New Year’s means new content! But before we iterate based on feedback, let’s take a look at what the Great North Labs audience liked, with theTop Posts from 2018.
Top topics included Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, IoT, Venture Capital Investing, and the Midwest Startup Ecosystem, and encompassed white papers, articles, and blog posts.
The Consumer Electronics Show is a monumental gathering of the topnames and startups that takes over Las Vegas annually.
This year, two Great North Labs portfolio companies are present: Misty Robotics and Glowe.
Misty has already garnered some big-time press attention fromTechCrunch. Their team, which includes Great North Labs advisor Ben Edwards, recently completed a round of funding and will be releasing their Misty II personal robot in April.
Jan. 21-22, Jamestown, ND. Precision Agriculture Summit 2019 offers hands-on and technical demonstrations of precision agriculture technologies, applications, and explanations of applications, procedures, and tools designed to lower producer costs and create a more efficient environment for farm production.
Jan. 22, St. Paul. MHTA’s Bi-Annual Legislative Reception is an opportunity for the science and tech community to connect with Minnesota’s elected officials and executive staff. “Members from both political parties and bodies of the Legislature, along with the Executive Branch, attend this reception and the event showcases the important role that innovation has played – and continues to play – in Minnesota’s economy.”
Feb. 2, Minneapolis. DevFest is hosted by Google Developer Twin Cities at St. Thomas, and features a keynote from Annyce Davis, the Software Lead of Mobile Development for Off Grid Electric. “DevFestMN is a one-day conference bringing together developers, designers and technology enthusiasts from the Midwest and beyond.”
Portfolio action
We have three new additions to the Great North Labs portfolio. Misty Robotics is a customizable personal robot that can be programmed by anyone from students to advanced developers. Pepr is AI-powered software that enables restaurateurs to increase profitability by providing a complete and unified picture of cost and budget data. Glowe has been an under-the-radar investment, that is preparing for beta launch. Their new product video is live on the Great North Labs website. New advisors
Great North Labs recently welcomed four new advisors to the team.
Joe Francis- President and CEO of Central McGowan. Central McGowan is Minnesota’s largest independent and locally-owned distributor of welding andindustrial equipment, gases, supplies, abrasives, safety equipment, automation, and robotics. Bryan Virnig- Director of Sales and Marketing at Virnig Manufacturing. Jeff Liebl- President and CEO, Atmosphere IoT Corp. Jeff was previously the CMO at Digi International, VP of Sales & Marketing at SportsEngine, and VP of Sales at eBureau. Dan Frankowski- Data Scientist at Pinterest. Dan formerly worked in data science at Code42 and was a software engineer at Google.