The following is a look back at the things that really stood out in the Iowa innovation community in 2016. To create it, I combed through the past 51 issues of The Pull and grouped the highlights into three pretty handy categories: Acquisitions, Accelerators and Investment. Of course, there were several other items that I wanted to include that didn't fit as neatly into one of the categories so you'll find them at the end in the "The Year in Other Stuff" section.

Putting together a post like this really makes one appreciate how much ground we cover as a community in the course of a year. You're all pretty great. 

We're now four months into doing the monthly Iowa Startup Power Rankings and I'm tweaking things just a bit. Rather than posting towards the end of the month with a floating time frame for recognition, I've decided to push the publish date until after the first of the month. That means that we'll be able to consistently recognize the efforts of the people and companies in our community from the calendar month prior. Also, it means that this post isn't technically late even though today is August 3rd and the post is about July (when all else fails, change the rules).