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 #156.

The Iowa Tech Tour starts on Monday! Tremendous thanks to everyone who has helped pull this together in a really short time frame: Deanna Bennett & John Jackovin in Des Moines, Jessalyn Holdcraft & Eric Engelmann in Cedar Rapids and Diana Wright & Sam Schill in Ames. It's going to be a great week!

The full tour schedule is available here but I want to highlight a few events where anyone and everyone can meet Paul Singh and join in the fun:

Monday

Pop-up Cereal Bar (provided by the Technology Association of Iowa) 8-10 AM at Gravitate (206 6th Avenue, 3rd Floor, Des Moines)
Kick Off Happy Hour 5-7 PM at Gravitate (206 6th Avenue, 3rd Floor, Des Moines)

Tuesday

Greater Des Moines Startup Community Town Hall (supported by the Universty of Iowa JPEC) 6-8 PM at the Pappajohn Higher Education Center (1200 Grand Avenue, Des Moines). RSVP requested due to limited seating.

Wednesday

1 Million Cups—Des Moines 8-9:30 AM at the Science Center of Iowa (401 W Martin Luther King Jr Pkwy, Des Moines)

Thursday

Pancakes with Paul 8-10 AM at Vault Coworking & Collaboration Space (415 12th Ave SE, Cedar Rapids)

Friday

Startup Ames 12-1 PM at Oakwood Road Community Center (2400 Oakwood Road, Ames)

Office Hours

Paul and his team will be holding office hours throughout the week in each of the three cities. You can apply for a spot here. Office hour appointments are an excellent opportunity to get direct feedback and perspective on your startup or the idea that you're considering. Having an entrepreneur and investor with Paul's breadth of experience isn't an opportunity that we get every day in our community so I'd encourage everyone to take advantage of it next week!

Thanks again to the sponsors that stepped up to support the Iowa Tech Tour: Next Level Ventures, Iowa Venture Capital Association, Davis Brown Law Firm, NewBoCo, BrownWinick—Attorneys at Law, Twilio and Square One DSM.

Featured

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.