the PULL #153

Big news, friends! We're bringing Paul Singh's Results Junkies Tech Tour to Iowa the week of July 17. Paul (formerly of 500startups, DisruptionCorp and more) is a serial entrepreneur, investor and startup ecosystem expert that has been criss-crossing the country in an Airstream camper for most of this year. Each week he drives to a different community and packs his schedule full of meetups, keynotes, round tables, office hours, etc. to get to know local founders, investors and policy makers.

We'll have him (and a few of his investor friends) with us in Iowa for a full week and we plan to make the most of it. We're working with Paul to plan the tour right now but we have a some room in the schedule if you have a great event idea (reply to this message to let us know!). Des Moines will be our main base of operations for the week but we're planning Eastern Iowa events on Thursday (7/21) in Cedar Rapids.

As we finalize the schedule we'll add it to the Iowa Tour page here. If you click the red "Count Me In!" button you'll get a notification as events are added.

We couldn't do this without the financial support of our established business community. Tremendous thanks to the Next Level Ventures/Iowa Venture Capital Association, Davis Brown Law Firm, NewBoCo and BrownWinick—Attorneys at Law for underwriting the direct expenses to bring the tour to Iowa.

One quick request: we're seeking two additional $1,000 sponsors to cover the cost of programming during that week. If you work with an organization that has the means to support innovative things like this in our community, let us know.

I'm super excited for this and 1,000 high fives to Deanna Bennett and John Jackovin for volunteering with me to pull it all together. 

Geoff

EntreFEST will return in May 2017 after a one-year hiatus. It will now be led the New Bohemian Innovation Collaborative (NewBoCo)—which operates the Iowa Startup Accelerator, Vault Coworking & Collaboration Space, and numerous other startup programs across Eastern Iowa—which is taking over from University of Northern Iowa's Center for Business Growth and Innovation (CBGI) who founded the event. CBGI will help the group to transition the event to a new, year-round operational team.

“We’re excited to bring EntreFEST back in 2017, as Iowa’s leading entrepreneurship conference,” NewBoCo Executive Director Eric Engelmann said. “EntreFEST is critically important to our state – it has changed the lives of many entrepreneurs in Iowa and across the Midwest.”

Geoff's note: I'm a big fan of EntreFEST and I'm excited that it lives on! Here's a post I published after the 2015 event: 5 thoughts on EntreFEST

• Max Farrell from WorkHound (Des Moines) was chosen as a delegate to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit that starts today on Stanford's campus
• Chris Augeri from Drive Spotter (Omaha/Des Moines) blogged about the decision to join a second accelerator
• AmesTrib wrote about the CyStarters (Ames) student accelerator program 
• DMR profiled organ donation communication startup Organizer (Iowa City)
• SPN talked with Dwolla (Des Moines) at the one year mark from their business model shift
• The Nonpareil covered a entrepreneurial summer camp/pitch competitions for middle schoolers in Council Bluffs
• Vault (Cedar Rapids) is hosting an event called "Tiny Bit of Space" this weekend