Politico Magazine published a lengthy story this week entitled: How America’s Dullest City Got Cool—One meeting, a visionary planner and old-fashioned Iowan cooperation reinvented Des Moines
Included in the story is a section on Gravitate and its role in our startup community:
High-tech startups began popping up on 6th Avenue just south of the loop, which soon became known as “Silicon Sixth.” Geoff Wood, a GIS engineer in his late 20s with a newly-minted MBA, moved back to cover the scene for Silicon Prairie News, the Omaha-based newsletter, and watched a University of Northern Iowa dropout named Ben Milne build Dwolla, an inexpensive payment transfer service, from “two employees and an idea” to a 70-person enterprise said to pose a threat to rivals PayPal and even Visa. Now Wood, 37, runs Gravitate, a co-working space occupying several floors of the renovated Midland Building on 6th Avenue that’s widely regarded as the hub of the startup sector. “We wanted to have an entrepreneurial center of gravity where creative class individuals could get the benefits of working alongside other people,” he says.
“There are a lot of Iowans coming back, but our biggest opportunity will be engaging people who’ve never been to Iowa to come here.”
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.