This invite-only event has some impressive speakers lined up, and should be excellent for networking with local execs. Great North Labs is an organizer of the event, and Ryan Weber will be speaking. Request an invite here.
From the press release:
Digerati.org is a national platform connecting digital leaders with networking and education opportunities. The Digital Transformation Summit event is focused on digital transformation, emerging technology, and networking for Chief Executive Officers, Chief Digital Officers, and other CXOs. In a world where software is increasingly transforming the core of every industry, hard-fought lessons from the digital practitioners delivering radical transformation are indispensable to senior management at all organizations.
The event is curated and invite-only, and includes panels by some of the leading companies in Minneapolis. It will be held on July 25th in downtown Minneapolis. Invitations inquiries can be made on the event page.
Ryan Weber is co-founder of Great North Labs, a local early-stage venture fund that invests in upper Midwest technology startups. He previously co-founded NativeX, a Minnesota based ad technology and media company that he ran for many years. Weber is helping organize the digital summit, which he says will feature an amazing lineup of local digital transformation leaders who are building forward-looking, digitally-driven enterprises.
Among the list of leaders speaking at the event are Mark Ritchie and Gene Munster. Ritchie is a politician and entrepreneur who served as Minnesota’s 21st Secretary of State. Munster is a former analyst for Piper Jaffray, and currently heads Loup Ventures.
Bharath Lingam, CEO of [x]cube LABS, a leading digital transformation company and host of the event, said that digital transformation today is a highly visible and yet very misunderstood topic. The best way for enterprises to engage with the subject is to have “birds of the same feather” communities, where digital practitioners can meet with each other, share lessons from the trenches on how they’re solving their challenges and learn from each other. The Digital Transformation Summit is designed to accomplish exactly that.
The Digital Transformation Summit is designed to provide a great opportunity for digital leaders to network with their peers and learn from the best practitioners of the trade.
The event will also host access to a digital innovation experience area, where the guest will get to experience some of the emerging tech like deep learning, blockchain, virtual reality and sensors, hands on.
Brendan Cooper, Head of Digital at Panini and a past Digerati event speaker, has said: “The Digerati community is the best and fastest way to meet and learn from people practicing digital transformation. Success on the frontier of business change requires extraordinary insight from people that live on that frontier. This is where you get it.”
About Digerati.org
Digerati.org is a public initiative focused on evangelizing digital innovation in the Enterprise space. The organization is involved in publishing research and news on digital themes, celebrating intrapreneurship around digital and holding workshops and conferences. Digerati.org is also focused on creating user groups of Digital Leaders and Influencers that can meet up regularly to discuss and organize new initiatives.
Welcome to Silicon Lakes!
The legacy of cornfields and flyover states taints the national perception of the modern Midwest. It’s led the area to be overlooked and under-capitalized by investors who paper the coasts with venture dollars.
While the name “Silicon Prairie” attempts to characterize the tech innovation occurring in America’s heartland, it’s a broad swath including an 8-state region (the name can also refer to two other regions, one in Texas, and one in Illinois).
The upper Midwest, near the Great Lakes, has a more dense collection of innovation hubs built around legacy industrial centers including Chicago, Minneapolis, Grand Forks, Des Moines, and Madison.
As investors like Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund are turning towards the interior, bringing much-needed capital to the area, our own Pradip Madan breaks down the common characteristics of innovation hubs the world over and evaluates the upper Midwest’s potential to become “Silicon Lakes”.
Events
July 25th, Minneapolis. Ryan Weber has been instrumental in organizing the Digital Transformation Summit for Digerati. This is an exclusive, small-crowd event for local leaders to learn and network. Speakers include Weber, Managing Partner of Great North Labs; Mark Ritchie, former MN Secretary of State; and Gene Munster, formerly of Piper Jaffray and head of Loup Ventures. Keep an eye on the site as more speakers are added, and visit the link to request an invitation!
August 16th-23rd, Madison. Forward Fest is an 8-day tech and entrepreneurship festival, the largest such event in Wisconsin. Ryan Weber will be there, so reach out if you’re in Madison and want to meet up!
August 20-22nd, Grand Forks. UAS Summit & Expo. What is UAS? Unmanned Aerial Systems: drones, their controllers and operators. This summit is in its twelfth year!
Portfolio action
FactoryFix is a new addition to the GNL portfolio. It is a labor marketplace for manufacturing businesses to find and contract skilled talent. The team is based out of Chicago and includes founder Patrick O’Rahilly, co-founder of Compass Automation.
New advisors
Great North Labs welcomed four new advisors in the past month:
Alex Ryan- Founder of Bitmatter; Co-Founder/CTO of Starting 11
Julie Novack-CEO/Co-Founder PartySlate
Jackie Schneider-CRO, Field Nation; Formerly Global Vice President of Sales at Proto Labs
Shannon Wiger-VP, Spring Hill Capital; Director of Business Development at Moss and Barnett
Job Board
FactoryFix is hiring a Business Development/Sales intern
Dispatch is hiring for sales, business development, driving and software engineering
Structural is hiring a back-end software engineer, and a customer success specialist

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

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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

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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!

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Giving in the Time of Coronavirus

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

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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
