Nebraska experienced a record-breaking year in 2025 for venture capital raised by local startup companies. In combination with the experimentations, struggles and recalculations that come with launching a company, these investments for equity act as stepping stones on a startup’s path to scale.
Where and how far to scale a venture depends on the entrepreneur’s goals and the business climate presented to them, Invest Nebraska CEO Dan Hoffman said. Overall goals could include forming a profitable business to pass down in inheritance, going public or selling ownership and exiting a startup upon achieving a high valuation.
“At the end of the day, when you think about entrepreneurship, it’s building wealth,” Hoffman said.
InvestNebraska is a nonprofit venture development organization that supports entrepreneurs in the state through community initiatives and investing in businesses. It released its 2026 Nebraska Venture Capital Report in March, highlighting the state’s nearly $530 million in VC funding in 2025.
Hoffman said local exits, such as of the website management platform Flywheel back in 2019, create a “waterfall effect.” He said investors receive back capital to expand their portfolios and founders go on to become mentors, community connectors and serial entrepreneurs — maybe even investors themselves.
Employees of acquired companies, he added, may walk away with earnings for being equity holders, too. Often, they go on to launch their own startups.
Some recent acquisitions and mergers from the early 2020s onward in the Nebraska entrepreneurial ecosystem include in-home care provider Home Instead, clinical workflow management platform Nobl, shopper analytics company Retail Aware, video intelligence company Engage Vision and third-party logistics company Bulu.
On top of the investment flow and market attention exits bring to a state, Hoffman said, a skilled workforce under a startup can be the convincing factor for an acquiring entity to maintain and grow an employee base in Nebraska. The lessons learned by the founders behind these exits can also help the next generation of entrepreneurs navigate early decisions and roadblocks
“You can’t really find that in a textbook,” Hoffman said.
The founders of the acquired startups Quantified Ag, LifeLoop and LiveBy shared their entrepreneurial journeys and the sparks behind their acquisitions that occurred in 2020-2022.
Invest Nebraska invested in all three. Hoffman said each demonstrated a typical six- to eight-year development cycle that he has observed in the state’s “fairly young ecosystem.”
Quantified Ag’s journey
Quantified Ag Co-founder and former CEO Vishal Singh said it had been a while since he last provided an overview of his then-Lincoln-based agtech startup.
Signh said he started on the venture a little before fleshing it out in the NMotion Accelerator program in 2014. He said his solution evolved from using drones to using modified ear tags to collect data on livestock, specifically for determining potential health concerns.
Singh said Quantified Ag’s early team of three would grow but remain small over years, with around 10 to 11 employees. Priorities were R&D and completing field trials.
“The six years that we spent on growing the company, the growth was all focused on really developing out the hardware, because that took a lot longer than we thought — as did the algorithms,” Singh said. “By the time the acquisition happened, we were still pretty early on in the sense that we didn’t really have more than just a small handful of customers.”
Quantified Ag was acquired in 2020 by Merck Animal Health, a division of global biopharmaceutical company Merck. The company was an investor in Quantified Ag and a partner who, Singh said, expressed early interest in acquiring the startup.
Singh said the timing of the deal felt right for him. As someone more interested in the creative and problem-solving aspects behind forming a startup, he said Merck was better prepared to move things forward with necessary resources and expertise.
Singh helped with the transition, but he eventually ended his involvement in the company. He said a significant number of Quantified Ag team members have continued working under Merck, such as his co-founder and former CTO Brian Schupbach. Andrew Uden, another early member of Quantified Ag, went on to pursue other agtech startup opportunities within Nebraska.
Schupbach said Merck lifted the weight of “wearing multiple hats” from his shoulders — allowing him to focus on the product.
The technology of Quantified Ag is available and has continued to advance under the name SenseHub Feedlot, Schupbach said. Although his team doesn’t have an office in Nebraska, he said he and previous members of Quantified Ag work remotely from the state — others moving elsewhere.
In the case of Singh, he would go on and take on various mentor and board member roles in local entrepreneurial support organizations. He recently acted as the entrepreneur in residence for the UNL Engler Agribusiness Entrepreneurship Program.
LifeLoop’s journey
Amy Johnson, co-founder and former CEO of LifeLoop, said the Omaha-based startup launched in 2015. The concept arose in 2013 out of her family’s desire to remain in closer contact with a loved one in an assisted living community.
