Seven tech startups have been selected for a new University of Minnesota program intended to help the companies accelerate their growth.
The ScaleUp Minnesota program, run by the university’s Technological Leadership Institute and created in partnership with Launch Minnesota and Minnesota SBIR, is intended to educate and mentor founders of fast-growing tech startups.
Kicked off last week, the program will run for nine months through a hybrid format, including strategic alignment sessions, in-person workshops and team mentoring opportunities, designed to help the entrepreneurs “thrive during the often-stormy post-startup period,” according to the program announcement.
“Entrepreneurs often find themselves in a vulnerable state during this time, hitting obstacles that they didn’t anticipate,” Mark Sanders, chair in engineering entrepreneurship at the Technological Leadership Institute,said in the announcement. Sanders is leading the program. “It is vital for scale-ups to have the right level of education and support – at the right time – to overcome these barriers during this critical business phase,” he said.
When the program concludes, the companies will graduate and give final pitches to the cohort and broader community, Sanders said in an interview.
The seven Minnesota-based startups chosen for the program’s first-ever cohort include:
- BKB Floral Foam Inc. – a Twin Cities-based company developing sustainable replacements for foams currently made from fossil fuels
- GogyUp – a Minneapolis-based adult-literacy platform that helps users learn English while reading documents
- Kavira Health – a Twin Cities-based health care startup providing on-demand care through house visits and tele-health
- Adcura Inc. – an Eden Prairie-based medical-device company focusing on creating precision technology for spine-related issues
- Advisory Aerospace – a Hopkins-based software development and operations advisory company offering expertise in the aerospace industry
- Sparrow Charts – a Minneapolis-based company providing software that tracks marketing performance analytics
- Radwave Technologies Inc. – a St. Paul-based surgical-tech company developing advanced electromagnetic tracking technology
