How Founders Spend Big Exit $$$, Flywheel, and St. Thomas: Innovation sans Full-Time MBA
Welcome back to the Great North Labs newsletter!
With so many great startups getting acquired or going IPO lately, one wonders: What do founders do when they score these big windfalls?
How Do Founders Spend Their Cash?
Rob Weber was curious, so he asked other successful founders from the region about their post-exit strategies. Do they do the kind of flashy things coastal entrepreneurs do? You know, like buy an island or a 100-foot yacht or something?
From Lamborghinis to Hamm’s beer signs, traveling the world to giving back to their local entrepreneurial communities, these founders have quite the stories.
Mar. 17th, Wisconsin Tech Summit. “The goal of the Wisconsin Tech Summit is to bring together major companies and emerging firms in a setting that allows them to meet and explore likely business relationships around technology needs and innovation.”
Mar. 23-25th, midwest.tech. “One-on-one meetings for Midwest-based or Midwest-linked startup founders, VCs, angel investors, incubators, and accelerators – focused on Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A stages”.
Apr. 27-28th, InvestMidwest Venture Capital Forum. “InvestMidwest highlights startups in the Midwest region with the most promise for success that are currently seeking Series A or B funding of $1M to $20M.”
Portfolio News
Flywheel is new to the Great North Labs portfolio! Flywheel is the leading research data platform that provides the tools needed for data import, automated curation, image processing, machine learning workflows, and secure collaboration. By leveraging cloud scalability and automating research workflows, Flywheel helps organizations scale research data and analysis, improve scientific collaboration and accelerate discoveries.
Allergy Amulet launched their product! “The world’s smallest & fastest consumer food allergen sensor” quickly sold out. Sign up on the Allergy Amulet website to receive info on future release dates.
With unemployment soaring, small businesses shuttering, and even some large chains withholding rent, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are reverberating through our communities. Many people wait on relief from the government in the form of stimulus payments and unemployment benefits. Businesses scramble to secure emergency loans, payroll support, and new ways to gain revenue. Oftentimes lost among other dire news is the plight of nonprofits and charities, who languish as donations dry up and revenue-producing events are put on hold.
Cash and Equity Giving
Jack Dorsey’s $1 billion equity pledgeis an eye-catching reminder of how important it is to support these causes and organizations now if you are able to. Many are dependent on revenue from events that can’t happen and donations from disposable income that has evaporated. Our Founders Pledge is built on the idea of baking giving into your venture as part of your short-term and long-term financial plans, to support your community, and to support the organizations that support you with a mix of cash and equity giving.
During this time many businesses and leaders have risen to the challenge to support their communities through non-cash/non-equity donations. Our portfolio companies are also active in the fight, supporting local businesses, hospitals, and healthcare workers on the frontline. Here are four examples of their work.
1. Dispatch launched same day delivery for local businesses. This service aims to help alleviate supply chain difficulties during the pandemic
2. 2ndKitchen launched a new service to offer delivery for bars and breweries. This is a lifeline for these businesses when they have to be closed, with 2go allowing bars and breweries to sell beer, food, and merchandise for pickup or delivery- for free.
Clinician Nexus partnered with MN COVIDsitters to provide the technology platform that connects volunteer medical students with healthcare workers to provide free childcare during the pandemic.
4. PrintWithMe is holding a Face Mask Drive. The face masks, unused N95 masks as well as simple surgical masks, are being supplied to Chicago-area hospitals.
Giving for a Better Future
In consideration of the pandemic, the Webers have expanded the list of colleges they support to include North Hennepin Community College (NHCC), one of the largest Minnesota State colleges serving a very diverse student body with many low-income students. Ryan and Rob are alumni of NHCC, where they gained the skills that helped them bootstrap their own startup.
The Webers have donated $10,000 to NHCC’s Foundation to directly aid Graphic Design students studying product design, a program they see as well-positioned to fill the large UI/UX design talent gap in Minnesota and the surrounding region. Their support of this program goes beyond money to include volunteering as mentors, promoting awareness of NHCC’s Graphic Design program, and using their networks to help students connect with internships and employment opportunities.
We continue to support and evolve our own educational initiative aimed at filling the gap of disciplined startup education in the region, formerly known as the Great North Labs Startup School. The programming is now known by a variety of names, and collectively as the Lean Startup School. The new iterations have come about by partnering with Red Wing Ignite and ILT Studios. These partners have allowed us to develop the programming as a white-label offering to communities around the state, with a particular emphasis on Greater Minnesota. There are two cohorts currently, in St. Cloud and Red Wing, with more planned for the future.
We will get through this crisis, one way or another. Whether or not the federal government gets behind legislation that supports startups with an influx of capital, such as the New Business Preservation Act, there is a broad community of entrepreneurial support and a healthy, growing startup ecosystem in the region. We will continue to cultivate transformative innovations, successful entrepreneurs, and tech startups in the Upper Midwest!
[Due to health and safety considerations during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are canceling this year’s in-person conference. We will keep our community updated via our newsletter on any changes, as we explore virtual event options.]
Great North Labs’s Startup Summit 2020 will be on August 27th at St. Cloud State University. Every year, Great North Labs gathers stakeholders together in late summer for an annual event aimed at supporting startups in our portfolio and the startup ecosystem in general.
Sometimes there are boat rides, other times there are distinguished speakers and panels. There is always networking. And food, and fun, and new connections. Every year, without fail, people ask, “What are we doing next year?”.
And every year, I say to at least one of them, “demolition derby at the Brainerd Speedway”. It is never true, but it keeps them guessing and excited, and that is just good marketing.
Well, the cat is out of the bag early this year.
Mark your calendars for August 27th. Great North Labs’s Startup Summit 2020 will be at St. Cloud State University in the Atwood Ballroom from 1-5pm. (Investors- save the date starting at 10:30am. Details will follow.)
There will be industry-specific breakout sessions and startup ecosystem speakers, plus plenty of networking. No helmets required.
Further details and an event sign-up link will follow. Keep an eye on our newsletter to stay up-to-date!
Ryan Weber // January 22, 2020
Introducing the new Greater Minnesota focused Startup School Initiative
Greater Minnesota has been underperforming in its formation of new startups. When we founded Great North Labs, we recognized this need, and committed to changing it before the region could fall further behind. We founded a Startup School to provide the educational components that we saw local entrepreneurs were missing. By partnering with Red Wing Ignite and ILT Studios, we will greatly expand our reach, capacity, and educational offering. This co-created, yet-to-be-named, Greater MN Startup School initiative will reach across the state to cultivate founders and startups in areas ready for the impact of entrepreneurial innovation.
The Necessity of Startup Entrepreneurship
From 2000-2017, 52% of companies in the Fortune 500 have either gone bankrupt, been acquired, or ceased to exist. Digital disruption is the primary catalyst of change. Adaptability is key to success. A key to any community, or organization, strengthening its adaptive intelligence is for it to master a disciplined approach to startup entrepreneurship. Disciplined startup entrepreneurship isn’t new but techniques have emerged the past 15 years that emphasize a more agile process for startup entrepreneurship that is needed in an environment with such accelerating changes.
One measure of the strength of startup entrepreneurship in a community is the number of first venture financings that it produces. The Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul) now have 1% of the countries first venture financings, but Greater Minnesota (generalized as non-urban MN, or specifically as all of Minnesota outside of the Twin Cities region) has lagged behind. Comparing the efficiency –the number of first venture financings per population– of the Twin Cities to the next largest markets in Minnesota is revealing. St. Cloud, Duluth, and Mankato have 50% or lower startup efficiency. Rochester (home of the Mayo Clinic) is a standout, and outperformed with a 200%+ startup efficiency compared to the Twin Cities.
The Need for Startup Education
My twin brother and Great North Labs Partner, Rob Weber, and I have previously angel invested in 25 startups from 2006 to 2017 while scaling our own startup with offices in Silicon Valley and Minnesota. I served for 10+ years as Chief Product Officer, and noticed an inefficiency in the startup teams resulting from a lack of disciplined startup entrepreneurship practices compared to Silicon Valley. I struggled finding Minnesota-based product managers trained in the more adaptive style of product management made popular by lean startups so we invested in developing a common process and trained our team on it.
As investors, too often we’d hear from a founder that they just need $300K to prove out their latest thesis. We’d meet teams that burned through $500K in angel funding that still couldn’t present evidence validating their thesis. This evidence we’d expect a product manager to answer at our company in their first two months of leading a new product idea with nothing more than qualitative research.
