| Date | Title | Description |
| 12.03.2024 | WithMe: A Startup Growth Story Fueled by Profits | Profitable growth is pretty rare to come by in the early stage startup world. This is the story of our portfolio company WithMe which provides printing and coffee amenity solutions to the multi-family real estate market.
I first met WithMe ... |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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... |
| 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... |
| 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 ... |
| 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... |
| 23.03.2020 | Chicago Startups That Are Hiring Right Now | To build off a great Twitter thread from Josh Inglis at Chicago startup PR and content marketing firm Propllr, we're compiling a list of Chicago startups that have confirmed they are currently hiring. As the ongoing coronavirus crisis begin... |
| 02.03.2020 | Digital Future Boardroom, PartySlate, and The Lean Startup School | Welcome back to the Great North Labs newsletter! We are excited to announce that signups for the new, Greater MN-focused startup school initiative are live, and will kick off on March 7th in St. Cloud and March 14th in Red Wing. |
| 03.02.2020 | World Economic Forum, NoiseAware, and the Startup School reboot | Welcome back to the Great North Labs newsletter! 2020 kicked off to a fast start. We were invited to participate in the World Economic Forum, and we announced the next chapter in our Startup School. There’s also a new advisor on the team, a... |
| 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... |
| 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... |
| 17.11.2016 | PrintWithMe Raises $800k in Seed Funding | PrintWithMe, a Chicago, IL-based company building a network of mobile print stations in public spaces, raised $800k in seed funding.
The round was led by Network Ventures with participation from M25 Group, New Stack Ventures, Little Engine ... |
