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startups begin in communities across the country why does silicon valley get so much credit my name is nick castner and i'm caitlin clays we're interviewing the people building startup communities across america but in the areas no one is talking about the middle this is the ecosystem builder podcast by mug.news john mahack is an ecosystem builder based out of fargo north dakota currently he is the chief innovation officer at the greater fargo moorhead economic development corporation john thank you so much for coming on the show today yeah i'm happy to be here looking forward to the conversation yeah me too so tell me more about how you became involved in your startup community um so i've been at the edc i've actually worked here a combination about 14 15 years worked there for a while came back when i came back in 2012 that's when as an organization we started deciding to kind of be more intentional about the ecosystem and entrepreneurial development it wasn't my role but really so how it actually started was um us and another organization in town that just got started called emerging prairie they decided to hold a startup weekend which is now a techstars program and my boss basically said hey you're gonna help organize the text or the startup weekend and then just kind of that got me into it and i kind of got more to work with merchant prairie kind of go going out at the same time and then my boss saw that i had like an affinity for this and just worked felt well and so then it became my probably like two years later it actually became my official role to be working in the entrepreneurial development ecosystem that is really cool so um you know i had another conversation with andy stoll i believed and we talked about how language is constantly changing and one of my questions that i had for you is like the term the actual term ecosystem builder were you aware of that term right out the gates or was that something that came up later in your experience after you'd already been building yeah it came up later i had no idea it was more of a i don't think i really started hearing it or thinking about it till the people like andy and the kaufman foundation we're talking about it and then you know they've had the eship conference that have gathered a lot of us together for several years um yeah i hadn't really heard of it and to be honest i hadn't even really thought about it it was for me it's just like hey i know this is what i do here but then you know from attending different uh conferences and then obviously just the connections you can make online now i started meeting other people you know in my role similar across the country and getting to know them or we've had people for a while that would come up and visit fargo because they felt like they'd heard or that we had such a good vibe going and they kind of wanted to see what were we doing what we learned and we'd always welcome anybody we they'd come to town and we'd show them around and we talked about what we did and for some it was a little bit novel that an economic development agency like us was putting so much in we had this like again this grassroots merchant prairie doing it and doing wonderful things and how well we work together so for some communities that was like novel and they wanted to see and there is a vibe here in fargo you just eat until you're here you don't really once you're hearing you meet the people you know what you know what i'm talking about well you're not always going to find that like open arms really welcoming like conversation wise in a ton of communities so that's already one thing that's pretty unique about fargo uh so would you tell me more about like what's something people wouldn't necessarily know about fargo if they've never been um well obviously you know people that have never been here there's going to be the stereotype from the movie fargo and or in the tv shows i guess now so some of the things that they don't know is that they just assume hey it's just cold all the time you know do you guys have the internet there um do you all talk like like marge from the movie um uh yes it can be cold it's actually cold today um yes we do have really good internet and um and some and we generally don't talk like marge but sometimes it'll the words leave even i'll say something occasionally and i'll be like oh my gosh did i just pronounce the word that way i sound like i should be on the tv show but but i think what people would be surprised is like our tech sector is very strong and we're actually a very diversified economy which has helped us whenever there's been these kind of ups and downs in the in the nation with the economy um we it doesn't really hit us that much we we don't have the very big highs we have the very big lows but because our we don't have a lot of eggs in one basket um we just kind of always written that out really well and um you know we've always been very strong in manufacturing for many many years and especially with like agricultural and construction kind of manufacturing a lot of like tractors are produced here in the technology for them and bobcat things like that but the tech sector is really strong and then that is fit into this entrepreneurial scene too that's just outstanding and then again it's the it's a real creative city so it's there's a lot of cool people and like we you and i had on a separate conversation before was like comparing it to austin you know with kind of the weird and we we've talked about kind of the good weird here it's like people are weird but it's a good weird it's like they're very creative willing to try things very receptive of others trying things and say oh yeah let's let's see if that that works and then if it doesn't like well at least you tried and um and that's just really fun to be a part of that and have that mindset here of that more more positive a little bit less uh you know cups half empty kind of philosophy but but you know with the tech sector too so with surprising people you know they don't realize that the large microsoft present we have here i don't know what their current numbers are they're typically around 1500 employees between them and their vendor companies and having microsoft here which originally was great plain software before they acquired them it brought a lot of tech talent here and it nurtured a ton of tech talent so those people some people have stayed there but there's plenty that have gone off and either to work at other companies that come here for that talent or they've gone up and started their own companies um and that's just um that's been a blessing for sure so it's it's from what i'm gathering like you just listed a ton of places that have like been from this ecosystem so then like before they got started they had like they have to start it step one so if someone were to start a business in your community are they eligible for any local grants are there any interest-free loans when they can you know aspire to get to the big the big stars um yes kind of so you know grants are grants can be somewhat of a myth out there like they everyone kind of assumes there's all this like free money for for businesses and but there are some here and um the answers will kind