Best Advice from the Great North Annual Event: Episode 7, Execution is King
In this compilation episode, Josef features the best advice for founders that we picked up at our 2021 Annual Event. Every year, Great North gathers investors, founders, and ecosystem builders together for networking and progress updates. In this episode, you can hear advice from our stakeholders- people who have proven they can execute- on hiring […]
How the University of Minnesota is Embracing Startup Culture, EmpowerU, and MEDA $1M Challenge Winners
Welcome to our first newsletter of 2021! In our look back on the past year in our last newsletter, we talked about resilient startups, the pandemic, and capacity building. We reflected on our own efforts, and then we started thinking about the startup ecosystem as a whole. We’ve talked extensively about nonprofit organizations that support startups (and our support of […]
The Dollars and Hours of Capacity Building, Ethical Entrepreneurship, and Impact Metrics to Date
The world is changing, and a new wave of tech entrepreneurs are shaping the new normal. The tech sector is performing well as the need for innovation, necessitated by the pandemic, becomes more urgent. As digital transformation accelerates in all sectors, and our country re-establishes its economic future, we are working to cultivate tech entrepreneurs in the Upper Midwest. […]
Building Capacity for Innovation
Entrepreneurship is a proven, capital-efficient way to build economic value and transform regions. It doesn’t just happen, though. Developing talent, supporting founders, and delivering capital and connections to promising ventures are all key. They are all necessary for driving innovation, which drives value creation. According to Brookings, “Annually, venture investment makes up only 0.2% of […]
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 […]
May: Innovation Ecosystems, SingularityU Kickoff, and PrintWithMe
The Innovation Ecosystem At Great North Labs, we work to cultivate the next generation of leading tech companies across the upper Midwest. As a venture fund, this means deploying capital, providing startup intelligence, and utilizing our network to support and grow early-stage tech startups. We also provide low-cost training through our Startup School, in areas that we […]
MinneBar 14 Recap
The annual MinneBar event, hosted by non-profit Minnestar, is the largest bar camp-style conference in the country. Saturday, April 27th was the fourteenth incarnation of this highly anticipated event, and it did not disappoint. How highly anticipated was it? Tickets were released in two waves this year, and the first wave sold out in under […]
Minnesota Innovation Collaborative
The Minnesota Innovation Collaborative (MIC) is one of the most exciting items in this year’s budget. It is a program under the Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), led by former Google/YouTube exec and Silicon Valley boomerang, Commissioner Steve Grove. The program calls for $4.5M in 2020 and 2021 to grow the startup and […]
February: Improving the Culture for Entrepreneurship, 2ndKitchen, and the Prairie Capital Summit
Improving the Culture for Entrepreneurship Many efforts are underway to continue to improve the culture for entrepreneurship in Minnesota and other Midwest states, ranging from policy driven efforts to increase access to capital for startup founders to workforce development initiatives to ensure the right talent is interested and available in high growth startup jobs. On the government side, forexample, the governor’s just-released budget includes funding for the creation of the Minnesota Innovation Collaborative, which is designed to accelerate the growth of the innovation ecosystem. Theproposed budget […]
Oct.-Nov.: Singularity University, Exponential Tech, and the State of Innovation
Exponential Tech with SingularityU Minneapolis-St. Paul Great North Labs Managing Partner Ryan Weber is now co-ambassador for Singularity University’s chapter here in the Twin Cities! SingularityU Minneapolis-St.Paul is one of 126 SU chapters in 63 countries. Singularity University is a global learning and innovation community using exponential technologies to tackle the world’s biggest challenges. Through their Grand Challenges, SU provokes moonshot thinking with global impact. Headquartered at NASA in Silicon Valley, SingularityUniversity empowers individuals andorganizations across the globe to […]