Gener8tor forges Minnesota partnership

In an effort to build more startups, the University of Minnesota's technology transfer office is partnering with Wisconsin-based gener8tor, which runs startup training programs.

The partnership is the first gener8tor has forged with a university outside of Wisconsin. About a year ago, gener8tor partnered with the Wisconsin 
Alumni Research Foundation, which provided an undisclosed amount of funding for gener8tor to provide coaching and other services to startups.

"This relationship brings Wisconsin and Minnesota closer together as we continue to position the Midwest to compete on the national and international stage," said Joe Kirgues, a gener8tor co-founder. "We anticipate collaborations emerging between the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin-Madison as we work with the best and brightest in each state."

Under the partnership, Mark McGuire, a successful entrepreneur who is managing director of gener8tor's Minnesota office, will manage the university's Discovery Capital Investment Program, which operates a $20 million seed fund for selected startups spawned on campus. McGuire will spend half his time running Discovery Capital and training classes for university startups, and the other half on gener8tor activities.

The University of Minnesota will benefit from having someone of Mark's caliber working with its team, said Jay Schrankler, executive director of the university's Office for Technology Commercialization.

"We like their program to help our startups out, and their connections to broaden our outside connections to investors are very valuable to our startups," Schrankler said.

Partnerships with large organizations such as the University of Minnesota are critical in a world where startups are increasingly challenged to collaborate in order to bring to market larger-scale solutions, McGuire said.

"I see a trend in the startup and investment world of moving away from the model of two coders and $50,000 being able to create $5 billion of market cap into a world where we’re solving much bigger challenges in areas like education, food, transportation and health," he said.