From this idea and through customer outreach, a platform developed. Its purpose was to support assisted living communities with nonclinical procedures while keeping families, staff and residents in communication. Functions included scheduling calendars, tracking resident engagement and fulfilling maintenance and transportation needs.
Her founding team of three — including her husband Kent Johnson and Phil Lee — lacked a background in the assisted living industry and software. But Johnson said her strategy became focused on finding the right staff to fill gaps, such as former LifeLoop Vice President and Partner Nick Nemer. Through these efforts, Johnson said her startup would expand to nearly 40 employees with a reach in all 50 states.
Nemer said that when the pandemic hit in 2020, its impact on the assisted living industry caused LifeLoop’s solution to go from a “nice to have” to a “must have.” Experiencing a boom in interest as well as a rising threat of “bigger players” on the scene, Johnson said they faced a decision.
“It was either go raise a bunch of money or get acquired,” Johnson said. “We assessed all of our options and picked the one that made the most sense at that time.”
LifeLoop was acquired in 2022 by iN2L, a Vista Equity Partners portfolio company. According to a press release, LifeLoop at the time had a presence in more than 700 communities across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
iN2L has since rebranded to LifeLoop and continues operations today. Its main office is in Colorado, but it still has an office in Omaha.
Johnson and Nemer said they were a part of the transition process and the merged company for a bit, but they have since moved on to advisory roles. As Johnson has gone on to become a board member for Invest Nebraska, both she and Nemer now run a startup and small business consulting firm and have voiced a continued interest in advancing solutions for seniors.
LiveBy’s journey
LiveBy launched in 2015 following its two co-founders’ participation in the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development’s Jumpstart Challenge. It developed from a need expressed in the reverse pitch competition, specifically for how local real estate networks could showcase their expertise and compete with industry giants such as Zillow.
Cory Scott, co-founder and the eventual CEO of LiveBy, said he had been networking in the community. Back then, he had reached a point in his career where he was interested in joining a startup. When the opportunity presented itself, he realized the startup he’d be a part of would be his own.
Scott won the JumpStart Challenge with his co-founder Matan Gill and was accepted into the NMotion Accelerator. After that, Scott said, his Lincoln-based business began to take shape. Its offerings would morph from a consumer-facing solution matching users to neighborhoods into a business-facing platform with hyper-focused neighborhood data and content.
“The product changed probably three different times … and we just didn’t get romantic with our first idea,” Scott said. “‘Cause if we would have, I don’t think we would have lasted two years.”
Scott said the startup grew to around 20 employees with its database covering North America, including the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands. Due to its traction and data access, Scott said LiveBy was once approached to be acquired before it actually was — though the situation led to LiveBy turning down the deal and adjusting accordingly.
Scott said LiveBy was eventually approached by Fathom Holdings. The company would acquire LiveBy in 2021.
Scott would take on a leadership role with the acquiring company while continuing as CEO of LiveBy underneath Fathom Holdings. A few years in, he said, the housing market began to falter and the industry faced legal battles. This put a pause on LiveBy’s development, which led Scott to decide to walk away.
Scott celebrated Fathom Holdings, but he said the entrepreneur in him needed to find something else that brought excitement. Beginning with some consulting work, he has gone on to start a family of businesses in Nebraska to answer lake home and boating needs.
“I just said, ‘OK, I want to pay attention to my life, my lifestyle, the things that I enjoy and try to solve those problems,’” Scott said. “And so that’s what I did.”
Current LiveBy General Manager Todd Bohling said despite the move to primarily remote operations, the team retains a prominent Nebraska presence. New product releases and version updates have continued, and the entity was recently acquired again in December.
For current and future founders
“The good thing with being able to tell a story where you start a company, were able to grow it and then successfully exit with it, is that other people can see that it’s something that can be done right here in our state,” Singh said. “You don’t have to go to the coast to find those types of stories.”
Scott emphasized the difficulties that come with growing a startup, though. From high failure rates to not having time to slow down, he said it was important for early entrepreneurs to be introspective on what they can handle.
Exits themselves, Hoffman said, may also not end how founders envisioned them. This could be anything from experiencing a lower valuation of their company to facing market pressures that force a decision.
Still, the perspectives of the founders behind Quantified Ag, LifeLoop and LiveBy included a shared appreciation of their respective journeys and a shared interest in not remaining idle — something they believed was shared by their teams.
“Everybody is always trying to recreate what we had at that moment, which I think is also an awesome thing, but it’s really hard to do,” Johnson said. “When you create that magic, just enjoy it.”
