Ben Pankonin with Social Assurance shares about maturing an industry

Building a product where an industry is already at, technology wise, is an easy task. But building a new product that matures an industry, and a big one at that, is no small task. To create a remarkable product it means focusing on one industry and knowing everything about it. Ben Pankonin and Social Assurance [...]

Video: Social technology will change business forever

Mike Betzer, CEO of Social Dynamx, presented his talk ‘Social Technology Will Change Business Forever’ to students of UNL’s Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management. An experienced executive in contact centers and CRM, Mike drives the overall corporate and product strategy for Social Dynamx as CEO. Mike worked for MCI for 14 [...]

Nebraska Business Leaders Provide Insight on M&As

This is the final piece in a multi-part series about business acquisitions. Nebraska business owners, investors and support professionals tell Nebraska Entrepreneur about the merger and acquisition (M&A) process and their best advice to business owners. Throughout the past several months, I’ve interviewed and profiled Nebraska business owners, investors and support professionals about what it [...]

Video: Vestn Builds Startup on Ideas, Raises Seed Funding

Vestn helps individuals develop personal brands and institutions market their outstanding programs. Vestn was founded by Conner Dana, Brian Cary, and Phil Baylog at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The company started out as a way to network students at a school via their interests and skillsets and quickly became a branding solution for both the [...]

Top 10 Tips for Smooth M&A Transactions

This article is part of a multi-part series about business acquisitions. Nebraska business owners, investors and support professionals tell Nebraska Entrepreneur about the acquisition process and their best advice to business owners. Selling a business can be a long, intricate process. From deciding to sell, to finding prospective buyers, to valuing the business and completing [...]

Dillashaw: Build a Strong Business, Exit Strategy Will Follow

This article appears in a multi-part series about business acquisitions. Nebraska business owners, investors and support professionals tell Nebraska Entrepreneur about the acquisition process and their best advice to business owners. As a corporate securities lawyer, Bart Dillashaw has seen plenty of merger and acquisitions deals. The Texas native spent seven years working in Silicon [...]

Hyp-Yoga co-founder shares lessons learned, looks toward franchising

Carly Cummings spoke at the Midwest Entrepreneurship Conference (MWEC), held March 30-31 in Omaha. For Carly Cummings, like many business owners, her journey has been a rollercoaster ride. However, through the years, the current director of the Omaha Yoga School and co-founder, president and CEO of Hyp-Yoga has learned many lessons that helped shape and strengthen [...]

Milestone Inspired Composites Grows, Sources Locally

“Sharp” is an apt word for both the activities and the owner-operators of Milestone Inspired Composites. At Milestone, locally sourced aggregate – think bottle and window glass, porcelain, mirror and stone scrap – is mixed with a resin to create a composite surface for use as countertop and flooring material. The original idea for the [...]

SharePlow Founder: ‘Mountain’ of Opportunities for B2B Products

Working in the startup industry since the height of the dot-com era in the early 2000s, Ron Osborne describes his passion for building companies as simply “euphoric.” The founder and president of one of Omaha’s latest tech startups, SharePlow, Osborne has worked with a variety of startups since his first job as a stockbroker and [...]

Video: Embracing the Mighty Bootstrap

Mark Carson started Fat Brain Toys out of the garage of his house based on the curiosity of his son. They now have 45 full time employees and up to 250 employees during the holiday season. Below the video you will find several of the key things that Mark talks about. This talk was given [...]

Fat Brain Toys co-founder to be a keynote speaker at Infotec

One keynote speaker at the upcoming Infotec conference in Omaha is Mark Carson. The co-founder of Omaha-based toy company Fat Brain Toys will share his experience with “embracing the mighty bootstrap.” “It will be part technical, part entrepreneurial, but 100 percent applicable to all attendees,” Carson said. “The core focus of the presentation will be [...]

SkyVu Entertainment co-founder Ben Vu found inspiration in iPhone

How did an animation studio specializing in mobile games land in the Omaha area? One might say it started with an iPhone. “I saw the possibility of telling stories through the device,” Ben Vu said. In 2008, Vu bought an iPhone and soon found that he spent more time using it than he did watching [...]

Video: Establishing and leveraging advisory boards

The second breakout in the Succession and Re-invention track at the 2012 Nebraska Summit on Entrepreneurship was focused on establishing and leveraging advisory boards within your business. This topic comes up often and especially in family businesses. The panelists included Todd Duncan, Duncan Aviation and Jan Labenz, Labenz & Associates, LLC. To learn more about [...]

SelectOut promoting greater online privacy for all

Speaker Preview: 2012 Nebraska Summit on Entrepreneurship It’s one thing to “cover your tracks” if you’re ambling through the mud or shuffling through freshly fallen snow. But the online realm, where it’s much harder to keep tabs on who’s keeping tabs on you, is another thing entirely. Enter SelectOut. Founded by Calvin Pappas 18 months ago, SelectOut’s [...]

Nebraska Wines Make Vinegars Divine: George Paul Vinegar Founder to Speak at NE Summit on Entrepreneurship

Speaker Preview: 2012 Nebraska Summit on Entrepreneurship Gourmet wine vinegars made in a traditional style, aging for six months to five years and made from fruits grown in the Nebraska Sandhills — this is what George Johnson, his wife and three children envisioned when they created George Paul Vinegars. The Johnson family started growing grapes [...]

Franchising is a Relationship

Franchising Series: this is the last article in our series on franchising. Aaron Marshbanks knows the excitement that goes along with a discovery day — that day when potential franchisees visit the home office and get the sales pitch. He has seen the wheels start to turn as people think about the opportunity for income and [...]

AIM Institute Presents – From Innovate to Dominate: Perspectives on Rapid Growth in the Cloud

The AIM Institute has been a longtime supporter of information technology leadership in the region. It does this through a number of different programs and initiatives and one of those has always been a speaker series. For 2012, the AIM Institute is focusing its speaker series around the impact that innovation, marketing, management and ‘the cloud’ have on the business [...]

Entrepreneur Spotlight: Liz Renner with Only10Pounds.com

Michael Ventrella, a contestant on the popular weight loss show “The Biggest Loser,” dropped 264 pounds in one season. Ventralla, along with numerous other contestants, inspired audiences to shed pound after pound with their remarkable transformations. But Liz Renner, owner of Only10Pounds.com, stresses the importance of losing small amounts of weight as well. “’The Biggest [...]

Investomers: What are they and how they could help your business

As any seasoned entrepreneur can tell you, investment can either help or hurt a company, depending on how it’s handled. That doesn’t change when investment comes from a customer, but the opportunities and risks tend to be a little different. For starters, customer investors tend to be more engaged, according to Isoft Data Systems CEO [...]

Game Development & Starting a Company

Nebraska Entrepreneur recently attended a talk at the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The speaker was Justin Hall and the topic focused on game development and the process of starting a company. Hall started a product called PMOG, later changed to The Nethernet, which focused on making [...]

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