For most of the funded startup teams, they were immersed in the market and sought to solve a problem they thought they understood well. However, they usually struggled to identify the problem that’s the most impactful to solve, the minimal viable solution that solves that problems needs, and an offer that communicates the value proposition clearly and for a price the buyer will accept.
The Great North Labs Startup School
Great North Labs was formed in the fall of 2017. In addition to our early-stage venture fund, we started an initiative called the Startup School to invest in strengthening our disciplined startup education in the region. We led a group of practitioners who ran workshops on Digital Transformation, Lean Startups (most frequent), and Agile Development. The free or low-cost workshops attracted over 200 participants through the end of 2019. The workshop materials were also shared with many others and we gave lectures at a number of universities and conferences in cities across the Upper Midwest.
For the Lean Startup Workshop, we found that participants were engaged with low attrition rates and heard from them after the fact as they reported on their progress. We had the Executive Director of a significant non-profit mention using the process to discover a new innovation they were pursuing to commercialize, several tech founders launching their MVPs after researching, and many staying in touch to assist and support each-other but also in some cases joining forces on a startup.
We saw a greater gap in the smaller markets across Minnesota and throughout the Upper Midwest. However, one bright spot was in Iowa. There, the state had invested in programming similar to ours, and had expanded across the state with their Venture School initiative.
The Greater MN Startup School Initiative
We are taking the experience and lessons learned along the way from our initial Startup School, from Iowa’s Venture School, and from other startup education programs to expand our program to our new Greater MN Startup School initiative. This new Startup School will make the skills and training necessary for disciplined startup entrepreneurship more accessible to Minnesota entrepreneurs than ever before. It will also open up networks and possibilities for people across the state that were previously unavailable. Across the state, we hope to see this cultivation of startups drive innovation, economic activity, and value creation.
What: A new set
of workshops designed to strengthen the skills in disciplined startup
entrepreneurship and provide an applied learning environment that allows
founders, and their supporters, to work from idea conception to
commercialization.
Participants will learn innovation techniques for identifying, defining, sizing, validating, and commercializing venture scalable startups. There will be new online and in-class programming to help you learn with hands-on practical activities, mentorship, insights, and opportunities to network to help you build confidence in your startup thesis and master the art of gathering feedback, directly from your future customers.
When: The first class for Customer Driven Innovation will run from March-April. The first class for Business Model Foundation will follow in early summer. The first class for The Lean Startup will run from mid to late summer. Web-site registration will be open in February for the classes and we will follow up with additional details.
Where: Red Wing and St. Cloud will offer the same classes in parallel but on different days
Why: To teach participants about design innovation, the Lean Startup process and how to identify, develop, define, validate, finance and commercialize their ideas so they are more successful in developing their own startup as a new company or inside of an existing one.
Earn a certificate for completing each of the programs and strengthen your credentials for a career as a Startup Founder or Product Manager. Initially, three workshops will be offered and each will feature a program certificate for those that successful complete:
Program 1: Customer Driven Innovation – Gain fresh perspective that will expand your thinking and push you to bold new ideas through practice and discussion within the class and interactions with the instructors and classmates. You’ll come up with a number of potential ideas and pick one to develop as a concept pitch.
Program 2: Business Model Foundation – This program builds on the Customer Driven Innovation course to help you form a strong business thesis. Learn to document your initial business plan and quickly analyze it’s potential, advanced customer discovery interview methods, and skills needed to help gather better feedback and ensure you are solving the right problem.
Program 3: The Lean Startup Certificate– This program builds on the Customer Driven Innovation and the Business Model Foundation courses to leverage the creativity and collaboration within a startup team to develop and execute experiments that test your business thesis, synthesis key learnings, and to explore alternative thesis based on those learnings until you find a business thesis that meets your success criteria. This program will culminate with an idea pitch event where an investor panel will award cash prizes to the top pitches.
Building up the Region
The Twin Cities has emerged as a strong startup community in the Upper Midwest. There are parallels between Silicon Valley and the Twin Cities that we can learn from and try to replicate in Greater MN, and potentially the entire Upper Midwest region.
Silicon Valley benefited from an emphasis on experimenting with practical skills in emerging fields, a network of VCs, links with Economic Development Departments, local universities, and local LPs. Our vision is to partner with all the aforementioned entities to serve the entrepreneurs of Greater MN.
While this is our pilot year, we already have interest from a variety of organizations. There is strong demand from around the state. If your community is interested in our program, please contact us, and we can stay connected and help with preparations as we make plans for expansion.
As far as involved organizations go, we’d like to take a moment to thank LaunchMN in particular, for their financial and operational support. This new MN DEED initiative led by Neela Mollgaard has helped make this new Startup School initiative possible.
We have an opportunity now to transform our rural markets into strong startup communities, and improve their resiliency in a world that increasingly requires adaptive intelligence and innovation skills to succeed.
Josef Siebert // January 21, 2020
Great North Labs at the World Economic Forum 2020 in Davos
Great North Labs will be participating in a couple of events at the World Economic Forum this year, where we have been invited to talk about our work investing in early-stage companies in the Upper Midwest. The Forum (WEF) is an annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland, of business, political, academic, and other leaders.
The purpose of the forum is to engage with leaders, and to help inform and shape global, regional, and industry agendas. According to WEF:
“The Forum strives in all its efforts to demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest while upholding the highest standards of governance. Moral and intellectual integrity is at the heart of everything it does.”
Great North Labs Partner Pradip Madan will be speaking about investing in the Upper Midwest, supporting and growing the ecosystem with initiatives like the Startup School, and of course, the promise of the Upper Midwest region.
“To me, it feels a little like the Internet 35 years ago when nobody, other than a few…believed in the idea of the internet. And people, when I was talking about it, were skeptical.”
“Over time, I think you’ll see venture capital shift. The coastal investors will need to have regional investment strategies.”
-Steve Case, Chairman and CEO of Revolution, and founder of Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund
Here are the events where Great North Labs will be speaking.
TOPIC: “Going Off Road Innovation in Tech: Leveraging unexplored areas and geographies to increase scale and innovation in the public and private sector.”
Attend this panel to understand methods and ways you can leverage untapped resources that are sitting available to you all around the globe. We will look at how this works from the startup innovation perspective, through funding and the venture firm perspective, and out to the large corporate entity with innovation and human capital that is an underutilized resource in many geographies. We will highlight this example specifically in how it is successful in the US and Minnesota and demonstrate and answer questions on how it applies to your specific use case.
This panel has plenty of Minnesota representation with Pradip Madan of Great North Labs, Jennifer Bonine and Dean Costakis of Minneapolis’s PinkLion.AI, Patricia Simmons who is on the Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees, and Maria Dayton who is the Ambassador of SingularityU Minneapolis-St. Paul.
2. The Digital Economist Night in partnership with The Caspian Week
TOPIC: Business models and strategies that will hallmark the next phase of global economic transformation.
Distilling the cutting edge tools from economic science, with hands-on industry experience, The Digital Economist roundtable series convenes enterprises, startups and innovators to explore, discuss and steward the business models and strategies that will hallmark the next phase of global economic transformation.
Pradip Madan will be hosting a roundtable for this, the inaugural summit for The Digital Economist, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Josef Siebert // November 27, 2019
Taking the Founders Pledge, Inhabitr, and gBETA Pitch Night
Happy Thanksgiving, and welcome back to the Great North Labs newsletter!
This is the perfect time of year to reflect on what we are thankful for, and for giving back. We are most thankful for our investors, our advisors, and our portfolio companies, of course! They are the reasons we exist, work, and succeed.
There is still a need to improve. There are valid and pressing worries about the creation, automation, and distribution of jobs. Innovation and startups are increasingly important to our future. Did you know that from 1980-2010 about half of all jobs created in the US were from high-growth startups?
Local nonprofits stand to benefit greatly when pledging founders have big exits.
There are several existing structures and organizations, but basically, to make a Founders Pledge startup founders donate a portion of their future proceeds to local nonprofits. They give support to the organizations that support them. If the Founders Pledge becomes ingrained in the culture of our startups, it will create a virtuous cycle between successful startups and the people and organizations that help them succeed.
