New tech business accelerator looks to grow new Wisconsin tech firms
Excerpted from Wisconsin State Journal
By Judy Newman
Madison is getting a new tech business accelerator: gener8tor.
Its goal: To provide money and mentoring to young tech companies early on, before they’ve gotten any other outside investment, and give them a running start, said Joe Kirgues, a co-founder of gener8tor.
Gener8tor has offices in Madison, at 1 E. Main St., and in Milwaukee. It picks up where 94Labs left off; 94Labs also had Madison and Milwaukee offices and closed its doors in March after about a year.
In fact, two of gener8tor’s organizers, Kirgues and Joel Abraham, were with 94Labs. Joining them in the new project are Dan Armbrust, president of Granite Microsystems, and Troy Vosseller, founder of Sconnie Beer and co-founder of Sconnie Nation.
“We got together and decided we wanted to work to help startups in the state,” said Kirgues, a Milwaukee native and a UW-Madison law school graduate.
Like 94Labs, gener8tor offers an intense, 12-week “seed” mentorship for companies chosen to participate then moves promising businesses into a longer, 12-month to 30-month accelerator program.
