.floatimg-left-hort { float:left; } .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 12px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} What is Silicon Prairie News?

We try to highlight companies that are doing cool and innovative things, which tend to be high-tech and high-growth companies. We found in the Midwest that on the whole we are a humble people, so it’s kind of hard to get people to raise their hands and say, “What I’m doing is really neat and I need to tell the world about it.” So we kind of have to find those people and bring them out and really tell their stories.

Are you an entrepreneur?

I definitely am. Silicon Prairie News is only part of what I do.

Describe your ideal scene.

Definitely that start-up community. I’ve worked for several good companies in my life, and each one was progressively bigger. What I found with that is decisions were harder to make, harder to execute and implement and get things done. Going back to school, I really wanted to push that back and get down to a small company and be more aware that we kind of live or die based on whether what we’re doing is successful, not what somebody else in some distant part of the company is doing.

Does Silicon Prairie provide any value for corporations?

It does. I think that there is an entire ecosystem out there. You have to have your kind of stalwart, foundational businesses. Without them, Des Moines wouldn’t be what Des Moines is. But you also need these start-up entrepreneurial groups that kind of work alongside them to really make the system turn. If I worked at a Nationwide or at a big company like that, I’d want to know what else is going on within the community. It may be a (jumping-off) point or it may be a potential acquisition for the company. The entrepreneurial ecosystem is what really drives the business community.

Describe Des Moines’ culture of entrepreneurialism.

I think there’s more there than I would have thought when I first moved here. It’s an exciting culture. We have some marquee names now; SmartyPig is the one that leaps to mind as a technology start-up that really took off and now has national and international recognition. They’re the type of company that the rest of us can look to if we ever get into that “can we do this in Des Moines” type of mentality. You see companies like Palisade Systems Inc. that are getting big.

What are the challenges?

What makes a good entrepreneurial ecosystem is the ability of the community to take risks. That’s probably the hardest thing that I’ve found in Des Moines, for people willing to say, “Yeah, I really want to try that.” I think part of that is the banking, financial, insurance hub that we are here. Those are the businesses that purposefully don’t take risks. So when you have kind of hot-shot programmers graduating from places like Iowa State, they are kind of pathway, where they think to go work for (a company) where they have a very stable job. You don’t find that in other places where the ecosystems are really blossoming. It’s kind of a cultural shift that I hope happens here over time.

Why Des Moines?

We really didn’t get too far outside the Midwest when we left Iowa. It was really a combination of having the baby, kind of wanting to start over with my career and my wife going back to school. It was an opportune time to come back. I didn’t really know what Des Moines would hold when we got here, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I didn’t realize how developed the neighborhoods had gotten, how cosmopolitan this community has really become and how many exciting things are really going on here.

What else is new?

I just launched another company in the past few weeks with a couple buddies from school called www.zanatic.com, which is a sports information sharing site. It will allow users to submit stories from ESPN or Fox News or even somebody local … and share that. You can subscribe to different pieces of that to kind of help you bubble up and find new content. We just launched the site last week.