Linseed Capital
719 South 75th Street, Omaha, Nebraska, 68114, United States
Overview
We founded and manage Linseed Capital to invest in great companies, help people achieve their ambitions and to make money. We are angel investors living in Omaha, Nebraska and Montecito, California. We actively mentor and support the entrepreneurial environment in the Midwest. We invest both independently and as members of The Nebraska Angels investment group. We sponsor Big Omaha, an annual innovation and entrepreneurship conference and were regional founders of the Pipeline Entrepreneur Fellowship Program. We serve together on the board of KANEKO, and separately on other nonprofit- and for-profit boards. Jim is Senior Associate to the President of the University of Nebraska and President of the University Technology Development Corporation. He is also Professor of Pathology and Microbiology at University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). He earned his B.S. in Biochemistry and Microbiology from Iowa State University, and his M.D, from UNMC. After residency training at Duke University he returned to UNMC, where he has been on the faculty since 1983. His experience in the private sector includes servings as a corporate officer at Cytyc Corporation, a leading manufacturer of medical devices, from 1995 thru 2007. He now is the a founder and Chief Medical Officer of Constitution Medical Inc., a Warburg Pincus company. Karen is President of Tethon3D and a member of Women Investing in Nebraska (WIN) philanthropic group. She earned her B.S. degree in Biology from Nebraska Wesleyan University. In 1995, she founded the School of Cytotechnology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and is Past President of the American Society for Cytotechnology. In 2001, she founded a reference laboratory, Heartland Pathology, Inc. and sold it in 2011. Her book profiling women business leaders, “The Women of Berkshire Hathaway”, was published in 2012.
- Total investments
- 5
- Lead investments
- 1
- Investments · 12mo
- 0
- Active investors
- 2
Sector focus
- Finance
- Financial Services
Investment portfolio
- Workshop
Participated · Seed · Apr 2021
Workshop offers a dedicated internal email platform designed to create, send, and measure employee emails and branded internal communications across distributed teams. The product includes drag-and-drop templates, automatically updated distribution lists, and engagement analytics, and it integrates with internal channels such as Slack, SharePoint, SMS, and Microsoft Teams. The platform is used by Fortune 500 companies and name-brand organizations including Papa John’s, Steve Madden, Edelman Financial, Northern Tool, and Movement Mortgage. Workshop plans to use the new funding to accelerate product innovation, recruit additional engineering talent, and scale go-to-market efforts. The company also intends to expand sales and marketing and reinforce the customer success team with additional support. Workshop was co-founded in 2020 by Rick Knudtson, Ben Stevinson, and Derek Homann. Workshop provides a purpose-built platform for internal communications with drag-and-drop templates, automatically updated distribution lists, and engagement analytics. It integrates with internal channels including Slack, SharePoint, SMS, and Microsoft Teams to distribute and measure employee emails and branded messages. The company was co-founded in 2020 by Rick Knudtson, Ben Stevinson, and Derek Homann and is based in Omaha, Nebraska. Workshop raised $5.2M in additional seed funding and plans to use the capital to accelerate product innovation and hiring. The immediate hiring focus is on engineering and sales talent to support product and go-to-market expansion. The product is designed specifically for internal use across distributed teams and emphasizes ease of use and measurable engagement data. Workshop provides an employee communications platform that serves as a single source of truth for internal information, offering an all-company hub, personalized updates, pinned resources, an employee directory, and global search. The product lets communicators create well-designed, targeted messages in minutes and distribute them via email, text, or Slack. The company has officially launched the platform and reports positive feedback from early customers about solving key internal-communication pain points. Workshop plans to use the seed proceeds to build out its team with a current focus on recruiting engineering talent and adding more functionality. The founding team includes Dusty Davidson and Rick Knudtson (former founders of Flywheel) and Ben Stevinson and Derek Homann (former founders of Median), who together have led prior companies to exits. The company is based in Omaha, Nebraska.
- Travefy
Participated · Equity · May 2015
Travefy develops online and mobile travel tools that allow groups to collaborate on trip details, build rich itineraries, and collect shared expenses. The company offers free consumer tools as well as white‑labeled and integrated platform partnerships for online travel agents, travel management companies, vacation providers, and travel brands. Led by CEO David Chait, Travefy is based in Lincoln, NE. The company raised $1.8M in funding and intends to use the proceeds to accelerate expansion and drive product innovation. No operating metrics were disclosed in the article. Travefy is a group travel planning platform founded in 2012 by CEO David Chait and based in Lincoln, NE. The product lets users invite friends to travel, poll dates and locations, collaborate on trip details, book hotels, and manage expenses. The company has released a beta of a new management tool to track and settle group expenses, built in partnership with SlidePay. A mobile app was scheduled for release in Fall 2013. Travefy intends to use newly raised funds to scale and commercialize the platform. The company previously received an angel investment from Linseed Capital and a grant from the Nebraska Innovation Fund's Prototyping Program.
- Flywheel
Led · Equity · Sep 2014
Flywheel operates a managed WordPress hosting platform purpose-built for designers, creative agencies, and freelancers. The Omaha-based company differentiates itself with workflow-oriented features such as its new “Organizations” tool, which gives teams a Twitter-style activity feed and robust team-management controls. Flywheel’s service starts at $15 per month and is currently used by roughly 40,000 agencies, freelancers, and creatives. Management plans to deploy additional capital toward scaling support, sales, and marketing while accelerating the development of new products that further streamline designer and agency workflows. The company positions its design-centric focus as a key competitive moat within the crowded WordPress hosting landscape. Financially, Flywheel has now raised a total of $5.2 million across seed and Series A rounds.
- Leap.it
Participated · Equity · Apr 2013
Leap2 builds a mobile search app that mixes websites, social conversations and images into single, visually rich search results so users get a "whole answer" without visiting multiple sites. Founder and CEO Mike Farmer says the product combines different media types into one scrollable result set. The company released updated iOS and Android apps that add a Leap2 Live homescreen showing trending topics and articles; the design aims to pack a lot of information into small screens. Leap2 plans to launch a web version soon. Financially, the company announced $1.6 million in new funding and rolled its prior $480,000 in seed funding into the current round. The article highlights product experience and design as core differentiators rather than providing operating metrics.