Last Call for 2024 MN Cup Submissions

The MN Cup, a program of the Holmes Center for Entrepreneurship at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, is the largest statewide startup competition in the country! Since its founding in 2005, it has served over 0,000 entrepreneurs and awarded over $5 million in cash prizes; in addition, MN Cup alumni have raised over $1 billion in capital.

14th Annual 2018 Minnesota Cup Underway

For those of you who didn’t hear, the Minnesota Cup recently opened for applications (through April 27). Frequent entreVIEW readers know that the Entrepreneurial Services Group at Gray Plant Mooty has been a supporter and sponsor of the Minnesota Cup since its early days.  

For those who aren’t familiar with the Minnesota Cup, it is the largest statewide startup competition in the country. In addition to awarding $2.4 million of seed money to MN startups over the last 13 years, it also affords a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to further develop and refine their business plans, gain access to investors, mentors, entrepreneurs (and even entrepreneurial lawyers), along with others involved in Minnesota’s entrepreneurial community.

We have posted about the Minnesota Cup and its value to Minnesota’s entrepreneurial community too many times to count, so no need to belabor the point any further. However, if you’re at all curious about the competition or want additional support for your aspiring business or idea, I highly recommend that you consider participating this year as a way to advance your endeavor.

Can’t wait to attend some Minnesota Cup events and learn about all the exciting entrepreneurial activity of this year’s participants!  

Minnesota Cup’s 11th Annual Competition Is Now Underway

For those of you who didn’t hear, the Minnesota Cup (cool new logo and all) recently kicked off its Applications are now being accepted. Frequent entreVIEW readers know that the Entrepreneurial Services Group at Gray Plant Mooty has been a supporter and sponsor of the Minnesota Cup since its early days.  
2015 competition.  

If you don’t already know, the Minnesota Cup is a statewide business plan competition that offers a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to further develop and refine their business plan, gain access to investors, executives, entrepreneurs (and even entrepreneurial lawyers), and others involved in Minnesota’s entrepreneurial community.  To gain access to this great opportunity, you need to submit an application through their website, which you can access  here.  The application period closes on May 8, 2015.

We have also posted many times about the Minnesota Cup and its value to Minnesota’s entrepreneurial community, including here, here, here and here, so I won’t belabor the point any further.  However, if you’re at all curious about the competition or want additional support for your aspiring business or idea, I highly recommend that you consider participating this year.

I’m looking forward to another great season of Minnesota Cup events and learning about all the exciting entrepreneurial activity of this year’s participants.  

MN Cup: Second Annual Women in Entrepreneurship Conference

Last week, I attended the second annual Women in Entrepreneurship Conference hosted by the MN Cup. I found the panel on financing to be the most inspiring. There were two panelists who shared their path to fundraising with the group. Maia Haag, the co-founder and president of I See Me!, self-funded her company through bank loans and a small inheritance that she had received. Katie Jasper, the co-founder and CEO of Prescribe Nutrition, used crowdfunding (indieagogo.com) to raise $40,000. The other panelist, Chris Mahai, a partner at Aveus, shared insights into her experience within the angel investment community.

As the three panelists discussed their experience in the capital raising world, a few themes became clear:

• Be purposeful in your decision to raise funds. Make sure your company is ready for outside investors. Be certain that you have a proven concept before you take too much money from investors.
• Be tenacious. Whether you are pursuing bank financing, crowdfunding, or seed/angel investments, dive into it. Once you decide that financing is necessary, be ready to work to get others to invest. 
• Be honest with yourself and with others. Be realistic and don’t overpromise to investors, especially if they are family members. 
• Seek good advice. Find mentors that will be brutally honest with you.

