Excerpted from news.wisc.edu
By Jeff Miller

University Research Park and the MG&E Innovation Center on its campus were cited yesterday, November 15, by Forbes Magazine as among the top breeding grounds for compelling high-tech startups.

The magazine named the park as one of the world’s “10 especially crackling innovation hubs” based on trends in funding for private companies. The MG&E Innovation Center acts as an incubator for businesses at the earliest stage of development, says Greg Hyer, interim University Research Park director.

The national recognition was “a shining example of Madison as a globally competitive city,” says Zach Brandon, president of the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce.

University Research Park was founded by the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1984 and is home to about 125 companies employing almost 4,000 people.

Originally designed to nurture high-tech businesses, the park is also key to retaining talent in Madison, Hyer says. “We have a history with those folks; we can continue to help them.”

High-tech startups need a great technology and capital, but they also need a core of experienced managerial talent, says Hyer. “Madison, because of the university, has always had great technology. Now, it’s beginning to get the established management talent and that begins to build on itself.”

Flexibility is another key to getting start-ups on their feet, Hyer says. “Places like MG&E Innovation Center and the park offer the kind of adaptability that the growing company needs. We offer sophisticated space, with the infrastructure they need to do their work and flexible contracts so they can grow or reduce in size, as they need. It’s not a rigid system; the park is as entrepreneurial as they are.”

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Excerpted from news.wisc.edu
By David Tenebaum

It’s a story that could become a company’s founding narrative. The two Steves built their first Apple computer in the garage. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to start a software company. And 4-year-old Patrick Heaney broke a plastic sword while play-fighting — and recognized that materials can always stand improvement.

Eventually, that could become the founding narrative of NCD Technologies LLC, a Madison startup that is developing a super-hard diamond coating for industrial cutting tools.

The technique was invented in the UW-Madison lab of mechanical engineering Associate Professor Frank Pfefferkorn, where Heaney received his Ph.D. in 2009. But when NCD finally makes a profit, some of the credit will be due to a high-tech, high-touch UW mentoring program called MERLIN Mentors.

Despite the name, MERLIN (Madison Entrepreneur Resource, Learning and Innovation Network) specializes in advice rather than magic. “We want to get skills in entrepreneurship to people interested in creating companies,” says Terry Sivesind, MERLIN’s director.

A serial entrepreneur who spent seven years helping make Promega a world-leading source of biological reagents, Sivesind knows that many would-be entrepreneurs have a technical background and far less expertise in skills that quickly become equally important — hiring, intellectual property, contracts, identifying markets — and of course, finding money to fund the startup process.

MERLIN is supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, University Research Park, the Wisconsin School of Business, and the Office of Corporate Relations at UW-Madison. Since it began five years ago this month, it has assisted 160 mentees and been involved in the creation or growth of 72 companies.

Entrepreneurs needing mentorship first present themselves and their ideas to a small screening group. Most then repeat the process to a larger meeting of potential mentors who can form a team around any interesting person or project.

Mentors are selected based on business and technical experience, Sivesind says. “We want people who have been there, who have seen how much energy, focus and perseverance is needed to get a business on its feet.”

Mentoring is a smart way to build the local economy, Sivesind says. “We can’t import people, but we can take the expertise we have here and share it, broaden it.”

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Excerpted from JSOnline
By Kathleen Gallagher

When Great Oaks Venture Capital decided to expand its reach and build digital start-up companies in Wisconsin, it didn’t take long for the New York firm to figure out where to begin: Madison.

Andy Boszhardt Jr. and John Philosophos, two University of Wisconsin-Madison alumni, turned to their alma mater’s highly regarded computer science department to collaborate on a venture that invests in and supports technology companies launched by student entrepreneurs.

They’re among a growing number of players, including Google and Zendesk, that are expanding their presence in Madison to take advantage of the city’s digital talent.

Dane County is among the strongest counties in the U.S. in terms of increasing jobs in information technology and related sectors during the five years ending in 2012, according to a report published this month by the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank.

Dane County had nearly 25% job growth in tech/information sector jobs, resulting in a ninth place ranking among all U.S. counties for the five-year period, the report said. The report included digital and tech jobs in more traditional industries such as film, news, publishing and telecommunications.

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Excerpted from Madison Magazine
By Brennan Nardi and Grace Edquist

Over the years, Madison Magazine has celebrated our Person of the Year and Top Madisonians in a variety of ways. This month, we rebrand the editorial project “The M List,” kicking off a new Madison A-list of the people you should know. The inaugural class recognizes fifty-three entrepreneurs and technologists who’ve launched or grown their businesses this year in an emerging and exciting high-technology sector.

A vibrant tech scene is fueling the city’s future. Let’s get to know the people behind it.

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Excerpted from VentureBeat
By Matt Lautz

Traditionally, top talent flocks to the coasts for the in-demand and most coveted technology jobs. The Midwest is rarely seen as a technology hub, if at all. In recent years that has been attributed to the “brain drain” phenomenon — the idea that talent created and nurtured in Midwest cities leaves for larger cities that are more well-known for their business and tech culture.

However, new research is beginning to paint a different story of rising job growth and business prosperity in the Midwest.

A quarterly report published this June by global human resources consulting firm Manpower ranked the top 10 cities hiring in the third fiscal quarter of 2013 and surprisingly Silicon Valley and New York weren’t listed. Coming in at number one on the list was a sleeper — Des Moines, Iowa, with a projected 26 percent net employment outlook. Grand Rapids, Mich., and Columbus, Ohio, also made the list.

Other cities like Milwaukee and Madison, Wis., have begun to transform from manufacturing meccas to growing pockets of tech innovation and are supporting a new wave of entrepreneurship in the process. In fact, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker recently passed a budget that will fund several initiatives aimed at encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation. This includes $6 million for seed accelerator and capital catalyst programs through Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.

Midwest cities are also getting the attention of venture capital firms. One VC firm, Hyde Park VC, just announced that it is looking to pour $25 million in funding into Midwest-specific startups. And a report from venture fund Venture51 shows VC growth in the Midwest increased by 103 percent, compared to Silicon Valley’s 12.6 percent and NYC’s growth of one percent between 2005 and 2010.
 
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