Digital Future Boardroom, PartySlate, and The Lean Startup School
Welcome back to the Great North Labs newsletter! We are excited to announce that signups for the new, Greater MN-focused startup school initiative are live, and will kick off on March 7th in St. Cloud and March 14th in Red Wing. Red Wing Ignite Startup School The Lean Startup School is a partnership led by Red Wing […]
Great North Labs's Startup Summit 2020
[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 […]
Great North Labs’s Startup Summit 2020
[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 […]
Introducing the new Greater Minnesota focused Startup School Initiative
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 […]
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 […]