Supporting the Startup Ecosystem
According to research on early-stage entrepreneurship from the Kauffman Foundation, Minnesota is lagging behind on 4 key indicators of success. Our rate of new entrepreneurs, opportunity share of new entrepreneurs, startup early job creation, and startup early survival rate are all below average, with our composite score putting us at 46th compared to the rest of the US.
Nonprofits are a vital part of supporting early-stage entrepreneurship, and creating favorable outcomes for founders. By contributing to their success, founders can increase the chances of their own and future startups’ success. Join the movement and Great North Labs in making a Founders Pledge!
Events
The holidays are a busy time for everyone! If you find some time between family and friends, here are some events worth attending:
Dec. 3rd- Medical Alley & AtriCure Networking Social. “This event brings the Twin Cities bioscience players together for expanding your network, hearing about exciting innovation and career opportunities. Appetizers, beverages, demos and tours of AtriCure’s MN facility will be provided.”
Dec. 9th- FASTCON at the Science Museum in St. Paul. “The first-ever MinneAnalytics Data Science and Tech Conference focused on Food, Ag, Supply Chain, and Sustainability”
Dec. 11th- Global Conversations: The Global Pulse of Minnesota. “Join a discussion with Global Minnesota’s President Mark Ritchie as he looks back over the evolution of Minnesota as one of the leading international regions, provides a snapshot of key indicators of the current global pulse of the state, and looks ahead at challenges and opportunities as we approach 2020.”
Dec. 11th- Lunar Startups Lunch and Learn. “Lunar Startups is launching Cohort 3 in March 2020. Join us to learn more about the criteria, how to apply and our process for selecting startups.”
Dec. 17th- TCB Mag 100 People to Know in Minneapolis. This annual event is a fun networking gathering put on by Twin Cities Business.
Dec. 18th- MinneAMA- Hiring Junior Devs 101. Minnestar’s monthly virtual AMA session will feature Matt Decuir, founder of Invisible Network and Minneapolis Junior Devs.
Dec. 19th- gBETA Greater MN-St. Cloud Pitch Night in St. Cloud, MN. This is the first cohort’s pitch night from the very first accelerator based in Greater MN!
Portfolio News
Inhabitr closed a $4M dollar series A round, led by Great North Labs. The news of the Chicago-based furniture rental platform was covered in TechCrunch, and in this piece by ChicagoInno.
2ndKitchen closed a $4.35M round. This startup connects restaurant kitchens with kitchen-less venues, such as bars and breweries. Investors included Hyde Park Venture Partners, Math Ventures, and M25.
Dispatch was named to CNBC’s Upstart 100, which includes “100 of the world’s most promising start-ups to watch in 2019”. Congratulations to the Dispatch team!
Job Board
Dispatch is hiring all over the country for Part Time Drivers and in Bloomington, MN for a Biz Dev Representative, HR Manager (Remote OK), Data Scientist, and CFO. Structural is hiring an Associate Software Engineer in Indianapolis or St. Paul, MN. TeamGenius is hiring a Sales Associate in Minneapolis. FactoryFix is hiring a Software Engineer, Product Designer, and UX Designer in Madison, and a Biz Dev Specialist and Account Manager in Chicago. 2ndKitchen is hiring a Customer Success Manager, Account Executive, and Director of Sales in Chicago. PrintWithMe is hiring a Customer Success Associate, Network Operations Specialist, and an Operations Lead in Chicago; Super User Technicians in Portland and Houston; and a Regional Sales Director for the West Coast. Parallax is hiring a Customer Success Specialist, Quality Assurance Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, and for a Growth/Customer Acquisition role in Minneapolis. Branch is hiring a Content Marketing Manager, Settlement Analyst, Customer Support Agent, Customer Success Manager, and Senior Backend Engineer in Minneapolis.
Josef Siebert // November 27, 2019
Founders Pledge: Support the Organizations that Support You
By Rob and Ryan Weber
Where do startups come from, and how can we encourage more of them? Whether you believe in clustering or building a rainforest, one thing is for sure: startups don’t materialize out of nowhere, nor do they always succeed on their own.
Importance of Startups
A healthy local startup ecosystem drives both new startup formation and their chances of success. Unfortunately, according to research available from the Kauffman Foundation on early-stage entrepreneurship, Minnesota is below average on every state-wide indicator.
This is incredibly important because between 1980 and 2010, about half of all jobs created in the US were from high-growth startups. 2.9 million were created per year on average, according to the National Venture Capital Association. In the Upper Midwest, each startup produces approximately 4 jobs in their first year of business.
The Kauffman Early-Stage Entrepreneurship Index is an equally weighted index of four indicators of entrepreneurship activity: rate of new entrepreneurs, opportunity share of new entrepreneurs, startup early job creation, and startup early survival rate. Minnesota ranks 46th. Source: 2018 State Report on Early-Stage Entrepreneurship
Founders Pledge
So how can a cash-strapped startup founder help? Take a Founders Pledge! The Founders Pledge is a popular movement driven by founders around the world. It came about because startups don’t have cash, but have enormous potential for value creation in their equity. Popular options include the Founders Pledge organization, where founders make a pledge of at least 2 percent of their personal proceeds to nonprofits, or Marc Benioff’s Pledge 1% which encourages founders to pledge 1% each of equity, time, product, and profit.
By taking the Founders Pledge, founders align a long-term commitment to do good with the success of their tech startup, and to the success of the entire ecosystem. Imagine if every time a local tech startup exited, that meant money went into local nonprofits?
MN Founders Pledge Challenge
While many startup founders support, actively engage with, and lead local nonprofits, we think it’s also important to support these organizations in a meaningful financial way. Time is an excellent donation, but an equity pledge is meaningful support that creates a shared interest in mutual success.
We believe this is so important that we are challenging other Minnesota startup founders to make a Founders Pledge! All it takes is pledging a percentage of your proceeds to nonprofits. It’s that simple.
Within your first 12-24 months of operation either go through the Founders Pledge, Pledge 1%, or structure your own pledge. We have chosen to structure our own pledge, and are willing to provide advice and referrals to the local legal and accounting professionals who helped us structure our giving.
The Value to Nonprofits
Our own pledge is to give at least 2 percent of our own personal interests from our $23.7M debut venture fund to Minnesota nonprofits. As Great North Labs’s portfolio grows and has exits, our nonprofit partners will benefit alongside our fund’s investors. For example, if a $10,000 equity pledge is made to a nonprofit today, and the fund returns a 5X multiple over its life, the $10,000 pledge will return $50,000 to the nonprofit over the fund’s life. This allows us to support local organizations in a meaningful way without sacrificing liquidity.
The same type of equity multiplier can apply when a founder pledges some of their equity, and it creates the possibility of creating sustaining legacy gifts in the event of large exits. For example, if a company has a $2B exit (like Michigan’s Duo Security in 2018), and a founder with 20% equity has made the Founders Pledge, that is an $8M dollar influx for local nonprofits. While big exits like this are rare, if the Founders Pledge becomes part of our culture in Minnesota and across the Upper Midwest, then large gifts like this become inevitable.
Local nonprofits can reap huge benefits from a cash-equivalent equity donation.
Supporting the Ecosystem
There are many aspects to a productive startup ecosystem, such as access to capital (part of why we founded Great North Labs), that are important. But it’s important to remember that these “aspects” aren’t just monolithic categories to fill in and check off of a list- they are individuals and organizations pursuing their own missions, with their own motivations.
These individuals and organizations are vital parts of the startup ecosystem, and include a variety of people, structures, and missions. While for-profit entities can self-support, nonprofits are dependent on donations.
Nonprofits we Support
As Managing Partners of Great North Labs, we’ve identified several nonprofits that we believe are making an impact not only in the Twin Cities, but in St. Cloud and throughout the entire state. We support them variously with time, cash, and equity pledges. While other founders undoubtedly have different lists of who they find personally impactful, this is ours:
MN Cup– The largest statewide startup competition in the world. In addition to the prize money they give out to the winners of their program, entrepreneurs receive valuable feedback and support for their new ventures.
Beta.MN– Beta provides startups with many of the same benefits as a for-equity accelerator (connections to investors, community support, etc.) while not requiring equity from startups that participate.
Minnestar– Every April, Minnestar organizes the largest bar camp in the world for free, where a community of 30,000+ tech enthusiasts participate in learning sessions on a variety of topics from leading practitioners. They also organize free demo events where many of our top local startups have provided their first public demo over the years.
St. Cloud State University Foundation– We built our first startup while attending school at St. Cloud State. Our professors took an active role in mentoring us during these years, and many of our employees were graduates as well.
