Every Wednesday Geoff publishes "The Pull", a digest of the top news for the Iowa innovation community that week. The following is the introduction to Issue #150.
Welcome to the sesquicentennial edition of The Pull (woot! I've been waiting several weeks to roll that word out).
This newsletter launched on July 23, 2013 and 150 weeks later its not only still alive but its flourishing. For those of you who didn't know me back in the summer of '13, I'd just left a startup, after four years, over disagreements amongst the founding team and I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do next. Since people knew me from being associated with startup news, I figured starting a newsletter that highlighted the top Iowa innovations stories each week was probably a solid use of time while I figured things out.
Over these past 150 weeks, I've done a lot of consulting/speaking/podcasting, worked with startup community builders all over the world through the Startup Genome project, helped Drake University start up the Lorentzen Hatchery, produced several events (and even shut down a few) and then ultimately launched Gravitate—the entrepreneurial center of gravity in downtown Des Moines—which is where I now spend most of my time.
Throughout all of those projects, I've continued to publish this newsletter each week and its been a lot of fun to see it evolve. That first edition had a different name, used a different software platform and was sent to a list of just one person (hey there Danny Schreiber). If you're curious, you can check it out here.
Today's edition is going out to more than 1,000 folks which means an increase of something like 99,900% which is pretty darn respectable.
Thanks to everyone who has contributed content (especially Megan Bannister!) and to you all for opening, reading and clicking each week. It's really great. Onward!
Geoff Wood is the founder, connector and space captain at Gravitate, a workplace community for entrepreneurs, freelancers and remote workers in the heart of downtown Des Moines. In addition to writing here, he hosts a podcast, speaks at conferences, organizes events and has been helping tell the story of the Iowa startup community since 2009.