Great North Labs Kickoff
1. Listen to learn and understand the ecosystem of startups in Minnesota.
2. Make connections to further connections for K-12 education (teachers and students) around how technology is changing everything, even right here in the Midwest.
(Great North Lab cookies)
Introduction from Ryan and Rob sharing their story and how it all started at SCSU, just a few years ago. Then recreating the picture that you see in the slide below. Great North Labs is an early stage venture fund for the upper Midwest. Positively impact our community while delivering strong returns.
Learn more here.
Andrew Leone
Dispatch
Grew out of the need for a better product to deliver materials, track product, and stay in connect with their customers. Andrew Leone, CEO & Cofounder
Mary Grove -
https://twitter.com/maryGrove
Rise of the Rest
Left silicon valley to come to Minnesota due to the future of innovation. She learned about entrepreneurship from her parents at a young age. At Google, she learned the importance of a mission. Google - To organize all of the worlds information and make it accessible.
A few of my takeaways...
- When we are forced to bootstrap, the results can be amazing.
- Economic Opportunity is Global. You are not constrained to launching products in your area, you can go global.
- The most successful people she has worked with think global from day one.
- By the year 2020, 90% of people in the world will have a mobile phone or have access to one by the age of six.
- Access to opportunity is not equally distributed. 70 % of vc funding went to CA, Boston, and New York. A small portion went to women and an even smaller percent went o African Americans (1%).
- Silicon North Stars
- Youth in Minneapolis go to Silicon Valley. Visit places like Facebook, Google. Then for the next four years they work together to create solutions to real problems!
- I would love to work with you on this!!
- Thriving Startups :1. Talent (cs and engineering programs as well as other programs like marketing) 2. Density (a physical cluster of university, coworking, housing) 3. Culture (risk taking, embrace failure, struggle is real and should be celebrated) 4. Capital (should be accessible outside of the cost). 5. Environment (how can the government help)
- Road map to maximize opportunity
- 1. Democratize opportunity to capital and look outside of the coast. It is not only the right thing to do but the economically savvy thing to do.
- Stockx in Detroit - sneakers, watches, ext raised a 44 million round
- Blockable - build beautiful modular houses for low income houses
- Freightways - 700 billion dollar market, aggregates data in freight transactions
- Neobite - Phoenix treat and diagnose infinite jaundice
- Dispatch, Strucrutal, 75f , kidizin in Minneapolis
- Minnesota is home to a 25 billion dollar top states for startups and leading with female entrepreneurs with in a diverse market.
Structural - The Internal People Network
- Developing an enterprise HR solution that allows customers to most effectively utilize information.
- For the first time in 20 years there are more job openings then people looking for work.
- You can search for a person and see comparable people.
- They are looking for introductions
Outstate Entrepreneurship-
Matt Lewis - Greater MSP/Growth North -Moderator
People drive the ecosystem and then companies follow. Ecosystems need to porous, to allow expansion of people (new to the system or new to the area). Connectivity. Everything boils down to access to being connected with time as the challenge.
Panelists
- Mark Ritchie, Former MN Sec. of State
- Eric Martell, Gener8tor
- Wade Beavers, President of Mobile, Newscycle Solutions
- Sandy Hansen, AgVenture Feed and Seed
- Neela Mollgaard, Red Wing Ignite
- Brad Goskowicz, CEO of Microbiologics
A few takeaways
- Minneapolis / St. Paul does a great job at retaining people in the technology market. People have left places like Silicon Valley to come here.
- Networking. The truth is part of the answer. The opportunity may not look like "us." The opportunity for women and minorities in innovation, technology, agribusiness, and how it relates to health. Finding direction and leadership - Sandy
- Fun fact. I didn't know Sandy before today. Her company is in the small town right next to where I live. I will seek her out to connect!
Ryan Gerhardy -
Pitchly - Turn your business information into designed content.
Nine years of investment banking and corporate finance let him to realizing there is a lot of data but it's not useful.
A lot of data, information, wasn't always useful. The goal of changing the paradigm. Makes business data useful.
A database layer for business information to be aggregated and organized to useful information like documents, presentations, ect off of templates.
