While Green Bay, the largest city in Wisconsin’s northeastern corridor, will long be revered for being home to the Packers, John Ernst hopes the land of the green and gold will soon take on another identity, along with its surrounding communities.
Ernst hopes Titletown can also become a Startup Town.
Ernst is board chairman of Kinnektor, a startup company for the startup community. The Green Bay-based operation has spread its wings throughout the Fox Cities area with broader visions on the horizon.
“We’re sort of the glue — the connective tissue, in a sense,” Ernst said of Kinnektor, which provides entrepreneurs with a range of resources, including co-working space, exposure, education and networking opportunities.
Kinnektor’s roots can be traced back to 2014, when it was known as Launch Wisconsin. Ernst said Launch Wisconsin was born out of a desire to provide what he and others involved in the founding believed was a critically needed service in the region.
“To be an entrepreneur here is difficult,” he said. “We didn’t know why (in 2014). We just knew it was hard, and we had to do something about it.”
In the years since Kinnektor’s launch, Ernst said the northeastern corridor launched the basic fundamentals — the “ecosystem,” as he refers to it — to give entrepreneurs in the region a fighting chance to succeed.
Last fall, the company’s name was changed to Kinnektor in an effort to broaden beyond the initial focus, which was an annual two-day event.
Alongside the name change was another game-changing event in the heart of the football season. When the most recent two-day Launch Wisconsin event took place in mid-October, it did so alongside Rise of the Rest, a competitive pitch event for the region’s startup community.
Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, has been hosting the seed-funding Rise of the Rest events in locales outside Silicon Valley, New York City and Boston. Case’s venture capital firm, Revolution, is behind Rise of the Rest.
Case’s presence at the Green Bay competition of Rise of the Rest provided a much-needed spark for the region, Ernst said, and the flames of passion within the local startup community have continued in the months since the event.
“He juiced the northeastern corridor in a way no one else has ever done,” Ernst said of Case. “It was a flash point.”
The region's startup activity will also get a boost from the recently announced TitletownTech, a $10 million initiative from the Packers and Microsoft to launch a startup incubator, VC fund and co-working space that will be located near Lambeau Field. The building is expected to open this fall.
In its new iteration as Kinnektor, many of the core elements of Launch Wisconsin remain in tact, Ernst said, but have been broadened to reflect the company’s year-round focus.
Case’s entrepreneurial invigoration has provided a jolt, but Ernst is quick to point out more work is needed to provide the Green Bay area with resources abundantly available in cities known for their startup cultures.
“We have a long way to go,” Ernst said. “We are trying to build a future at Kinnektor where startups are seen as a mechanism for innovation.”
He added, “It takes leadership. It’s hard.”