College of Saint Benedict and St. John’s University (for the benefit of the McNeely Center for Entrepreneurship)- Many of our other employees and mentors graduated from this Central Minnesota university. The McNeely Center supports student entrepreneurs, and the university itself has a tremendous track record of celebrating entrepreneurship via their annual alumni award program.
SingularityU Minneapolis-St. Paul– Ryan is a graduate of the Singularity University Executive Education program and Co-Ambassador of this chapter, which brings educational opportunities around exponential technology to the Twin Cities while promoting local Moonshot startups taking on global problems.
Centracare Foundation– You can’t start a successful business without taking care of yourself and your employees healthcare needs. The headquarters for our previous company was in St. Cloud/Sartell, and many of our employees had newborns at Centracare or had other types of medical treatment.
Silicon North Stars– MN DEED Commissioner Steve Grove and Rise of the Rest Seed Fund/Revolution Partner Mary Grove started Silicon North Stars to promote technology careers for a more diverse set of students in the Twin Cities.
A Virtuous Cycle
Together, our equity donations will provide considerable upside to the nonprofits over the long run as our startups go on to create immense value, growing the startup ecosystem and not only benefitting local job growth and creation, but also making the next generation of startups more likely to succeed.
Once the Founders Pledge becomes part of the culture of the startup community, it will create a virtuous cycle of success.
If you are a founder who would like to make a similar commitment, feel free to contact us, or tweet @greatnorthlabs with #MNFoundersPledge. We can offer advice on making the commitment and professional referrals for legal and accounting.
The environment is ripe and the ecosystem is ready, and it’s time that this popular movement started spreading through Minnesota and the Upper Midwest!
Josef Siebert // October 9, 2019
7 Places to Spot Us at Startup Week
Twin Cities Startup Week kicks off tonight, and goes until October 16th! This is the biggest startup (event? happening?) anything in Minnesota every year, and TCSW 2019 is bigger than ever, with over 300 events. So what does a venture fund like Great North Labs have to do with it? Are we just wandering around writing checks?
Oh, no. Oh ho ho ho ho NO.
1. BETA Showcase
Oct. 14th, from 7-9 pm at the DQ Club Room at TCF Bank Stadium
When Reed Robinson at BETA approached us about including Greater MN in Twin Cities Startup Week (TCSW), we had some ideas.
This year, we helped BETA source and vet startups from around the state for the BETA Showcase, which regularly sells out (and which attracted 800 attendees last year!). For the first time ever, this premier event of TCSW will include 10 startups from Greater MN, in addition to the 14 from the BETA cohort. Who will take home the Golden iPod this year?!
While many demo events are industry or metro-specific, this will truly be a celebration of the state’s entire ecosystem. Come to eat, drink, and talk one-on-one with some of the hottest new founders in the state!
2. Greater MN Meetup
Oct. 14, from 5-6 pm at the “M” Club Room at TCF Bank Stadium
2019 is the first year focused on including Greater MN, so Great North Labs decided to help organize the Greater MN Meetup, with sponsors EPIQ Partners and Moss & Barnett.
This invite-only (request and invite at the link if you haven’t received one) pre-event gathering before the BETA Showcase will be a place for policy folks, business leaders, economic development pros, entrepreneurs, and investors interested in supporting the innovation and startup ecosystem statewide. It will also give all of the Showcase newcomers a place to gather with likeminded people before the craziness of the BETA Showcase.
Join us to connect with Greater MN stakeholders, and have a drink and snacks before the BETA Showcase!
3. Exponential Medicine
Oct. 14, from 1:30-2:30 pm at Junior Achievement of the Upper Midwest
Ryan Weber is not only a Managing Partner at Great North Labs, but he is also the Co-Ambassador at SingularityU Minneapolis-St. Paul (SU-MSP), where he keeps up on digital transformation and exponential technologies.
The mission of SU-MSP includes educating people in the community around these topics. Exponential Medicine is part of the featured Health track, and we have gathered 3 cutting-edge local companies to speak about what they do, where they see the tech going, and the impact that will have in the future.
Come to learn about advanced tech in local medical companies StemoniX, Recombinetics, and Miromatrix Medical.
4. Exponential Medicine Moonshot Workshop
Oct. 14, from 3:00-4:00 pm at Junior Achievement of the Upper Midwest
Another part of the mission of SU-MSP is to promote local moonshots using exponential tech to take on the world’s most pressing problems! This Moonshot Workshop will work on generating some of these big, transformative ideas with a health focus.
Ryan Weber will co-facilitate this workshop with fellow SU-MSP leadership team member Nick Tietz, Founder and CEO of ILT Studios.
Want to think outside of the box while brainstorming BIG ideas to make the world a better place? Join us for this session to not only learn how to generate these ideas, but to generate some yourself!
5. TCSW Awards Ceremony
Oct. 16, from 6-9 pm at the Science Museum of Minnesota
The Closing Party of Twin Cities Startup Week is going to be a blowout at the Science Museum. This will be the last hurrah of TCSW 2019!
Sign up separately to attend the TCSW Awards Ceremony from 6-7 pm. There are a variety of awards given out, and this year we are proud to be sponsoring the 10K Award. The award is for recognizing an organization, team, or individual fueling Minnesota’s startup ecosystem outside the greater MSP Area.
Vote for the 10K Award recipient here, and attend the event for the last goodbye to TCSW until 2020!
6. Partnerships Matter: Why Go it Alone if you Don’t Have to?
Oct. 11, from 10 am-12 pm at EPIQ Partners
Managing Partner Rob Weber will be speaking at EPIQ Partners alongside Neela Mollgaard, Director of Launch MN, and Matt Meents, former CEO of Magnet 360.
“Success rarely happens as a solo effort. Every entrepreneur must find and nurture partnerships along the way. From co-founders developing trust in early stages to finding the right advisors to track towards an exit, partnerships matter. Come and absorb from an informed group of experienced partners.” – from the event description that was so right-on it had to be directly quoted
Come to hear about the value of partnerships, and valuable partnerships.
7. Kind of all over the place
Great North Labs contributes to many organizations that are important to the local startup ecosystem including MN Cup (Final Awards ceremony on Oct. 14th!), Minnestar (Minnedemo 33 is Oct. 10th!), BETA (operational support for all of TCSW), and SingularityU Minneapolis-St. Paul.
A healthy ecosystem produces more startups, and we hope to grow it locally, while continuing to invest in early-stage startups throughout all of Minnesota and the Upper Midwest. We are glad to see Twin Cities Startup Week growing in attendees, events, and sponsors, and by including startups from Greater MN!
Josef Siebert // October 3, 2019
The Greater MN Meetup, Parallax, and Exponential Medicine
This year, Greater MN is joining Twin Cities Startup Week in a big way! The premier event of TCSW is including Greater MN for the first time, as Great North Labs has partnered with BETA to open up the BETA Showcase to Greater MN startups. BETA is the founder and organizer of Twin Cities Startup Week, and every year the Showcase is the sold-out highlight of the week, featuring top startups.
Ten Greater Minnesota startups will be highlighted alongside 14 from BETA’s cohort.
“With the efforts of some amazing partners like the NEW Launch MN initiative and Great North Labs, there’s an ever increasing appetite for supporting and celebrating technology being built in Greater Minnesota. It’s our privilege to present some of these companies at one of Twin Cities Startup Week’s most exciting events – the BETA Showcase. Working together, we’re excited to see what kind of growth occurs – customers, investment, awareness, etc – by building tighter relationships between the local technology ecosystem and those building outside of the Twin Cities.” – Reed Robinson, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Beta.MN
The event will be Oct.14 in the DQ Club Room at TCF Bank Stadium, from 7-9 pm. Tickets for the Showcase usually sell out, so be sure to get them well in advance as 1,000+ attendees are expected this year.
Greater MN Meetup
Great North Labs is sponsoring a special, invite-only, pre-Showcase gathering for Greater MN stakeholders called the Greater MN Meetup. The Greater MN Meetup will focus on Greater MN start-ups, founders, and relationships, and making introductions and connections within this group. Ticketholders for the Greater MN Meetup (from 5-6 pm) are invited to stay for the VIP Showcase event from 6-7 pm, and the Showcase itself.
If you haven’t received an invitation to the Greater MN Meetup and are interested in attending, please make an inquiry here.
