Entrepreneur Spotlight: Ben Blecha with Sky Prosthetics and ACE Ortho Solutions

Ben Blecha has one leg. He lost the other to bone cancer at age 16 and suffered through pain and blood loss during his college years. The prosthetic device he was fitted with never worked quite right. But the struggles he faced as an amputee now define his career. Blecha established Sky Prosthetics in Benkelman, [...]

A Look Inside the Nebraska 2011 East 2 West Venture Competition

This post is from guest contributor Wade Sikkink:  After spending the first part of my professional life inside huge organizations (US Navy, Fortune 500 companies) I became interested in startups and entrepreneurship. I started dabbling in side business ventures while reading more and more about startups and the startup scene.  I’ve been involved in several [...]

Invest Nebrasksa Wants to Live Up to its Name with East 2 West Venture Competition

On Nov. 18, Invest Nebraska is holding its third annual East 2 West Venture Competition, designed to celebrate, encourage and spotlight the unique conditions in Nebraska’s culture that result in such a rich entrepreneurial spirit. If you plan to enter, be sure and come with your sleeves rolled up. A tagline on Invest Nebraska’s website proclaims, [...]

Startup Weekend Returns to Omaha

Time and money are two roadblocks faced by every entrepreneur, but with just $75 and 54 hours, you can jump-start your ideas and maybe even launch a business. Startup Weekend Omaha is back.  From Sept. 16-18, business people, creatives and developers will converge at the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Mammel Hall for a unique [...]

$5,000 Awarded to Students with Big Ideas

Students representing Nebraska high schools, area colleges and universities had three minutes to pitch their idea for a new business. The second annual 3-2-1 Quick Pitch Competition was held on Wednesday at Memorial Stadium in the Club Level Concourse. “This year we had over 50 competitors from all over Nebraska.  We’ve had a good diversity of [...]

Invest Nebraska Names $50,000 New Venture Winner

(Omaha – November 19, 2010) Invest Nebraska Corporation, a statewide venture development organization, hosted its East 2 West state competition Friday at The Old Mattress Factory Bar and Grill in Omaha. Six hopeful finalists competed for the chance to win a $50,000 equity investment, but only one went home with the prize. After judges’ deliberation, [...]

Coach’s challenge sparks Agile Sports; Raikes School provides tools and experience

A challenge in 2006 from then University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) Cornhuskers Head Football Coach Bill Callahan sparked the development of Agile Sports, now a growing startup in Lincoln’s Haymarket.  Callahan wanted to improve how videos of play action are used in training. He also wanted a safer, easier way to get videos to players and [...]

Allied Strategy sets path for Raikes School startups

While the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) is a gateway to corporate positions for some graduates, others use this honors program education and experience to start them on a different path – launching their own companies. The startup stories of two Lincoln companies that raised significant outside capital demonstrate the ways the [...]

RockDex earns local and national attention

RockDex, a company in Omaha, lets bands learn how they really rate with fans based on Internet buzz. Their software application tracks data like band mention and song plays on social media sites and other Internet venues, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and music blogs. RockDex compiles, analyzes and presents the data so that musicians, managers, [...]

High School Students Learn Real World Skills in Entrepreneurship Focus Program

On a Friday morning in late May, three young people huddle around a laptop, making last-minute tweaks to a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. New, bright blue t-shirts printed with inspirational words and business names rest on a table nearby. Across the room, a large foam board model of Lincoln’s Haymarket displays representations of new businesses including some [...]

Game on Games brings hobby hub to rural Nebraskans

McCook, Nebraska, is probably one of the last places you’d expect to find a game store, let alone one with a global customer base. But since 2007, Game on Games has been providing Nebraskans in the southwestern corner of the state a place to, well… get their game on. Branching well beyond the world of [...]

NBC Now Casting: America’s Next Great Restaurant

Do you have an idea for America’s next great restaurant? Are you sitting on a billion dollar concept? If you think your restaurant idea has what it takes to go national and bring in millions of hungry Americans, read on… From NBC and Magical Elves, the Emmy Award-nominated producers of “Project Runway” and “Top Chef,” [...]

Inaugural “Quick Pitch” Competition A Rousing Success

An “elevator pitch” is a bare-bones run-down of a business proposition, truncated so as to be deliverable in the time it takes an elevator to travel from the bottom floor to the top. So, it was only fitting that students hoping to win cash prizes for their budding business ideas took an elevator up three floors to [...]

Wayne Business Lets Customers Create Custom Headboards

Marilyn Wilson got the inspiration for a new Wayne, Nebraska business, Heady Bed, while watching a design show on television. She noticed the designer’s staff often had to carry large, unwieldy headboards up narrow, sometimes winding steps. She said she remembers thinking, “Wouldn’t it be good to have a modular system.” Later, when Wilson designed [...]

2010 Invest Nebraska Venture Competitions Planned

NebraskaEntrepreneur.com talks to Dan Hoffman, executive director of Invest Nebraska, about their Venture Competitions. Invest Nebraska is a nonprofit corporation that advises and invests in entrepreneurial businesses in Nebraska. In future posts we’ll talk with him about other Invest Nebraska activities and opportunities. Q: What are the Venture Competitions you organize? A: Last year we [...]

Nebraska Center for Entrepreneurship Helps Students Navigate Troubled Job Market

The most successful entrepreneurs are those who’ve been able to visualize opportunity where others see nothing at all. That propensity for pulling ideas out of thin air is indispensable in an ailing economy, where employment is increasingly hard to come by. In today’s rocky professional landscape, it’s safe to say a fair share of available jobs are those that don’t [...]

Broken Bow Bison Ranch Wins Nebraska EDGE Honor

via IANR News GRAND ISLAND, Neb. — In 1994, Marty and Karen Bredthauer of Broken Bow began raising bison as an alternative to raising cattle on their 320-acre ranch. They sold their first bison meat the next year. Today, their Straight Arrow Bison Ranch is home to about 60 head of bison, a growing regional [...]