As of this post, Clay & Milk is on an indefinite hiatus. It’s been a good seven (7!) year-ish run for us. We started in 2016 with a goal of bringing you daily news about the Iowa startup community and our collective role in the future of Iowa’s innovation economy.
I’m proud of what we’ve…

This is one of those bittersweet moments where I have the duty to share that our longtime editor Jake Slobe is stepping away from Clay & Milk to pursue other interests. Jake’s been the primary news-sharer and storyteller of the Iowa entrepreneurial community for almost four years and we are all the better for his…

A week ago I took my first real “vacation” of the COVID-era, joining tens of thousands of Iowa State football fans in Las Vegas for the Cyclones game against UNLV. It was the first time that I’d been on an airplane or stayed in a hotel since 2019. I bought the tickets last Spring just…

In my last commentary post for Clay & Milk, I shared my concern that although some national economic development professionals see Des Moines as poised to take a step to “The Big Time” we will never get there because many of the priorities of the Iowa General Assembly, as evidenced by the bills that have…

Earlier this week, Facebook Memories reminded me that a publication called Site Selection Magazine put out an article a year ago—before most of us had ever heard the word “coronavirus”—with the subtitle “These 10 cities are ready for the big time. They just need to act like it.”. Our capital city, Des Moines, is one…

AgriSync, a four-year-old AgTech company based in Waukee, Iowa, announced that they had closed a seed investment round this morning. Casey Niemann, AgriSync’s President and CEO said the funding will be used to "expand our marketing, sales and product enhancement efforts" in a release.
The company declined to release the total size of this round or…

Last week I sat in on a meeting with Paul Pate, Iowa’s two-time Secretary of State, held at the Greater Des Moines Partnership. The meeting was one of several listening sessions that the Secretary has held across Iowa in recent months to find ways to improve our local business climate.
Among other duties, the Secretary of…
We’re excited to share that our friend Matt Patane—the founding editor of Clay & Milk—is moving on to a new role at the Cedar Rapids Gazette. We’re happy for Matt and glad that he has this opportunity to continue to grow in his career.
We founded Clay & Milk to make sure that the story of…