UPDATE: Signup here for St. Cloud or Red Wing locations! Or View Course Information.
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.
Read more about our startup education and sign up for courses
Who: Great North Labs, ILT Studios, Redwing Ignite and Partners.
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.
To read the full article on Tech.mn, go here.
Local Tech Vet Ryan Weber Launches Great North Labs Startup Incubator

Great North Labs is a new technology incubator in St. Cloud to “build new startups that apply breakthrough technologies to disrupt large markets.”
Greetings Everyone:
I wanted to briefly share a note about my new venture, Great North Labs, that we created to support the growth of tech startups in our region. There was a write-up yesterday on SC Times about it in case you missed it.
Our new incubator kicked off the summer on May 11th in St. Cloud with a focus on free product and engineering boot camps to train talent to later assist with developing new startups here. We’ll be picking at least one business model to develop a product for by the end of June using talent assembled from the incubator (including professional and student contributors). Later in the summer, we’ll be formalizing a new fund for Great North Lab’s to provide fuel to the incubator backed startups in addition to a formal mentor ship program.
I wanted to personally invite you to join us for a social event in support of Central Minnesota Tech Startups that is coming up in just a few days. Business Leaders, Students, Trainers, Developers, Founders, Mentors, and Other Supporters are gathering (families are welcome to join too) for a free picnic (Custom Catering is providing the food service) on Wednesday, May 24th from 5pm to 7pm at Riverside Park in St. Cloud. A buffet style dinner and beverages will be provided to all who attend (we have the shelter reserved). To ensure we can adequately plan food portions, please RSVP by 10am on Monday by sending an email with your name, the number of people attending, and if you have any special food needs in your party to: events@greatnorthlabs.com
Happy to answer any questions you may have too!
P.S. Please forward this email to anyone you think may have an interest.
Regards. Ryan Great North Labs

June Newsletter

Demystifying Startup HR

Head of Finance & Fund Administration- Venture Capital Firm (Remote)

Demystifying Startup HR

3 Portfolio Companies Make Inc. 5000 + Quicklly & Instacart Expand

3 Portfolio Companies Ranked on The Inc. 5000 List

iraLogix closes $22M + Branch expands with Uber

iraLogix closes $22M Series C

Flywheel lands Gates Foundation grant

Venture Capital Analyst

Orazio Buzza, Founder and CEO of Fooda – on Episode 13, “Execution is King”

$40M Fund II Raised!

Eric Martell, Founder of Pear Commerce: Episode 13, Execution is King

Great North Ventures Raises $40 Million Fund II

Investment Thesis: Fund II Strategy

Investment Theme: Community-Driven Applications

Investment Theme: Digital Transformation Through AI

Investment Theme: Solving Labor Problems

Trends in the Gig Economy + Work in the Metaverse

Portfolio raises $125M + talking fundraising with Branch CEO

Omnia Fishing closes $4M round, joins Great North portfolio!

Atif Siddiqi, Founder/CEO of Branch: Episode 11, Execution is King

Michael Martocci, CEO and Founder of SwagUp: Episode 10, Execution is King

Yardstik new to portfolio, closes $8M Series A

First venture studio startup comes out of stealth!

Insights for founders from a data guru, + FactoryFix raises a Series A!

Una Fox: Episode 9, Execution is King

Start With a Mobile App, Not a Website

2ndKitchen acquired by SoftBank-backed REEF + advice from an early Googler

Joe Sriver, 4giving: Episode 8, Execution is King

2ndKitchen Acquired by REEF

Venture studio startup jobs + advice for founders from founders

Best Advice from the Great North Annual Event: Episode 7, Execution is King

Newsletter: Do you fit our investing themes?

Jonathan Treble, PrintWithMe: Episode 6, Execution is King

Anna Mason, Revolution: Episode 5, Execution is King

Mynul Khan, FieldNation: Episode 4, Execution is King

Nick Moran, New Stack Ventures: Episode 3, Execution is King

Molly Pyle, Center on Rural Innovation (CORI): Episode 2, Execution is King

Justin Kaufenberg, Rally Ventures: Execution is King Episode 1

Newsletter: “Podcast Launched: Execution is King!”

“Execution is King” – the Great North Ventures Podcast

Newsletter: Fund II is open for business!

Unlocking the Potential of Anonymized Commercial Real Estate (CRE) Data

Fund II is open for Business!

Mike Schulte Promoted to Venture Partner

New Name + New Venture Studio

Great North Launches Startup Studio

We Don’t Need No [full-time MBA] Education

How the University of Minnesota is Embracing Startup Culture

Top Stories of 2020, iraLogix, and LaunchMN Calls for Mentors

Building Capacity for Innovation

Seizing Opportunity in a Recession, Allergy Amulet, and Twin Cities Startup Week

Recessionary times, a record-setting IPO, and Minnesota’s Resilient Startups

Minnesota's Resilient Startups

July 4th, Equitable American Dream-ing, and Robots Diagnosing COVID

Jumpstart, the Startup School, and Branch Wins a Webby!

COVID-19 Trends, the Great North response, and our Founders Survey

Giving in the Time of Coronavirus

COVID-19 Resources for Startups, State-by-State

COVID-19, the CARES Act, and startups stepping up

New Business Preservation Act

Digital Future Boardroom, PartySlate, and The Lean Startup School

Great North Labs’s Startup Summit 2020

Great North Labs's Startup Summit 2020

World Economic Forum, NoiseAware, and the Startup School reboot

Great North Labs at the World Economic Forum 2020 in Davos

Top 5 Stories of 2019

Taking the Founders Pledge, Inhabitr, and gBETA Pitch Night

Founders Pledge: Support the Organizations that Support You

BETA Showcase, Greater MN, and Launch MN comes to St. Cloud

7 Places to Spot Us at Startup Week

The Greater MN Meetup, Parallax, and Exponential Medicine

Greater MN at the big show, Neela Mollgaard heads Launch MN, and Misty’s roadtrip.

Talking VC, tech kids, and Forge North’s Horizon

June: Great North Labs’s first fund raised!

May: Innovation Ecosystems, SingularityU Kickoff, and PrintWithMe

April: Minnebar Recap, ZenLord Pro, and Supporting Entrepreneurs

MinneBar 14 Recap

Dispatch and 2ndKitchen claim Tech Madness titles

Minnesota Innovation Collaborative

March: Minnebar, Hockey + Hustlers, and Innovation Workshops

Great North Labs at CES

Dec.-Jan.: Top Posts from 2018, pepr, Glowe, and Misty Robotics

Carried Interest: Top Posts from 2018

Oct.-Nov.: Singularity University, Exponential Tech, and the State of Innovation

July: Pitchly, ForwardFest, and Where to Invest in the Midwest

Digital Transformation Summit, July 25th in Minneapolis

June: Silicon Lakes, FactoryFix, and the Digital Transformation Summit

Putting the “Silicon” in Silicon Lakes

Digital Manufacturing and Logistics

May: Team Genius, IoT, and the Future of Everything

IoT 3.0

Healthcare Innovation

March: Exponential Tech, the “Goldilocks Zone”, and Minnebar 13

February: Team Expansion, Dispatch, and Startup School Events

Great North Labs Newsletter – December 2017

A Letter To My Younger Self

Great North Labs Newsletter

Great North Labs Featured on Tech.mn

Great North Labs Featured in St Cloud Times

Great North Labs – Featured on BizJournals.com
