Wisconsin Startup Week: Nov 11-15

Green Bay-based startup enthusiasts Andrew Verboncouer and Jacob Miller are ready for Wisconsin Startup Week.

The pair are spearheading the events for Startup Wisconsin, an organization founded by Matt Cordio in 2017, which was created to help founders, startup investors, and talent connect, find resources, and discover events in the state.

“Our goal is to connect the state because we don’t have that sort of density in one area… everyone’s spread out, not just across Green Bay, Madison, and Milwaukee, but all across the state,” said Verboncouer.

“We collaborate with organizations and not compete with them. We want to collaborate with as many people as possible that are helping to shed light on what resources are available in their backyard… Our goal is to partner with organizations that co-host and co-run events and use community as a differentiator to connect people across the state,” he continued.

Verboncouer explained how he and Miller came to lead Startup Wisconsin.

“This will be the third Startup Wisconsin week that we’ve organized,” Verboncouer said.

“In 2013, we started Digital Fertilizer, which was based in Green Bay. We would host monthly meetups and showcases of startups. We would have local entrepreneurs and even entrepreneurs from the coast who are from the area come back and share their stories. We were just trying to hold events to get people connected,” he said.

“Jacob joined the board of that along the way and got connected into the community, and now we’re both at Headway,” he continued.

“When we were working with Matt Cordio, we decided to do Startup Green Bay in conjunction with Digital Fertilizer… Things have evolved since then; we’re no longer doing Digital Fertilizer. Startup Wisconsin is our core focus, and it’s backed by and presented by the parent company, Headway,” he said.

“When Matt told us that he was going to be moving on from Startup Wisconsin, we thought that we would be good stewards of what he had built so far, and our new way to evolve it was to grow beyond Startup Week. Even though Startup Week still is a big part of our programming, we are also doing events and highlights throughout the year,” he stated.

“We’ve kept the spirit of Startup Wisconsin Week. We’re empowering people to put on their own events, right where they live or to do a virtual event. That’s really what it is—empowering anyone across the state that has the talent or the wisdom or the network that they want to share through their events,” Miller added.

Verboncouer shared plans to strengthen the organization’s impact.

“We’ve been evolving our site to be a digital-first front door to the ecosystem. We’re evolving how people can get access to things. We are trying to figure out how to make it more dynamic and engaging… We want to really take advantage of the tools we have to actually connect people across the state versus just sharing a digital ‘Yellow Pages.’ We definitely think there’s an opportunity to be more than that,” he said.

Miller explained his motivation for participating in the Wisconsin startup ecosystem.

“This is one thing that gives me a sense of purpose, outside of family and friends, and it’s really fulfilling,” Miller stated.

“I think it’s more on a personal level; I like helping individuals. A lot of times it’s all about meeting the right person, at the right place, and at the right time. I always love hearing stories about someone going to an event and meeting a person, and then there is a domino effect. If I can create more of those opportunities for people, I can increase the chances of those meetings happening. That’s how I think about it. I don’t really think about it in terms of the economic scope of Wisconsin; I think about it on an individual level,” he concluded.

To see a list of Startup Week events throughout the state, click here. To connect with Startup Wisconsin, click here.