This is a continuing series reporting on fundraising activity by companies in the Iowa startup community. The information is refined from publicly-available SEC filings as available online at sites like formds.com. It's not intended to be a perfect dataset but something to be measured over time to help in measuring changes in the ecosystem.

Access to investment capital is something that every startup community is trying desperately to improve and we all know the old axiom that you only improve the things you measure. With that in mind, I've done some research and created a baseline of investments raised by Iowa companies over the last five years.

Looking back at 2014, it was a pretty special year for those seeking investment in the Iowa innovation community. According to my research, at least $146,677,300 was raised by 20 Iowa companies.

Here's a list of all the Iowa-based companies who raised investment rounds in 2014 that where either reported on or announced. It does not include loans, grants, contest winnings, etc.

This is the first in a recurring series of posts where I'll be keeping track of funds raised by Iowa startups and technology companies. The series will track fundraising as rounds as they're announced or reported starting January 1.