There are quality startups around the state that can use the exposure that comes with a slot at the top startup event of the largest startup gathering in the state (and one of the largest in the country!). We are excited to do our part connecting Greater MN with this awesome gathering.
Events
Oct. 9-16th, Twin Cities Startup Week in Minneapolis, MN. This is the largest startup gathering annually in Minnesota, featuring dozens of events at multiple venues around the city. Be sure to check out:
Beta Showcase on Oct. 14th. This year’s Great North Labs partnership with Beta will bring Greater MN into the metro startup ecosystem! Plan to showcase, sponsor, or attend!
SingularityU Minneapolis-St. Paul’sExponential Medicine and Exponential Medicine Moonshot Workshop on Oct. 14th. Exponential Medicine will feature leading local health tech entrepreneurs Ping Yeh of StemoniX, Mark Platt of Recombinetics, and Jeff Ross of Miromatrix Medical. Great North Labs’s Ryan Weber will be running the Moonshot Workshop with ILT Studios’s Nick Tietz.
Oct. 10th, Innovation Expo inSioux Falls, SD. Great North Labs partner Ryan Weber will be speaking on the Finance Panel.
Oct. 11th, Future Finance Forum at Allianz Field inSt. Paul, MN. “Join more than 300 CEOs, founders, VCs, government leaders, journalists and corporate executives from across the country as they connect in Minnesota to discuss the latest trends moving the fintech industry forward.”
Oct. 15th, The Dance – Automation Summit in Columbus, OH. “We’re bringing together more than 300 of the brightest minds in robotics and automation for one day summit at the Columbus Musuem of Art on October 15th.”
Nov. 11-17, Startup Wisconsin Week in multiple locations across the state. “Advancing Wisconsin’s tech and startup ecosystems through unique programming driven by entrepreneurs” is the mission of this state-wide happening.
Nov. 14th, Cultivate in Fargo, ND. Put on by Emerging Prairie, this conference is all about emerging tech in agriculture.
Nov. 14th, OnRamp Manufacturing Conference in Indianapolis, IN. The OnRamp Manufacturing Conference highlights innovations disrupting the manufacturing industry, the leaders making such innovations possible and how new technologies and business models will reinvent the industry.
Portfolio News
Parallax is new to the Great North Labs portfolio. Parallax is a platform that simplifies lead planning and provides real-time answers to the most important questions, allowing businesses to succeed while crafting their vision for tomorrow.
Branch is also new to the portfolio. Branch is a mobile-first technology that helps hourly workers get ahead financially. The application allows users to budget, take paycheck advances, and earn more income by picking up available shifts.
Job Board
More information about our portfolio companies can be found here.
Dispatchis hiring all over the country for Drivers and locally for Product Owner, Biz Dev, QA Engineer, UX Designer, Accounts Payable, Driver Engagement, and a CFO. Structural is hiring a Software Sales & Operations Support Specialist. FactoryFixis hiring a Software Engineer and Product Designer in Madison, and a Business Development Specialist and an Account Manager in Chicago. Misty Robotics is hiring a Devops Engineer and Principal Electrical Engineer in Boulder, CO. 2ndKitchen is hiring a Digital Marketing Manager, Customer Success Manager, Account Exec., Biz Dev Development Manager, and Director of Sales, all in Chicago, and a Product Designer in New York, NY. PrintWithMe is hiring a Marketing Manager and NOC Tech Support Technician in Chicago, and a Regional Sales Director for Sacramento/Bay Area and Los Angeles. Branchis hiring a Senior Fronted Engineer, Senior Backend Engineer, Android Engineer, Creative Manager, Content Marketing Manager, Senior iOS Engineer, Settlement Analyst, Customer Support Agent, Demand Generation Manager, Customer Success Manager, Account Exec., and an Office Assistant.
Josef Siebert // June 27, 2019
June: Great North Labs’s first fund raised!
$23.7 Million Raised
Great North Labs has closed its first fund with $23.7M in committed capital! This is one of the largest debut seed funds ever raised in the Midwest.
“We are very appreciative and humbled by the tremendous support shown for our debut fund by our limited partners,” said Great North Labs Managing Partner Rob Weber. “Our investors’ support shows not only their conviction for us as fund managers, but also their conviction to backing the next generation of startup founders across our region.”
Managing Partners Rob and Ryan Weber, SCSU President Robbyn Wacker, and Managing Partner Pradip Madan at the Great North Labs Startup Ecosystem Kickoff last September.
This fund raise has exceeded our team’s expectations, and has increased our capacity, reach and impact as we cultivate the next generation of tech startups across the Upper Midwest.
“The opportunity in the Midwest is significant for investors with the right experience, criteria and investment thesis. For four decades, capital has gravitated towards Silicon Valley, Boston and New York. With the high cost of living and a talent supply-demand imbalance, making a startup successful is now more difficult in Silicon Valley,” said Managing Partner Pradip Madan, who is based in Silicon Valley. “As a result, investors are starting to pay more attention to the startup ecosystems in places like Chicago, Minneapolis, Madison and Des Moines. Plus, many of the industries – financial, food, travel and hospitality, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, mining – that entrepreneurs are now disrupting are native to these areas. In the new Gold Rush, the gold is the hard-working entrepreneurs and their startups in these regions.”
July 17-18th. Enterprise Rising, Minneapolis. “If you’re an enterprise SaaS startup, then this will be the best room you’ll be in all year.”
July 17-18th. Fund Conference, Chicago. Brad Feld of Foundry Group is the featured speaker this year. “FUND Conference was launched in 2015 to connect investors, vetted, emerging-growth companies, and business leaders for same-day connections and business development opportunities.”
July 18th. Minnedemo32, St. Paul. A showcase of working tech products made in Minnesota. No PowerPoint, 7 minutes to present.
July 24th. Horizon, St. Paul. This is Forge North’s activation event for ecosystem leaders. “If you are ready to look to the horizon, set clear and ambitious new goals for our region, and rally around breakthrough ideas, partners in Forge North invite you to join in.”
July 25th. TedX Fargo 2019: Forward, Fargo. “We want to empower people to be solution-orientated, believing that ideas can change the way the world works. We want to encourage you to listen to new ideas, find a topic that you’re passionate about, and then take action to enable those ideas. Join us as we celebrate our 10th TEDxFargo event, and 10 years of TEDx!”
Advisors
Two Great North Labs advisors are new to the team!
Geoff Wood is the founder of Gravitate Coworking in Des Moines, Iowa, as well as the Executive Director of the West Des Moines Business Incubator. Geoff co-founded and publishes Clay & Milk, a media startup that covers the Iowa entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Mike Rynchek is the former CTO of Bright Health. Before that, Mike founded and served as CEO of Spyder Trap, which was acquired by Bright Health. He is currently the Global Strategy Lead for Onduo, and an active startup investor and advisor.
Job Board
Dispatchis hiring all over the country (25 cities!) for Field Sales Representatives and Drivers. In Bloomington, MN, they are hiring an Engineer, a UX Designer, and for Biz Dev, Customer Experience, and Driver Engagement roles.
2ndKitchen is hiring a Full-Stack Developer in Brooklyn, NY, and an Operations Associate in Chicago.
PrintWithMeis hiring a Business Development Executive, a Customer Success Manager, a Strategy Intern, and a Marketing and Operations Intern.
Josef Siebert // May 31, 2019
May: Innovation Ecosystems, SingularityU Kickoff, and PrintWithMe
The Innovation Ecosystem
At Great North Labs, we work to cultivate the next generation of leading tech companies across the upper Midwest. As a venture fund, this means deploying capital, providing startup intelligence, and utilizing our network to support and grow early-stage tech startups. We also provide low-cost training through our Startup School, in areas that we perceive an educational need, such as our Lean Startup Bootcamp currently running in St. Cloud.
This sort of development can’t occur through a singular entity, however, so Great North Labs supports a variety of impactful elements that are key to developing the tech community and innovation ecosystem. SingularityU, with 156 global chapters in 68 countries, is one of those organizations that we believe can be valuable to developing a transformative, globally competitive innovation ecosystem here in our region.
SingularityU Minneapolis-St. Paul Chapter is an official member of the SingularityU global community, and is committed to inspire and educate leaders to solve Grand Challenges (e.g. Clean Water Access, Disaster Resilience) by leveraging Exponential Technologies (e.g. AI, blockchain, robotics).
