Clay & Milk and the Greater Des Moines Partnership are partnering to develop the Iowa Innovation Dashboard, a comprehensive indicator of entrepreneurial activity in the state of Iowa.
The dashboard will compile several key metrics of entrepreneurial information into one location to capture the pulse of Iowa’s entrepreneurial and startup climate. The dashboard will track several different metrics including startup growth, external funding, the success of accelerator programs, patents filed, team diversity, perceptions of Iowa’s startup community, and more. The Partnership and Clay & Milk will update the dashboard annually, with plans to add new metrics in future years.
By providing statewide data and metrics, the dashboard will allow community leaders and organizations throughout Iowa to make more informed decisions about how to best champion local entrepreneurs, and the ecosystem as a whole.
The dashboard will launch in Spring 2022.
Iowa Founder Survey
Along with the dashboard, Clay & Milk and the Partnership are conducting an in-depth survey of Iowa founders. The Iowa Founder Survey will dive into fundraising climate, working environment, future outlook, and the challenges of operating a startup.
Questions in the survey will go over:
- General information about your company (location, year founded, industry)
- Resources in Iowa you’ve used to date (accelerators, incubators, etc.)
- Fundraising history (venture capital, grants, state funding)
- Demographic information
- Perception of Iowa’s startup ecosystem
We’ll use this information in an anonymized fashion to help better understand the companies being founded in our region. Any information shared will have no identifiable or confidential information included. We will use this survey as a baseline to track changes to the ecosystem over time.
The survey is now open and will close on Friday, Feb. 18. All participants of the survey will be entered to win a $500 cash prize.
If you’re an Iowa-based organization that serves or connects startup founders and you would like to share the survey with your community, you can share info about this survey and project using our Dashboard Sharing Kit.