- mSuite – Cedar Rapids
mSuite is a software platform for the construction industry that helps leverage existing platforms – such as Autodesk Revit – to increase replication and efficiency. The company has multiple software extensions and efficiencies across a variety of software tools – but particularly BIM-FAB-FIELD workflow tools.
- Tractor Zoom – Des Moines
Tractor Zoom is an ag equipment valuation, auction, and social platform – combining a variety of insights to help ag equipment buyers and sellers identify and work with each other. Tractor Zoom has quickly moved into the ag equipment auction industry, creating a significant relationship with auctioneers. The most recent addition of Iron Comps is a huge boon for the company.
- Moov Financial – Cedar Falls
Moov is a payments system that allows banks to move money around at low cost and without having to build costly digital infrastructure. The company offers a Banking-as-a-Service platform that allows for cloud native infrastructure scale to help new digital banks or traditional banks seeking to improve digital infrastructure.
- Rantizo – Iowa City
Rantizo is a drone company that applies fertilizer and herbicide to fields of crops to decrease weeds and improve yields. The company makes it much easier to reduce time and energy spraying and allows for late season access to continue to apply appropriate chemicals.
- Victory XR – Davenport
Victory XR is a virtual reality deck that provides educational experiences for students seeking a more immersive experience. The company blends both virtual reality (completely immersed in computer generated environment) and augmented reality (digital overlay to the “real world”).
- Haber Technologies – Ames
Haber Technologies is a harvest management company. The technology behind the company (researched and created by Iowa State University) helps dry corn more efficiently. First it provides a mechanism to dry corn faster – but it also allows for better consistency of dryness throughout a grain bin. It also provides time limits and mechanisms to provide data to farmers to maximize price through optimal dry-ness.
- Solar Service Providers – PowerTech (Council Bluffs), Eagle Point Solar (Dubuque), Moxie Solar (North Liberty)
Multiple companies have created business units that are providing services and new technologies to increase the spread of small commercial and residential solar in Iowa. In so doing, they are creating a strategic differentiation that may yield significant high growth opportunities.
- PowerPollen – Ankeny
PowerPollen helps increase the length of time and the productivity of pollen in crops. This allows for longer periods of cross-fertilization, which in turn creates strong, better yielding crops with stronger disease resistant genes. The company has helped corn seed producers improve yield by more than 20 percent (per their website).
- Gross-Wen Technologies – Slater
Gross-Wen Technologies uses an algal biofilm system (RAB) to efficiently and sustainably recover needed nutrients. Basically the company’s algae system (including a conveyor belt oriented vertically) “eats” the nitrogen and phosphorus from the wastewater. These nutrients are, in turn, used as either fertilizer or in a bioplastic product.
- Praxidyn – Oakland
Praxidyn Technologies is a physical device that mixes chemicals. The device comes in a small form factor allowing chemicals to be mixed in small batches. For example, the first application can be used by an individual farmer to mix fertilizer to be applied on an individual field or even a section of a field. This small form factor opens the door to specialty mixes across industries and chemicals.
Best Scaleup: Growers Edge (Johnston), Vida Diagnostics (Coralville), IDx (Coralville)
Best Exit: Performance Livestock Analytics (Ames), Smart Ag (Ames)
Over the course of the following weeks, mug.news will provide a top ten list of startups in various states. These lists were made with some restrictions about what qualifies as a startup. Companies that are well established with significant revenue and older than five years…are not startups. If they are still growing rapidly, we would define them as scaleups. Generally, to make the list the startup will have raised less than $10 million in venture capital or debt, it will export a product outside of a specific city or region, it will have less than $5 million in revenue. Many will be smaller than this.
