Minnesota venture capital firm Great North Labs announced it is partnering with Red Wing Ignite and ILT Studios to create a startup school that will mentor entrepreneurs and early-stage companies in Greater Minnesota.
When Great North Labs was founded in fall 2017, it operated a startup school in addition to its early-stage venture fund. It contained workshops on digital transformation, operating lean startups and agile development. The firm said that its free or low-cost workshops attracted more than 200 participants through the end of 2019.
"We saw a greater gap in the smaller markets across Minnesota and throughout the Upper Midwest," Founder and Partner Ryan Weber said in a blog post. "However, one bright spot was in Iowa. There, the state had invested in programming similar to ours, and had expanded across the state with their Venture School Initiative."
He added that Great North Labs plans to use lessons learned from its own startup school, along with Iowa's Venture School and knowledge from other startup education programs, to in its new programming. The firm does not own the new startup school, but will be partners and contributors.
The startup school will provide participants with online and in-class programming in addition to mentorship and networking opportunities. The first class, called Customer Driven Innovation, will run from March to April. A Business Model Foundation class will follow in early summer.
Red Wing and St. Cloud will offer the same classes at the same time but on different days. A name for the school has yet to be determined.
Great North Labs said that Launch Minnesota, a new initiative from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, will provide financial and operational support to get the school's new programming started.
"This new Startup School will make the skills and training necessary for disciplined startup entrepreneurship more accessible to Minnesota entrepreneurs than ever before," Weber said. "It will also open up networks and possibilities for people across the state that were previously unavailable. Across the state, we hope to see this cultivation of startups drive innovation, economic activity and value creation."
Twin brothers and Great North Labs founders Rob and Ryan Weber began their entrepreneurial journey in Greater Minnesota. The Webers are alumni of St. Cloud State University and founded their first company, NativeX, while in college there. They sold their business in 2016. Even though Great North Labs is based in Minneapolis, the Weber brothers have remained rooted and invested in Central Minnesota.
Last year, Great North Labs began working with Midwest startup accelerator gener8tor and more than a dozen other organizations to bring gener8tor's suite of programs to entrepreneurs in Central Minnesota. The group, which also includes the Greater St. Cloud Development Corp., agreed to fund the accelerator for three years.
In June 2019, Great North Labs announced that it had closed its first fund at $23.7 million, likely one of the largest debut seed funds raised in the Midwest. The firm said that it would use the funds to back fledgling startups in the Upper Midwest, which it defines as Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois.
"We have an opportunity now to transform our rural markets into strong startup communities and improve their resilience in a world that increasingly requires adaptive intelligence and innovation skills to succeed," Weber said.
