Inspired by recent connections formed at the Wantable Cafe in Walker's Point, a group of Milwaukee startup founders is launching Founder/Fest, an event aimed at creating a broader sense of community among local entrepreneurs.
Designed for current, recent or aspiring founders, as well as investors and other startup supporters, the inaugural event will be on Aug.12 at the Penrod LLC office at 219 N. Milwaukee St. It's free and will include music, food, networking and talks by local founders.
The event is presented by the Milwaukee Founders Collective, a new "decentralized, asynchronous community of founders" led by Jeremy Fojut, CEO and co-founder of community-building software startup Like|Minded, and Nick O'Brien, co-founder of WorkAround, an app designed to connect people who want to work remotely around others.
“Startups are not built-in silos,” Fojut said in a statement. “Startups are built by establishing, solidifying and growing an extensive web of support through relationships. This is the why behind Founder/Fest.”
Fojut and O'Brien first met in 2015 but reconnected this spring — along with other local founders — at the Wantable Cafe. The cafe has become a hangout for startup founders, partly due to a WorkAround pilot program that encouraged entrepreneurs to work from there.
The grassroots community of startup founders organized through WorkAround also includes Erin Magennis, co-founder of WorkAround and the non-fungible token (NFT) social platform Spree; washbnb LLC co-founder and CEO Daniel Cruz; and Investii Inc. co-founder and CEO Nishant Deshpande, all based in Milwaukee. The group began connecting during the pandemic through a text chain and WhatsApp group and then began meeting in person at the cafe.
In addition to Founder/Fest, the group has recently been organizing informal events, including Pitch and Run, a startup founders running group, and Founder Feature, a new lunchtime storytelling series on Mondays at Frontdesk Inc. at 1845 N. Farwell Ave.
If the first Founder/Fest is successful, organizers may host it three or four times a year, Fojut said. Interested founders and startup supporters can register here.