Ann Winblad, the keynote speaker and the co-founder and managing director of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, reiterated the importance of finding mentors that will support and challenge you. She noted that if you find a mentor that is going to be brutally honest with you, it’s better for them to be brutally honest in the beginning of your capital raising process. 
As you consider fundraising options, know what terms are standard for raising funds in Minnesota. Avid readers of the entreVIEW blog may know that Gray Plant Mooty’s Entrepreneurial Services Group has published two reports that analyze seed and angel capital that has been raised by Minnesota start-up and early-stage companies. Information like this can be extremely helpful to determine what terms investors expect to receive in a financing deal. Click here to review the report that covers financings in the first half of 2014.

Of course, you’re always welcome to contact your friendly, neighborhood member of the Gray Plant Mooty Entrepreneurial Services Group. We’re always glad to share our knowledge and help out however we can.  

In the meantime, happy capital raising!

10th Year of Minnesota Cup Another Success

This past Wednesday, I had the privilege of attending the final awards event for the Minnesota Cup. The awards event concluded the 10th year of the Minnesota Cup, which is a statewide competition for early stage businesses in Minnesota. Gray Plant Mooty has been a sponsor of the Minnesota Cup for most of those 10 years, as we’ve found it to be an excellent supporter of Minnesota’s entrepreneurs and start-up community.

At the event, which I thought was the best yet, they provided some interesting statistics. During the 10 years of the event:

• Over 9,000 businesses have participated.
• Greater than $1,000,000 in prize money has been awarded.
• Division winners have raised in excess of $160 million in private capital!

This year’s event, like the last few years, was hosted at the McNamara Alumni Center on the University of Minnesota campus. The room was filled with past participants and winners, entrepreneurs, students, business and political leaders, and others interested in Minnesota’s entrepreneurial community. Even our state’s two US senators sent video congratulations to the winners and participants.

Each of the seven division winners and runners-up gave one minute “elevator” pitches of their businesses.  The pitches were great, and displayed a variety of interesting business ideas. Among the elevator pitches by the division winners, the audience liked the presentation from Jonny Pops the best, and voted for them to win an extra $1,000.  Jonny Pops, which makes all natural smoothie-sicles on a stick, was also handing out samples of their product at the event. I thought they were quite good and will plan to buy a box soon for my kids to try.

At the end of the evening, the judges selected 75 Fahrenheit (75F) as the grand prize winner of this year’s Minnesota Cup. In addition to receiving $50,000 for being the grand prize winner, 75F also won $30,000 as the clean tech/water division winner, and received a $25,000 grant from the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation – total prize money of $105,000! 75F has developed an interesting technology that allows users to regulate building temperatures in an environmentally friendly way by using wireless zone controllers to monitor airflow temperatures in building zones.  

The other division winners were equally as impressive as 75F. I imagine the judges had a very difficult decision in picking a winner.  

For any aspiring entrepreneurs who were not able to participate this year, I suggest that you give strong consideration to participating in next year’s competition. Just by submitting an application, you are forced to think through some issues in your business plan that you might not otherwise consider. If you are chosen to be a semi-finalist in the competition, you will have access to mentors, advisors, investors, and others in the entrepreneurial community who can help you further refine your business strategy.  Even if you don’t win any of the prize money, the Minnesota Cup provides a great opportunity to make valuable connections for your business that you might not otherwise have. 

Congratulations to all of this year’s participants, and especially to the winners.  We’ll be looking forward to next year’s competition.

Minnesota Cup Begins 10th Season

As a friendly notice to all of our aspiring entrepreneur readers, the Minnesota Cup recently kicked off its tenth season. If you don’t know, the Minnesota Cup is a statewide business plan competition for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Gray Plant Mooty has been a long-time sponsor of the Minnesota Cup (and the high tech division). We have posted about the competition many times over the past few years, including here, here and here.  

The Minnesota Cup added a new division to its format this year (food/beverage/agriculture) to go along with the other six division categories from last year – energy/clean tech/water, general, high tech, life science/health IT, social and student. Each division will produce one winner, who then will compete for the overall grand prize awarded on September 10th (hopefully after a nice warm summer to reward us all for the Polar Vortexes we endured this winter). Each division finalist and runner-up will be awarded cash prizes, and the grand prize winner will receive $50,000 in seed money. You can visit the Minnesota Cup's website for additional details and information about the competition.

