By the end of May, the Iowa AgriTech Accelerator welcomes six new startups fresh on the agriculture field to Des Moines. Each of those startups selected to participate receives $40,000 in seed funding, subsidized housing throughout the 94 days, and time to build mentorships, partnerships and a broader agritech network…
Co-founder and CEO Arsalan Lodhi likes to compare agtech startup Wisran to public utilities metering. Without water or gas meters, Lodhi said, communities would have no way to track the waste of resources incurred by residents, and costs would look much different. “The same concept and principles we are bringing…
Highway Equipment company of Cedar Rapids has become the first Platinum Harvester Sponsor for the Ag Startup Engine at Iowa State University. The Ag Startup Engine effort was launched two years ago to help with seed-stage investment and organized mentorship. “Now more than ever, we need entrepreneurs and innovators in…
In the next few years, you might be saying goodbye to that file cabinet of insurance policies. The eight startup founders presenting at last night’s Global Insurance Symposium represented the latest graduating class of the Des Moines-based Global Insurance Accelerator, which has graduated 26 startup companies from the program as…
As Executive Director of Entrepreneurial Initiatives, Mike Colwell at the Greater Des Moines Partnership knows what draws an audience to networking and business-building events. “People tend to like t-shirts,” Colwell said. So for Accelerate DSM on April 5, the Greater Des Moines Partnership turned to Mike Draper of Raygun, seeking…
In 2008, David Tominsky was working in downtown Cedar Rapids, just blocks away from the Cedar River. That June, monumental river levels stopped everyone in their tracks. “The building that I worked out of – the basement was completely filled, and the water came up ten or eleven feet onto…
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Visit www.businessrecord.com/innovation-iowa to view all Innovation Iowa stories, including the 2026 Innovation Iowa Magazine, out now.
-Sarah Diehn, Business Record Editor