Doug Berg
Browser based tool. You can zap data from anywhere you go. Extract data and enrich it. Here is x person. Here is his blog, email, phone number, and the put data in your CRM. Share the data with your team in an easier way and quantify your results. Easy way to send information to and from.
BPI -Browser Protocol Interface.
Margaret Anderson Kelliher -
- Healthcare, Internet, Software are the three strongest places where vc has taken place in Minnesota.
- The health care sector - 3.8 bullion.
- VC investments are becoming more concentrated over time. Over time fewer industries are accounting for a greater share of the total VC.
- Emerging investment opportunities are energy & utilities and leisure.
- Angel investment tax credit. more than $421 million of private investment in Minnesota companies have been tied to the credit. Many people in the room today have used it.
- the credit disappeared at the end of 2017 and was not renewed in 2018.
- opportunity to reinstate the credit when legislature reconvene in 2019
- Minnesota Venture Conference
- Day after the election, November 7at the Raddison Blu for Entrepreneurs and Investors
Mark Ritchie
President and CEO of EXPO 2027 - Minnesota's World Fair
Theme: Healthy People, Healthy Planet
Mission: Wellness and Well Being for All
Sports Tech Panel
Moderator : Rick Ehrman Vp of Bus Dev Sports Engine
Panelists-
Dave Abbott - SportsRadar
Todd Larson - TeamGenius
Alex Ryan - Starting11
- Linklete is a website connecting people through the shared experiences of sports. The stories will inspire and encourage us as we navigate our way through youth sports.
- If you can measure it, you can improve it. Growing market for measured results and analytics.
Todd Larson
Problem: tryouts are one of the most stressful and time consuming events of the year. The typical process hasn't evolved in decades. Paper pencil. Long hours of hardworking volunteers with long wait times. Team Genius has web and mobile tools to streamline the process.
Centracare Health Foundation
Bradley Konkler
Philanthropy and Community Health
- 9 out of 10 people in central MN receive their health from Centracare, 700,000+ people
- 11 million dollars into the central Minnesota, consider a charitable partner in your business plan
Sarnath Ramnath - Department Chair of Computer Science at SCSU
- A mentor of Ryan's while at SCSU
- Relationships and connections are vital
- Helped Ryan build NativeX
- "There is nothing more exciting to hear from your students that you did something to help them. It's awesome!"
- New Approaches for Sum-of-Diameters Clustering - article
Mynul Khan
Field Nation
Slow and Steady Start. The power of connections. They couldn't do it alone. There is a lot of great talent between SCSU, Uof MN, Mankato State but we need to create an ecosystem to build a vibrant community. Mynul benefited from the finances and meeting the right people through Ryan and Robert. Connections over money.
Patrick O'Rahilly
Factory Fix
Chicago based startup. Skilled manufacturing Pros, On Demand. Field nation for skilled manufacture workers.
Problem: There is a shortage of skilled workers. No good way to find them. Hiring them full-time is risky. Engineering, Maintenance, and... Kind of like a dating website for hiring skilled workers. They are hiring. Can't find enough people in developers and designers in Madison.
Glowe
In stealth mode. They haven't launched yet. Gamified social wearable device targeted to teams. Check them out. This is the best I can do for now to showcase GLOWE, a company I will be following.
My Thoughts for future events like this:
- Thank you for bringing everyone together in the same room
- Thank you for the focus on sharing stories, advice, and facts
- I would love to have the pamphlet shared online via a shortened URL for ease of access
- I would love to have contact information for people highlighted in the pamphlet included (Twitter/Linked?)
- Thank you for the healthy food in a grazing type atmosphere
- Use Flipgrid for each person to share a 30 introduction to what they do
- Use Flipgrid for attendees to share why they are attending and what they hope to get out of the day
- Charging solutions at tables
- Build in a student panel (high school and college)
- Wondering if our name tags could identify who we are/ what we are looking to do by color
- I wonder if Google Slides would be a good way for presenters to get their information to you without formatting issues?
- Let's create a Google MyMaps of Startups in MN to highlight the diversity in our state
**If I mentioned you or your company in this post, and something isn't accurate, please reach out and let me know! I did my best to document my learning while actively listening with little time for editing.**
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