For the last two years, Minnesota's food and agriculture startups have had their own track in Twin Cities Startup Week (TCSW), a seven-day celebration of tech and innovation in Minnesota. But this fall, the food and agriculture startup community, led by Grow North, will host a separate theme week occurring at the same time at TCSW, called Food, Ag, Ideas Week.
This year's inaugural Food, Ag, Ideas Week will consist of more than a dozen speakers and panel discussions led by Grow North. These events will address topics such as food innovation and tech, sustainable agriculture and the future of farming. There will also be "meet + eat" networking lunches and at least two startup showcases from Maker to Market and Techstars Farm to Fork.
Grow North, an initiative from the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management that focuses on boosting Minnesota's food and agriculture entrepreneurs, will lead the events. The Agricultural Innovation Research Institute, Finnegans, The Bell Museum, The Good Acre and a handful of other local organizations have confirmed that they will participate.
Organizers have already locked in a number of industry leaders to speak at the Food, Ag, Ideas Week panels, including General Mills CEO Jeff Harmening, Conservis CEO Pat Christie and Angie Bastian, founder of Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP.
Although Food, Ag, Ideas week occurs at the same time as TCSW, the two startup events will not be competing against each other, Grow North Founder and Managing Director Lauren Pradhan told Minne Inno.
"Twin Cities Startup Week is a week that drives visibility for sectors where there is significant energy and opportunity for entrepreneurship and innovation," Pradhan said. "We wanted to make sure that food and agriculture was part of that conversation."
She added that Startup Week was an "incredibly valuable launch pad" for Minnesota's food and agriculture startup ecosystem, and that the community felt it had scaled and become large enough to host its own separate series of events. Leading up to the big week, Grow North and TCSW will collaborate to cross promote each other's events.
Twin Cities Startup Week will turn five years old this fall. The seven-day celebration has grown exponentially since it first kicked off in 2014. Startup Week, organized primarily by Beta.MN, estimates that this year's festivities will consist of more than 150 events and over 200 pitches and around 12,000 attendees. These events are spread across the Twin Cities metro, occasionally taking over high-profile venues such as the First Avenue Mainroom.
Startup Week has about a half-dozen different "tracks," groupings of events for different startup industries. The food and agriculture track was added in 2016 and led by Brett Brohl, who now manages the new Techstars Farm to Fork ag-tech accelerator. Grow North took the reins in 2017. By forming its own startup week, Pradhan said that Grow North hopes to draw more attention to the innovation occurring within local food and agriculture community.
"With the number of companies and perspectives across food and agriculture, as well as our collaborative spirit, Minnesota is truly an epicenter of possibility," Pradhan said in a release. "The time is now to bring these voices together, get involved and elevate our community."
Both TCSW and Food, Ag, Ideas Week are scheduled for the week of October 8th this year. Tickets for Food, Ag, Ideas Week are now available.