In addition to the prize money awarded to winners of the competition, there are many good reasons for entering the Minnesota Cup. 

• Participants will have access to several programs throughout the year regarding various areas of business development (marketing, raising capital, accounting, legal, etc.).  

• There are many good opportunities in the program to network with other entrepreneurs and those who serve the entrepreneurial community (investors, advisors, lawyers, accountants, etc.).  

• Semi-finalists are also assigned mentors who can help with the development of their business plan. Just participating in the Minnesota Cup will create great impetus for you to refine your business plan and move to the next phase of development.

The fact that finalists from the last 5 years have raised nearly $75 million in financing is one measure of the impact that the Minnesota Cup has had on its participants. 

Best of luck to this year’s participants, especially those who are regular readers of entreVIEW!

Another Successful Year for Minnesota Cup

This year marked the 9th anniversary of the Minnesota Cup competition, an event that according to the Cup’s website is now the biggest emerging venture competition in the U.S. The competition culminated in a final awards event at the University of Minnesota’s McNamara Alumni Center two weeks ago on September 11, at which division winners gave oral presentations to the review board and the grand prize was awarded. Approximately 1,100 participants joined this year’s competition, which started last spring, competing for awards in six specific divisional categories: energy/clean tech, high tech, life science/health IT, social, general, and a student-only group. 

This year’s winners ran the gamut of unique, innovative technologies and ideas. In the energy/clean tech space, a company specializing in sustainable agriculture through the development of indoor/urban warehouse farming systems came out on top. In the high tech division, a business providing a practical and intuitive platform for company employee and staff scheduling won the prize. The winner of the social entrepreneur category was a Mankato-based community action agency that provides programs and services to help eliminate poverty, and the general division champ was a developer of a “safe and simple” blog for K-12 students.  My personal favorite was the winner of the student division, ShedBed, creator of a technology that attracts and contains pet hair and dander to a pet’s bed. I wonder if it works when your pet misappropriates your human bed… (I can’t help it—is anyone else’s dog THIS CUTE?!). 

“I’m sleeping in today.” – Mac (my parents’ Norwich terrier)

Overall, Preceptis Medical was the company that came out on top – the divisional winner in the life science/health IT division. This company received accolades for its development of tools to assist in ear tube procedures, the most common pediatric surgery in the U.S., allowing them to be performed in an outpatient setting in a fraction of the time, with parents present and less pain for the patient. 

With the Cup’s 10th anniversary approaching in 2014, it is clear that the competition continues to achieve its goals of not only supporting the Minnesota entrepreneurial community, but also of making the Cup a centerpiece of the state’s emerging business landscape. Good luck to next year’s participants!

A Post by Karen Wenzel, Guest Blogger

Spring, Time for Some Real Competition?

As detailed by my colleague and fellow poster, Max Bremer in his post about this time last year, one of the great competitions that commences in March (in addition to that minor basketball tournament happening about now—sorry for the reminder Gopher fans) is the Minnesota Cup.

In case you’re new to the startup scene in Minnesota (or have been living in a cave the last seven years), the Minnesota Cup is a business plan competition that identifies the top Minnesota-based start-up businesses in each of six different divisions: High Tech (a division sponsored by this blog’s favorite entrepreneurial service law firm), LifeScience and Health IT, Energy & Clean Tech, General, Social Entrepreneurship, and Student. You can submit your application to be named a top Minnesota start-up company beginning today and continuing through May 17th. For more information about the Minnesota Cup and this year’s event details, visit the competition’s website.

There are lots of reasons to enter the competition, and as Max detailed last year in his post, it isn’t just about the $25,000 in prize money. If you’ve been thinking about that next great “breakthrough idea,” maybe it’s time to do something about it. Who knows, you could be the next Florida Gulf Coast University...