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 […]
Top 5 Stories of 2019, Clinician Nexus, and the gBETA Greater MN St. Cloud pitch night
Welcome back to the Great North Labs newsletter! 2019 has been a big year for us. We invested $5.7M in 10 startups, including six in Minnesota, three in Illinois, and one in Wisconsin. That brings our totals to date to $8M in 18 early-stage startups throughout the upper Midwest, and one in Colorado. Other than investing, the past year has […]
Top 5 Stories of 2019
1. The year started with a bang, as we closed our debut fund. Our $23.7M raise is one of the largest debut venture funds ever raised in the Midwest. You can read about it on our site, at VentureBeat, or here, here, here, here, here, and elsewhere. 2. Minnebar is one of the largest tech gatherings […]
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. We […]
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 […]
BETA Showcase, Greater MN, and Launch MN comes to St. Cloud
Twin Cities Startup Week is over! It was a busy week for many of us in the tech and innovation community, with around 300 events to attend and thousands of people to meet. This year, Great North Labs was proud to bring Greater Minnesota into the BETA Showcase for the first time ever. Thanks to […]
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 […]
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 […]
Greater MN at the big show, Neela Mollgaard heads Launch MN, and Misty’s roadtrip.
Summer is coming to an end, but fall is shaping up to be a good time! The ever-growing Twin Cities Startup Week is October 9-16th this year, and the schedule is currently being finalized. 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 […]
Talking VC, tech kids, and Forge North’s Horizon
July is over! This is the moment where summer fun planning always turns a little earnest, when we try to store up every last bit of Vitamin D and fish protein we can to last the upcoming season-which-shall-not-be-named. There’s still fun to be had, and we took some time out of the sun recently to attend […]