Great North Labs Managing Partner Ryan Weber is an alumnus of the SingularityU Executive Program, and regularly speaks throughout the region on exponential technology. He is a founding board member and Co-Ambassador of the SingularityU Minneapolis-St. Paul Chapter (SU-MSP).
The chapter is holding its Kickoff this Tuesday, June 4th, from 5:30-8:30 at the Carlson School of Management. The event is to kick off greater collaboration and discussion around the use of exponential technologies for social good with local businesses, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Tickets are free and open to the public.
Speakers include:
Ryan Weber, Managing Partner of Great North Labs
Mark Ritchie, President of Global Minnesota, and President & CEO of Expo 2027 (Minnesota’s World’s Fair bid)
Cora Leibig, CEO & Founder of Chromatic 3D Materials
David Williams, Chief Innovation Officer of Elements Group
MN DEED policy update
Speaking of innovation ecosystems, Google/YouTube alum Steve Grove is actively working to develop Minnesota’s. MN DEED will hold a legislative session wrap-up to talk about new initiatives coming with the new MN state budget. The wrap-up will be in a Facebook Live session on this Friday at noon:
In a series of Tweets, Commissioner Steve Grove said, ”The 2019 #mnleg jobs bill empowers @mndeed to help build future of MN economy:
-Angel Tax Credit is back -New program “Launch Minnesota” to grow startups -$40M in Broadband grants –@SciTechMN Internships & robotics programs -Regional startup centers”
Events
June 4th– SingularityU Minneapolis-St. Paul Chapter (SU-MSP) Kickoff. This event will kick off collaboration and discussion around the use of exponential technologies for the greater good with local businesses, innovators, and entrepreneurs in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Great North Labs Managing Partner Ryan Weber also serves as the Co-Ambassador of the SU-MSP chapter, and will emcee the event.
June 6th– Polsky Innovation Showcase. Part of UChicago Innovation Fest, this event is the culmination of the New Venture Challenge at the University of Chicago, one of the top college startup accelerator programs in the country. Great North Labs Analyst Mike Schulte will be at the event and available for meetings.
June 19th– OnRamp Healthcare Conference. Put on by gener8tor, this conference is focused on healthcare innovation, and will be at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, WI.
June 20th– Initiative Foundation Lunch and Learn. Ryan Weber will be presenting on disruption and innovation in the nonprofit sector at this community event in St. Cloud, MN.
June 21-23– ConnectUp!. “ConnectUP! MN is a two-day, culturally grounded gathering of curated underestimated entrepreneurs and investors that: learn and share with each other, engage in relationship-building, provide best and next practices from the field, as well as engage in active problem solving to build thriving, diverse, and sustainable enterprises and co-design an ecosystem that prioritizes equitable access to resources, capital and networks.” It is held in St. Paul.
Portfolio
PrintWithMe is new to the Great North labs portfolio. PrintWithMe is mobile-first kiosk printing for coffee shops, residential buildings, co-working spaces and anywhere pay-to-print printers are offered. This user-friendly service simplifies printing for customers, and makes providing a printer amenity easy for businesses.
Advisors
Three Great North Labs advisors are new to the team!
Carson Kipfer is the Principal Designer and co-founder at SportsEngine. He is also the Co-Commissioner of the US Pond Hockey Championships.
Andy Johnson is the former CEO of NativeX. Before that, he was the President of Fingerhut’s Ecommerce division.
Patrick Riley is a film producer, and the former CEO and co-founder of Modern Survey Inc., and the former CEO and founder of Cyber Works Inc.
Dispatchis hiring all over the country (26 cities!) for Field Sales Representatives and Drivers. In Bloomington MN, they are hiring Software Engineers, Biz Dev, and a marketing intern.
Structural is hiring a Node/JavaScript Engineer, a React Engineer, and a Digital Marketing Analyst.
PrintWithMeis hiring a Business Development Executive, a Customer Success Manager, a Strategy Intern, and a Marketing and Operations Intern
Entrepreneurship is a proven capital-efficient way to build economic value and transform regions. Great North Labs believes that venture investment guided by a policy framework is the most efficient way to develop regional economies across Minnesota and the upper Midwest. Locally employing tech natives entering the workforce, and retraining the current workforce into tech roles with on-the-job training, is the most durable and sustainable way to build the economies in the region. We are hoping to invest at least 10% of our investments in opportunities that can deliver high returns and serve social criteria. Let us know if you know of a high-return, high-impact startup we should look at.
Josef Siebert // February 21, 2019
February: Improving the Culture for Entrepreneurship, 2ndKitchen, and the Prairie Capital Summit
Improving the Culture for Entrepreneurship
Many efforts are underway to continue to improve the culture for entrepreneurship in Minnesota and other Midwest states, ranging from policy driven efforts to increase access to capital for startup founders to workforce development initiatives to ensure the right talent is interested and available in high growth startup jobs.
On the government side, forexample, the governor’s just-released budget includes funding for the creation of the Minnesota Innovation Collaborative, which is designed to accelerate the growth of the innovation ecosystem. Theproposed budget also includes thereturn of an Angel Tax Credit forMN.
Walker Orenstein spoke with Great North Labs Managing Partner Rob Weber on the MN Angel Tax Credit for MinnPost: In a follow-up interview, Weber outlined his pitch for bringing back the tax credit. For starters, he said Minnesotans tend to take fewer chances when investing compared to tech hubs like California and Washington state.
An angel tax credit can make it easier for investors to take a leap of faith on the off chance they bet on, say, the next 3M, Weber said. “Government can play a role getting the culture to be a little more risk tolerant,” Weber said. He pointed to Finland, where the government has offered aggressive help to entrepreneurs, as an extreme example of prodding the private sector into building a robust technology industry.
On the workforce development side, over 200 startup enthusiasts attended a recent Beta.MN event, MN Tech – State of the State, where the role of stock options in startups was brought up by Rob Weber. Rob shared his ‘manifesto’ on why stock options need to be more prevalent in regional startups if they are to succeed, and why those options need to be valued by employees of early-stage startups.
Lee Schafer followed up on the topic with Rob for a column in the Star Tribune: “What the Silicon Valley ecosystem has figured out is the top talent can bounce back and forth between high-paying corporate jobs with low upside, and riskier, earlier-stage jobs with more upside, assuming stock options are present,” Weber said. “The Twin Cities could potentially create the same kind of dynamic because of how blessed it is with large [corporations].”
This opportunity architecture that Rob describes is a de facto talent exchange that brings experience to startups and innovation to large corporations. Workforce development occurs naturally in this system through existing incentives.
Here in the upper Midwest, we can create an innovation ecosystem that promotes risk-tolerant investment and rewards risk-taking talent, and match the ongoing development and sustained economic impact of the cities with even the most successful startup cultures.
MN DEED commissioner Steve Grove recently met with some of Minnesota’s top VCs (including Rob and Ryan Weber) to talk about how to grow the startup ecosystem.
Events
February 20th, St. Paul, MN. Minne Inno’s first State of Innovation Meetup of 2019 will be held at Osborn370 from 5:30-8pm. It will feature trends in retail andtech with Branch Messenger CEO Atif Siddiqi, and pitches from the first cohort of Lunar Startups, the new accelerator based at Osborn370.
February 21st, Minneapolis, MN. WE* Pitchfest is a pitch event held at UMN- Carlson from 5-7pm. Organized by the Holmes Center for Entrepreneurship, the event seeks to inspire more women to pursue entrepreneurship, and to connect those that do with the resources they need.
March 6th, Fargo, ND. The Prairie Capital Summit will take place at the PrairieDen in Fargo. Great North Labs advisor Greg Tehven is the Executive Director of Emerging Prairie, the founder and host of the Summit. Emerging Prairiehosts recurring conferences and runs multiple events throughout the year in support of startups and the startup ecosystem, including the Prairie CapitalSummit, which is in its third year. Great North Labs Managing Partner Ryan Weber will be speaking.
March 7th, Eau Claire, WI. Intro to Exponential Technology and Leadership will be from 6:30-8pm at CoLAB. Ryan Weber, managing partner at Great North Labs and co-ambassador of Singularity University Minneapolis-St.Paul Chapter, will speak. The talk focuses on exponential trends in technology that are poised to disrupt our lives, work, and economy. The event is co-sponsored by UW-Eau Claire and CoLAB.
March 8th, Minneapolis, MN. Tech Cities at UMN-Carlson. This annual event explores issues and topics surrounding business and tech in Minnesota, andaround the world.
