| Date | Title | Description |
| 04.08.2022 | iraLogix closes $22M + Branch expands with Uber | Welcome back to the Great North Ventures newsletter! We have first product shipped, a large funding, as well as our monthly roundup of portfolio company updates and jobs. |
| 11.07.2022 | Flywheel lands Gates Foundation grant | Welcome back to the Great North Ventures newsletter! We have grant funding news, as well as our monthly roundup of portfolio company updates and jobs. |
| 03.06.2022 | $40M Fund II Raised! | Welcome back to the Great North Ventures newsletter! The big news this month is the closing of Fund II! |
| 04.04.2022 | Portfolio raises $125M + talking fundraising with Branch CEO | Welcome back to the Great North Ventures newsletter! We have a couple of big raises to report, along with updates and job listings from our portfolio. |
| 30.03.2022 | SPACs are on the chopping block thanks to the SEC’s latest proposal | This is the web version of Term Sheet, a daily newsletter on the biggest deals and dealmakers. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
It may be the end of the road for SPACs.
Paid Content How to harness stakeholder trust in trouble... |
| 28.03.2022 | Dispatch, the Leading B2B Last-Mile Delivery Platform, Accelerates Growth with $50 Million Series C | BLOOMINGTON, Minn., March 28, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dispatch, a tech-based B2B last-mile delivery platform, announced today that it completed its $50 million Series C funding round led by PeakSpan Capital. This funding round will support... |
| 31.01.2022 | Insights for founders from a data guru, + FactoryFix raises a Series A! | Welcome back to the Great North Ventures newsletter! We have some great funding news, insights for founders and investors from our partners, and a former Yahoo and Disney exec on our podcast, Una Fox! |
| 03.01.2022 | 2ndKitchen acquired by SoftBank-backed REEF + advice from an early Googler | Welcome to the Great North Ventures newsletter! We have exit news! And for founders, we have a former Googler talking about the importance of being data-driven, and sharing other advice. |
| 04.12.2021 | Venture studio startup jobs + advice for founders from founders | Welcome back to the Great North Ventures newsletter! This month we have advice for founders featured in our latest podcast episode. |
| 01.11.2021 | Newsletter: Do you fit our investing themes? | Welcome back to the Great North Ventures newsletter! (Sign up here!) This month we have some advice for founders as well as an open call for funding applications. |
| 05.10.2021 | Newsletter: “Podcast Launched: Execution is King!” | Welcome back to the Great North Ventures newsletter! (Sign up here!) We are excited for the launch of our new podcast and Fund II investing! |
| 08.07.2021 | Newsletter: Fund II is open for business!
| Welcome back to the Great North Ventures newsletter! (Sign up here!) Summer is in full swing, as is our Fund II investing. |
| 29.06.2021 | New Name + New Venture Studio | Welcome to the Great North Ventures newsletter!
Yes, you read that correctly: Great North Ventures. We have had some big news come out lately, and the name change to Great North Ventures better reflects our organization. |
| 01.02.2021 | How the University of Minnesota is Embracing Startup Culture, EmpowerU, and MEDA $1M Challenge Winners | Welcome to our first newsletter of 2021!
In our look back on the past year in our last newsletter, we talked about resilient startups, the pandemic, and capacity building. We reflected on our own efforts, and then we started thinking about ... |
| 04.01.2021 | Top Stories of 2020, iraLogix, and LaunchMN Calls for Mentors | Welcome to our last newsletter of 2020. It’s been a challenging year. We feel fortunate that the local early-stage startup scene has remained strong, and believe that investment in innovation and digital transformation will help fuel the po... |
| 03.12.2020 | How to Spot a Worthwhile Consumer App Startup, 2020 Gift Guide, and a New Startup Investment Incentive | While there are vaccines on the horizon and a potential further stimulus package, possibly in time for the holiday season, we still have a ways to go until economic recovery. Startups will be key to that recovery. |
| 06.10.2020 | $2M Startup Competition for Black Founders, Winning Startups to Watch, and Twin Cities Startup Week | It’s a wrap for Twin Cities Startup Week (TCSW), Minnesota’s largest annual startup event. How big is it? In 2019 the event attracted 17,000 people to over 200 sessions. This year, the event stretched nearly a month as it went virtual for t... |
| 02.09.2020 | Seizing Opportunity in a Recession, Allergy Amulet, and Twin Cities Startup Week | Last month we wrote about the history of local startups that were formed during a recession and went on to success, including local unicorn Jamf. The conversation quickly turned to what that means for founders and investors. |
| 04.08.2020 | Recessionary times, a record-setting IPO, and Minnesota’s Resilient Startups | Today it was announced that last quarter’s drop in GDP was the second largest ever recorded. Overall US economic output fell by 9.5%. This dire news comes on the heels of fantastic news for the MN tech startup community: the largest IPO fro... |
| 09.07.2020 | Dispatch Raises $11M in Series B | Dispatch, a B2B marketplace for courier services, recently completed its Series B round of funding, securing over $11 Million to focus on team growth. The round of funding was led by Trinity Private Equity Group with participation from HPA,... |
| 08.07.2020 | Jumpstart, the Startup School, and Branch Wins a Webby! | Welcome to the May edition of the Great North Labs newsletter. In this time of economic change, entrepreneurial skills, advancing technology, and its new applications will drive the innovations and evolving business models necessary to spur... |
| 01.07.2020 | On-demand delivery startup Dispatch raises $11M Series B | Dispatch, a local tech company offering an on-demand delivery platform, announced Wednesday that it had secured $11.15 million in Series B funding.
