company would have to reimagine what it was. “We didn’t have a real buyer. Everybody loved the service, they loved what it could do, but nobody was willing to pay for it,” Myers said of their original sports app…

  • Bugeater Foods sprints to Demo Day

    Bugeater Foods sprints to Demo Day

    Bugeater Foods, in the NMotion accelerator program in Lincoln, Nebraska, came into existence less than 9 months ago, with the idea of cricket- (yes, the insect) based health supplement products, and they have been sprinting ever since. You can already find their product on the shelves of the local HyVee and in the latest Bulu Box…

  • Repair chain Gophermods expands into Des Moines and Omaha

    Repair chain Gophermods expands into Des Moines and Omaha

        Founder Casey Profita wired up his first Gophermods outlet while attending the University of Minnesota, and immersing his team in the college’s University Technology Enterprise Center (UTEC) program. Profita’s going-on-six-year-old consumer electronics repair company is now expanding from a regional perspective while the entrepreneur considers its potential as a national brand. “The economic downturn…