March 8-17th, Austin, TX. SXSW (South By Southwest). This annual event has turned into a cultural touchpoint for this generation, with high-level focus areas of Art, Film, and “Interactive” – which is sort of a Tech catch-all that includes startups, investing, marketing, coding, and more. The Entrepreneurship & Startups track is from Mar. 8-12th. The energy and impact of this massive event transcends the actual conference and city, so even if you don’t attend, you’ll be sure to hear about it during and after.
March 14th, Fort Snelling, MN. Minnesota Entrepreneur Kickoff. The 9th incarnation of this annual event aims to celebrate and sustain local entrepreneurs. It is hosted by the Minnesota Entrepreneur Network, which supports local entrepreneurs and is committed to growing the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. Ryan Weber will be speaking on Exponential Technology as an intro to the featured panel on Emergent Technology.
March 19-20th, Kansas City, MO. “InvestMidwest is a venture capitalconference that showcases 40-45 companies from throughout the Midwest in the three industry tracks of life sciences, technology and food/ag/bioenergy.” The 20th annual event is expected to attract over 300 attendees, including a mix of founders and investors.
Portfolio action
2ndKitchen is new to the Great North Labs portfolio. 2ndKitchen is a hyperlocal, food ordering fulfillment platform that enables businesses anywhere to serve food seamlessly using a custom menu from nearby restaurants .
Advisor news
Two Great North Labs advisors are new to the website!
Jack Dempsey is an investor, board member, and CEO mentor. He is a former senior partner at McKinsey & Co, and former President of Pentair, Inc.. Joe Sriver was the first UX hire at Google. He is a repeat founder, of startups Revirs and DoApp, and is currently the Chief Giver at 4giving.
2019 is here! Since Great North Labs is a proponent of iterating based on data-driven feedback, it’s time for a look at the best-performing content from 2018. What captured people’s interest? What is the Great North community interested in?
The Posts
Facebook controversy. Rob Weber’s post about Sheryl Sandberg and the importance of “integrators” titled, of course, “Sheryl Sandberg and the Importance of Integrators“,is the top post of the year. The Facebook COO faced a lot of criticism in the past year, and Mark Zuckerberg, the Woz to Sandberg’s Jobs, found himself testifying before Congress this past April for 10 hours. Facebook has come under increasing scrutiny in the wake of data breaches and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and public interest remains high as the 68% of Americans who use Facebook grapple with the implications of data insecurity.
The Internet of Things. Pradip Madan’s white paper on the third generation of IoT and the industrial internet is well-researched and thought-provoking, with input by Great North Labs advisors at Protolabs and Misty Robotics. Pradip makes the case that we are uniquely situated in the upper Midwest to originate the next wave of tech-enabled disruption in IoT in “IoT 3.0“.
Venture capital investing. Pradip Madan writes about VC as an investment class is his white paper, “Where to Invest in the Midwest: Venture Across Asset Classes“. He examines the benefits of venture investing as an asset class even during a down cycle, and how funds can provide protection from multi-year downturns. Pradip also enumerates the unique advantages that Midwest venture funds offer.
The Midwest tech ecosystem.“Putting the ‘Silicon’ in Silicon Lakes”, by Great North Labs Managing Partners, Rob Weber, Ryan Weber, and Pradip Madan, enumerates the key ingredients required to create an innovation hub like Silicon Valley that fosters growth and startups. It is part mission statement, part love letter, and all about the opportunity present in the upper Midwest.
For more content, click below to browse all of our articles. You can also sign up below to receive our newsletter, which has job links, portfolio news and events in addition to articles; or follow the links to social media and video content on Youtube.
Josef Siebert // October 2, 2018
September: Great North Labs Startup Ecosystem Kickoff Recap, Twin Cities Startup Week
Great North Labs Startup Ecosystem Kickoff
“It doesn’t take a lot of capital with early-stage tech companies to make a big impact.” – Ryan Weber
The Great North Labs Startup Ecosystem Kickoff brought together successful entrepreneurs and innovators to learn about the current state of the tech and investment ecosystem and network with like-minded professionals. 25 speakers, 6 portfolio startups, and over 250 attendees came together for the afternoon! The topics of education, community, fostering connections, economic impact, and the ripe opportunity for venture capital in the upper Midwest dominated conversations, as some of the area’s most innovative thinkers gathered, spoke, and networked.
Here’s what people have to say about the event:
“a fantastic event with great speakers” (@jmjhjr)
“pretty amazing turnout here at #SCSU“ (@graemethickins)
Oct. 9th, “Minimal Lovable Product Panel” (part of TCSW). 3-5 pm, at the Baker Center, Minneapolis. FieldNation is hosting, and Ryan Weber is a panelist.
Oct. 10th, “Project North Fall Quarterly Roundtable“. 12-4 pm, at the Lumber Exchange Event Center, Minneapolis. Rob Weber will speak on the “State of the Twin Cities Innovation and Startup Community”.
Oct. 24-25, 2018 FUND Conference, Chicago. “FUND Conference is the nation’s connector of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, and industry experts with a focus on curated deal flow, captivating content and same day connections.” Pradip Madan is speaking.
CEOs from our portfolio companies presented at the Startup Ecosystem Kickoff, giving overviews, updates, and asks of the Great North Labs community. Visit the Startup Ecosystem Kickoff playlist on the Great North Labs YouTube channel to see presentations from Dispatch, Structural, TeamGenius, FactoryFix, ZAPinfo, and Pitchly.
New advisors
Great North Labs welcomed three new advisors in September:
Jason Heathis the CFO at Drip + LeadPages, and was formerly the VP ofBusiness Intelligence & Analytics at GoDaddy. Mike Bollingeris the Founder of Livefront and the Co-founder of TECHdotMN. Graeme Thickinsis the President and Founder of GT&A Strategic Marketing Inc. and is a MinneAnalytics board member. He also has a long career as a tech writer and analyst, and runs GraemeThickinsontech.com.
August: Great North Labs Startup Ecosystem Kickoff, ZAPinfo, and the necessity of advice and capital availability
Great North Labs’s August Update
Fostering Midwest success means making guidance and capital available for tech startups
Great North Labs got the front-page treatment in the Star Tribune Business section this Sunday. Former investment banker, consultant and corporate officer (and current business journalist) Lee Schafer talked about building successful tech companies with Ryan and Rob Weber– including the importance of providing advice and mentorship in addition to capital.
Rob also caught up with former advisor and mentor Young Sohn, President of Samsung, and former advisee and investee Mynul Khan, CEO of FieldNation. They illustrate the success that can come with “a little bit of money and a lot of advice”.
If a startup is considering moving from the Midwest to find that success, as Rob says in the article, “It shouldn’t be because the capital can’t find you. It shouldn’t be because you can’t get the mentorship you need.”
Events
September 17th, St. Cloud – Great North Labs Startup Ecosystem Kickoff. This invite-only event is THE annual event for Great North Labs! We will hear from:
Mary Grove, Partner at Revolution/Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, formerly Director of Google for Entrepreneurs
Margaret Anderson Kelliher, President/CEO of Minnesota High Tech Association
Matt Lewis, Director of Make It MSP @ Greater MSP, team member at Forge North
Mynul Khan, founder/ CEO of FieldNation
Corey Koskie, former Minnesota Twin, Founder at Linklete
Mark Ritchie, former Minnesota Secretary of State
Talks include “Why the Future is Bright for Startups Across America” and an “Outlook for Minnesota Technology & Innovation”.
A panel discussion on Sports Tech features local startup executives from SportsEngine, SportsRadar, SportsHub, and Starting11, while an Outstate Entrepreneurship panel will feature leaders from local accelerators, investors and entrepreneurs who are actively involved in outstate, upper Midwest ventures.
Great North Labs portfolio companies will give updates, and will be available to connect with. These include: Dispatch, Structural, Pitchly, ZapInfo, TeamGenius and FactoryFix.
This is about building the startup ecosystem, so there will be plenty of time for some high-quality networking and hors d’oeuvres.
If you haven’t received an invite, go here to request one. Tickets are free, but the invite list is filling up fast! After you receive your invitation, tickets for you and up to 2 guests can be claimed via Eventbrite.