The round was led by Trinity Private Equity Group along with continued support from previous... |
| 05.05.2020 | COVID-19 Trends, the Great North response, and our Founders Survey | Forecasts of the economic impact are still developing as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Mary Meeker (famed for her annual Internet Trends report) released a report on coronavirus trends as an exclusive to Axios. Takeaways from the trends ... |
| 10.04.2020 | Giving in the Time of Coronavirus | With unemployment soaring, small businesses shuttering, and even some large chains withholding rent, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are reverberating through our communities. Many people wait on relief from the government in the form ... |
| 01.04.2020 | COVID-19, the CARES Act, and startups stepping up | The world is in the grip of a pandemic that is testing our health systems, our governments, and our economies. COVID-19, known simply as the coronavirus, has hit 700,000 cases worldwide, with the U.S. now topping the list of countries affec... |
| 19.12.2019 | Top 5 Stories of 2019, Clinician Nexus, and the gBETA Greater MN St. Cloud pitch night | Welcome back to the Great North Labs newsletter! 2019 has been a big year for us. We invested $5.7M in 10 startups, including six in Minnesota, three in Illinois, and one in Wisconsin. That brings our totals to date to $8M in 18 early-stage... |
| 27.11.2019 | Taking the Founders Pledge, Inhabitr, and gBETA Pitch Night | Happy Thanksgiving, and welcome back to the Great North Labs newsletter!
This is the perfect time of year to reflect on what we are thankful for, and for giving back. We are most thankful for our investors, our advisors, and our portfolio c... |
| 01.11.2019 | BETA Showcase, Greater MN, and Launch MN comes to St. Cloud | Twin Cities Startup Week is over! It was a busy week for many of us in the tech and innovation community, with around 300 events to attend and thousands of people to meet. |
| 03.10.2019 | The Greater MN Meetup, Parallax, and Exponential Medicine | This year, Greater MN is joining Twin Cities Startup Week in a big way! The premier event of TCSW is including Greater MN for the first time, as Great North Labs has partnered with BETA to open up the BETA Showcase to Greater MN startups. B... |
| 05.09.2019 | Greater MN at the big show, Neela Mollgaard heads Launch MN, and Misty’s roadtrip. | Summer is coming to an end, but fall is shaping up to be a good time! The ever-growing Twin Cities Startup Week is October 9-16th this year, and the schedule is currently being finalized. |
| 01.08.2019 | Talking VC, tech kids, and Forge North’s Horizon | July is over! This is the moment where summer fun planning always turns a little earnest, when we try to store up every last bit of Vitamin D and fish protein we can to last the upcoming season-which-shall-not-be-named. There’s still fun to... |
| 27.06.2019 | June: Great North Labs’s first fund raised! | Great North Labs has closed its first fund with $23.7M in committed capital! This is one of the largest debut seed funds ever raised in the Midwest.
“We are very appreciative and humbled by the tremendous support shown for our debut fund by... |
| 19.06.2019 | Great North Labs Raises $23.7M to Back Midwest Startups | Local venture capital firm Great North Labs announced Wednesday that it has closed its first fund at $23.7 million – likely one of the largest debut seed funds raised in the Midwest.
Based both in Minneapolis and St. Cloud, Great North Labs... |
| 31.05.2019 | May: Innovation Ecosystems, SingularityU Kickoff, and PrintWithMe | At Great North Labs, we work to cultivate the next generation of leading tech companies across the upper Midwest. As a venture fund, this means deploying capital, providing startup intelligence, and utilizing our network to support and grow... |
| 10.04.2019 | Dispatch and 2ndKitchen claim Tech Madness titles | Great North Labs portfolio companies Dispatch and 2ndKitchen have claimed titles in American Inno’s 2019 Tech Madness competition. The annual competition is a tech startup, voting-based version of March Madness. And yes, it’s better than th... |
| 03.04.2019 | March: Minnebar, Hockey + Hustlers, and Innovation Workshops | Minnebar is almost upon us and this year is going to be great. The annual event will take over Best Buy’s headquarters for the fourteenth time, on April 27th. As always, it features local tech and startup community members, and an agenda of... |
| 02.10.2018 | September: Great North Labs Startup Ecosystem Kickoff Recap, Twin Cities Startup Week | “It doesn’t take a lot of capital with early-stage tech companies to make a big impact.” – Ryan Weber |
| 26.09.2018 | August: Great North Labs Startup Ecosystem Kickoff, ZAPinfo, and the necessity of advice and capital availability | Fostering Midwest success means making guidance and capital available for tech startups |
| 22.05.2018 | Mid-Market Grocer Growth: Organic, Seeded or Grafted? | Amazon (mkt cap ~$760B) recently paid more for Whole Foods ($13.7B) than the balance sheets of many mid-market grocers. This frames the obvious question for all grocers: how can your business compete long-term?
This is an especially challen... |
