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 […]
7 Places to Spot Us at Startup Week
Twin Cities Startup Week kicks off tonight, and goes until October 16th! This is the biggest startup (event? happening?) anything in Minnesota every year, and TCSW 2019 is bigger than ever, with over 300 events. So what does a venture fund like Great North Labs have to do with it? Are we just wandering around […]
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 […]
June: Great North Labs’s first fund raised!
$23.7 Million Raised Great North Labs has closed its first fund with $23.7M in committed capital! This is one of the largest debut seed funds ever raised in the Midwest. “We are very appreciative and humbled by the tremendous support shown for our debut fund by our limited partners,” said Great North Labs Managing Partner Rob […]
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 […]
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 […]
Carried Interest: Top Posts from 2018
2019 is here! Since Great North Labs is a proponent of iterating based on data-driven feedback, it’s time for a look at the best-performing content from 2018. What captured people’s interest? What is the Great North community interested in? The Posts Facebook controversy. Rob Weber’s post about Sheryl Sandberg and the importance of “integrators” titled, […]
September: Great North Labs Startup Ecosystem Kickoff Recap, Twin Cities Startup Week
Great North Labs Startup Ecosystem Kickoff “It doesn’t take a lot of capital with early-stage tech companies to make a big impact.” – Ryan Weber The Great North Labs Startup Ecosystem Kickoff brought together successful entrepreneurs and innovators to learn about the current state of the tech and investment ecosystem and network with like-minded professionals. 25 speakers, 6 portfolio […]
August: Great North Labs Startup Ecosystem Kickoff, ZAPinfo, and the necessity of advice and capital availability
Great North Labs’s August Update Fostering Midwest success means making guidance and capital available for tech startups Great North Labs got the front-page treatment in the Star Tribune Business section this Sunday. Former investment banker, consultant and corporate officer (and current business journalist) Lee Schafer talked about building successful tech companies with Ryan and Rob […]