Great North Labs Pre-TedX Happy Hour, St. Cloud. From 5-6pm October 11th, we’ll gather at Great North Labs’s headquarters for a happy hour ecosystem talk and networking, before TedX St.Cloud 2018: Cultivating, which will be held only a few blocks away, at the Paramount in St. Cloud.
Past Event: Forward Fest was a great event this year, with Ryan Weber in Madison for two days (Aug. 20-21) of the annual week-long Wisconsin startup gathering. The fun started at Starting Block Madison, where GNL Advisor Nick Kartos ( CEO-GymDandy) helped facilitate a meet-and-greet happy hour. The event pitted MN and WI microbrews against each other, while entrepreneurs and investors had a chance to check out Starting Block’s space and hear about Great North Labs. The next day, Ryan moderated a panel on Startup-Corporate Partnerships at the Forward Technology Conference (Forward Fest’s “headline tech conference”). Thanks to everyone who came out, and thanks for the help, Nick!
Portfolio action
ZAPinfo is new to the Great North Labs portfolio. Formerly WebClipDrop, ZAPinfo is an information automation and productivity tool that helps recruiters and sales professionals be more productive by capturing, enriching, and sharing data easily across the web and any web based applications. With one click, users can gather a plethora of information about candidates from a variety of web sources, and with another click export it to any web form or app, or to a CSV, PDF, or other data file.
ZAPinfo is led by CEO/founder Doug Berg, who previously founded Jobs2Web and techies.com, and is an expert on workforce and career trends.
New advisors
Great North Labs welcomed two new advisors in August:
Daine Billmark, Senior Manager at TransUnion (formerly eBureau).
Wade Beavers, President of Mobile at Newscycle Solutions.
Welcome to the team!
Job Board
Dispatch is hiring Drivers in Cincinnati, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Orlando, and Minneapolis.
Structural is hiring an Account Executive and a Senior Software Engineer.
Team Genius is hiring a Lead Full-Stack Engineer. Pitchly is hiring a UI/UX designer and Core engineer- watch for postings or contact directly for details.
Pradip Madan // April 30, 2018
Healthcare Innovation
Healthcare Today
Some of the smartest minds work in healthcare, life sciences and biopharma. Yet the healthcare sector struggles to bring innovation into its ecosystem. The pace of innovation adoption has been much greater in other sectors, including in communication (Facebook, Skype), learning (Google, YouTube, Coursera), shopping (Amazon), personal finance (PayPal), and entertainment (Netflix).
This is not because of a lack of innovation in the pipeline. Healthcare sector innovators are hard at work on drugs and therapeutics, devices, and operational aspects of healthcare delivery. Breakthroughs have come in genomics-based precision drugs, machine-learning-based disease detection, EMRs, payment systems, patient adherence and education tools. In healthcare, the innovation tends to be evidence-based, with scientific papers that quantify results from well-designed experiments, and a highly-skilled academic research ecosystem at their source. That aspect is unique in the healthcare sector, and the sector has other ecosystem attributes not seen in other sectors. It’s this unique ecosystem that makes market insertion, growth and adoption at scale more complex, requiring specific insight and enablement.
The Upper Midwest has substantial healthcare anchors to promote a thriving ecosystem of clinical innovation and practice. Examples include the leading research, teaching and clinical centers of the Mayo Clinic and University of Minnesota; hospital systems like Minnesota Health System and CentraCare; device manufacturer Medtronic; software companies like Epic; payers such as United Healthcare; and the processors Optum and United. There are also hundreds of strong, related entities across the region. Healthcare investment is shifting from traditional hotspots like Boston, Houston, and Raleigh-Durham to Silicon Valley, and while the global ecosystem catches up, there is an opportunity to take advantage of this transition to strengthen the ecosystem in the Upper Midwest.
Strong healthcare research leads to breakthrough ideas which require mentorship and incubation to grow. Leading research institutions can organize ecosystem support, such as how the University of Minnesota encourages mentorship through their Venture Center’s Business Advisory Group which brings together entrepreneurs, funds (including Great North Capital Fund), and industry leaders to drive the successful commercialization of its academic research. This is big business, and the U of MN now generates roughly $1B per year from such efforts (two-thirds life sciences and one-third software/IT).
Geographic and industry-themed startup accelerators have also begun to proliferate in the region. Startup accelerators support early-stage, growth-driven companies through education, mentorship, and financing for a fixed period of time, among an admitted cohort of companies. The multi-city startup accelerator, Gener8tor, is managing a new Twin Cities med-tech accelerator backed by Boston Scientific, the University of Minnesota, and the Mayo Clinic. Venture studios and incubators are other forms of early-stage support available in the region. Minneapolis-based Invenshure has successfully launched multiple healthcare startups.
The region’s healthcare system is also significant on the demand side. For example, the cost drivers of healthcare in Minnesota reflect those in the US at large. Yet, while challenges in patient care are also similar to those of other regions, Minnesota’s efficiency is better. Healthcare spending accounts for over 16% of the US economy but is only about 13% of the Minnesota economy. So not only are Minnesota-based insights relevant, they are valuable. Innovations can be developed and piloted in Minnesota, then applied in other states. Startups developed here can be scaled nationally and, with adaptation, internationally.
Figure 1: Health Care Cost Drivers: Spending and Shares of Growth by Service, 2011 to 2013.
Each decade brings its own set of innovations that transform industries. The healthcare industry will undergo vast changes in the next 10-20 years. The growing spate of investments and partnerships among tech innovators is signaling an increasing rate of change in this sector. The most visible examples of these innovators include Amazon, Apple, Google, Qualcomm, and Walmart. Google Ventures alone did 27 healthcare deals in 2017, up from 9 in 2013.
These companies you wouldn’t normally think of as bastions of healthcare innovation, yet they are all allocating large talent pools and budgets in the industry. Until Tesla, who would have thought that the next innovation in cars would come from Silicon Valley? More than their balance sheets, the noteworthy attributes of these companies are their culture of observing ecosystems, and their practice of inserting innovation in a stepwise and sustained manner to upend markets.
When you combine such entities with those like Berkshire Hathaway and Goldman Sachs (both of whom are partnering with Amazon in healthcare), and the financial and corporate venture groups that work with them, a disruptive landscape begins to take shape in which other innovators and incumbents alike can find new opportunities. For innovators, it means aligning their innovations with insertion points with high economic value and low resistance. For incumbents, at minimum, it means awareness and being prepared; more proactively, it means proactive engagement with capital (e.g., investments through VC firms), pilots, and adoption. For example, the Mayo Clinic has partnered with Google on leveraging its Knowledge Graph smart search algorithm for patient education, and Optum’s venture arm (based in Boston and Silicon Valley) has allocated $250M to venture investments
The range of innovations in the pipeline is equally stunning. Early examples include smartphones coupled with wearables for clinical-grade data. Today’s pipeline includes voice assistants (trained Alexa-like products) for health-related questions, machine vision for detecting physical anomalies (in skin, bones, retinae, or genes) or even bacteria in food. There are AI and visualization-enabled robotic surgery tools for doctors (e.g., Verb Surgical); machine learning in patient-specific onset detection for things like allergies and COPD; big data in early cancer detection (e.g., Freenome) and other diseases like multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s and autism. The Mayo Clinic and AliveCor have shown that an AI can be trained to identify people at risk for arrhythmia and sudden cardiac arrest despite normal EKG results. There is also analytics-optimized underwriting for individuals and small businesses (e.g., Oscar), Medicaid (Clover) and self-insured populations (Collective Health).
Enabling the Innovation
Applying capital to create, enable and grow innovation platforms, align disruption with practical value in startups, and engage institutions for initial adoption, deployment at scale, and sustained growth requires a deep understanding of the ecosystem and cross-disciplinary skills to navigate it. This is especially true in healthcare given the ecosystem’s unique attributes and complexity, the importance of human health, government regulation, and the depth of incumbency among some players.
Startups benefit from focused enablement of resources including mentors, partners, lab space, hardware/software development expertise, and communication and data analysis platforms. Healthcare enterprises benefit from investment partners who understand their service goals and the need to balance innovation within financial constraints and with operational realities such as the need for patient privacy and the limitations of government regulations.
At Great North Labs, we focus on bringing such forces together to apply capital and expertise effectively and efficiently. We study ecosystems and leverage experts as advisors. We bring people together at events and entrepreneur training, through referrals, and with investment, mentorship and thought leadership by our team. We apply our capital and resources locally, with a deep connection to innovation hubs nationally, and with the goal of scaling globally.
