Get Connected
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Connected
With the genuinely helpful nature of our community, it's no surprise that many area startups look to personal connections as a great way to improve their business while also being an active participant in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Here are several resources and helpful hints on how to better engage.
Emerging Prairie
This non-profit works to connect and celebrate the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Fargo-Moorhead. They are the leader in many initiatives such as Grand Farm, StartupBREW, Emerging Digital Academy, Autonomous Nation, Prairie Capital Summit, TEDxFargo and more. Sign up for newsletters on their homepage.
StartupBREW Fargo
Our homegrown StartupBREW Fargo kicked off in 2021 and replaced the niche previously served by our 1 Million Cups Fargo, which had been the largest in the nation, consistently attracting 125+ attendees each week, with some weeks as high as 350! Often referred to locally as “church for entrepreneurs”, these events serve almost as a town hall, gathering a vast collection of friendly and engaged citizens.
Techstars Startup Digest Fargo
This email will have the most varied curation of entrepreneurial, innovation and business-related happenings & features.
Click here to subscribe to this bi-weekly email and view current and past issues.
Grand Farm
As mentioned above under Emerging Prairie (EP), the Grand Farm started through EP and continues to gain more & more steam, including their soon-to-be-built innovation facility on 140 acres near Casselton. Connections via Grand Farm are often most relevant if you are in the agricultural, agtech or food space, and their events may appeal to an even broader audience at times.
Vault ND
The Vault is a resource hosted by Dakota Business Lending designed to store the multitude of valuable resources that exist for small businesses and entrepreneurs throughout ND. One chamber of the vault is focused on financial programs and the other chamber consists of other business resource organizations.
Gener8tor North Dakota
gBETA is a free 7-week program for early-stage companies, providing coaching, mentoring, meetups, pitch opportunities and more. The gener8tor accelerator is part of the same organization, with the accelerator providing a $100k investment and concierge-approach, 12-week program for 5-6 high growth startups per cohort. gener8tor 1889 is a venture capital fund that makes seed investments into early stage North Dakota startups. Named for the year North Dakota obtained statehood, gener8tor 1889 is industry agnostic with target check sizes ranging from $250K- $750K.
NSF I-Corps Hub Great Plains Region
The Great Plains I-Corps offers a free 5 week training program that provides training to graduate students, post-docs, researchers, and faculty members interested in moving inventive ideas to commercialization. The Regional I-Corps training provides teams with the opportunity to learn the best practices about customer discovery needed to understand their ecosystem and stakeholders more thoroughly. Throughout the process, teams will acquire feedback on their best path forward from trained instructors and mentors, and identify key milestones and commercialization pathway. This unique program gives teams the opportunity to connect with like-minded innovators across the Great Plains Region.
Other Opportunities
Let some Fargo-Moorhead serendipity run its course. Our community is often jam-packed with events and trainings, as we are a friendly & creative community of doers and activators. You may run into people like this at events like Full Stack Fargo, CreativeMornings Fargo, Business & Beer, Strong Women Strong Connections, She Starts Fargo and Coffee + Coding, just to name a few. Many events in our area utilize Eventbrite.com and Facebook Events to market and organize their events. Some groups use Meetup.com as their organizing platform. Connections are always plenty as well at our many coffee shops and breweries/wineries.
