From startups to spin-offs, incubators to accelerators, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and the surrounding area have embraced entrepreneurship. This special section highlights some of those established efforts — some brand new — and the personalities that make them fly.
1 Million Cups — or 1MC — was developed on the idea of giving entrepreneurs and their communities a safe place to gather and connect, to share ideas and feedback, and to identify challenges and find opportunities. Its name is reflective of its mission: the notion that entrepreneurs discover solutions and engage with their communities over a million cups of coffee.
Sadie Sell and Nicholas Terbovic never owned a business before co-founding Mabel & Pearl Tea Co. a year ago, but training opportunities and community resources have their business purring.
New Bohemian Innovation Collaborative, Inc.’s Iowa Startup Accelerator has piloted a new program model aimed at taking already profitable businesses and teaching them the tools to grow to the next level.
A program called FarmBeats helps highlight the intersection of tech and agriculture
Amanda Dee’s specialty is doing weddings and portraits. She serves hundreds of clients, mostly in the Corridor area of Cedar Rapids to Iowa City, with many coming back year after year. A Kiva microloan helped her with equipment upgrades.
NewBoCo’s Kaitlin Byers is traveling to Indonesia as part of the YSEALI Professional Fellows Program Reciprocal Exchange. The program builds on a partnership that began last summer, when NewBoCo welcomed Shafira Rizki, co-founder of Lead With Her.
A new partnership with Iowa State means Iowa’s Future City regional competition will move to Ames. The partnership should make the competition accessible to more Iowans across the state, leaders hope. NewBoCo has been hosting the Future City Iowa Regional Competition since 2017.
In Iowa, STEM education can mean getting a start as early as preschoolers playing with building blocks.
Applications are open for the next round of the Iowa Startup Accelerator, with the hope that ideas start, grow and thrive in Iowa’s business landscape. With a renewed focus on marketing and sales, ISA’s relaunch signals a bold investment in Iowa’s future.
The Geonetric Building in Cedar Rapids’ NewBo District has been sold to WRH Inc., a South Amana-based civil contractor.
The Iowa Startup Accelerator is officially returning this fall with a renewed focus on helping Iowa-based startups sharpen their branding, marketing, and sales strategies.
EntreFEST, a conference for Iowa entrepreneurs, hosted its first-ever pitch competition Friday in Cedar Rapids, with $15,000 in cash prizes. The first-place winner, from Cedar Rapids, is a regenerative farm that’s growing produce of cultural importance.
Fatima Torres, a junior at Jefferson High School, has long dreamed of a future in video game development. But when she discovered her school didn’t offer after-school coding opportunities, she found NewBoCo’s Girls Who Code Clubs program. She’s helped start a coding program at her school.
Erica Cole was finishing her degree when she attended EntreFest in 2019. She went on to launch a clothing company, No Limbits, and made an appearance on Shark Tank. Now she’s coming back to the June 2025 conference as a keynote speaker.
Daily Newsletters