of depend on the type of business you are maybe where you're located so sometimes because we're on a board or two of north dakota in minnesota so there's some difference in the programs between the states and different uh what they look for for the most part those grants are going to be targeted the kind of businesses that are more innovative so it's not going to be like a grant so much for hey i want to open a coffee shop it's going to be hey i'm working on this something that's maybe tech related it's it's more on a kind of manufacturing or science based thing and so we in north dakota for example there's one called innovate nd and what the nice thing about that program so you get up to 40 000 in that through four phases is that it's it's not just about the money but it's so there's some steps you have to go through and at each step you kind of have to call in and i kind of do the advising and mentoring through it too and they have so the startup will have zoom call with them and they kind of do either their one minute pitch or their five minute or 15 depending on their stage and we're there to kind of ask them questions to like or to give them advice so it's you know it makes them work for the money a little bit but also it helps them through the process and their validation and connections um so that's kind of the most common grant thing on the minnesota side they have launched minnesota which is a pretty new program that one's up to 35 000. um interest-free loans kind of would be normally no but um there is a new program through the state of north dakota called lyft i can't remember what the laft stands for and it's it used to be in an order but now they moved it but that is targeting basically those uh innovative companies again that would be all over the they could have customers anywhere and it's targeting if you have an uh you're basically creating new intellectual property diversifying our economy um and the state put about 15 million towards that a couple years ago the legislation and then went through really fast like it was very popular it's an awesome program and right now our legislators are in session right now and we're really hoping they put more towards that so it can because um the last time i heard was about 25 million but that one which was so nice was that it's it's technically a loan um but it's zero percent interest no payments for the first three years then it goes to two percent and it's unsecured so for those startups especially the ones when you're kind of pre-revenue on the idea or just very early you're kind of in that limbo of like hey it's tough so it was just a great and we've had a couple companies tech companies actually moved here because of that program and and then we're working with a couple more that they would they're i think they'll move here as well if they um if this gets refunded through the state um other than that i mean that's kind of the closest on the no interest thing um you know there's obviously cuba loans that can be done through crowdsourcing and um but then we have other programs through you know our organization has our we have a micro loan program it's not interest-free but and then the state of north dakota has what's called the development fund which is it's kind of like a bank through the department of commerce and again it's not interest-free but it's very friendly kind of terms for these early stage companies and we actually our state actually owns a bank we're the only state in the country that has the state-owned banks so it's the bank of north dakota and what they do is so they don't do direct loans but they're more of a banker's bank and how that helps the the companies is that because the our state-owned bank will partner with a bank here in town for example what they do is they partner on that financing so it really reduces the exposure and the risk for our bank here so the programs are designed to make the banks go yes let's give this company let's let's give them a chance let's help them grow because um they can still get that money out but again you're cutting your um the bank's risk sometimes you know in half there's one program designed specifically for growing kind of accelerating tech companies that the state bank will will come and cover up to 90 percent of the exposure so there's a potential let's say it's a million dollar loan that this startup needs our state bank will come in and cover 90 900 000 of that and and really that bank only has a hundred thousand of exposure so it's really a blessing to have programs like that to have a the development fund and the bank of north dakota it's our companies that we work with like the primary sector those manufacturing technology they've utilized those programs so many times because they're just awesome you know this is one of my favorite questions that we kind of ask on the ecosystem builder podcast because the when it comes to finances it can be very difficult to navigate that if you are a business builder if you're trying to create your startup and you bring up a good point that i hadn't quite heard is just that the money isn't free but then also that helps like people plan for that and plan to be strategic when they approach how to finance their business um i personally am a bit of a planner i like to know what options are and what resources are available so i really appreciate you taking the time to really go into depth with all of those opportunities and especially i wouldn't know anything about the bank of north dakota like that's something that i truly didn't know about before yeah and that's my job as an economic developer and someone in the ecosystem is that you know our job is to know a little bit of a lot of things and to know a lot of people so we never expect that the startups or even like the banking partners we work with to know all the stuff that's out there whether it's local state or federal so the start you know that's where the entrepreneurs should be coming to us because we'll visit with them and and there's other people like me in in our whole ecosystem network with yeah so as a as a kind of like a personal reflection in addition to that is i used to be an international orientation assistant through my campus and like you said you know a little bit about everything and so what we would always do if we didn't know the specific direct answer we always knew how to direct the student or direct the faculty member i'm guessing is that something similar in within ecosystem building as well where you know yep um and pretty much any time i meet with a startup for the first time a very common thing for me to say is like hey i can't guarantee i'm going to be able to help you i can't guarantee i have the answers but we don't know until we start talking sure and then yeah so i'll kind of learn about them figure out their stage figure out what they need now what they might need later and then it's like pretty pretty much it's something generally for me i usually need a moment to let it simmer in my brain but sometimes i can tell them stuff now but i'm generally making notes during that starting my things that i really want to do and i'll just say all right after this meeting you're going to get email email from me here's the things why why i'm sharing this with you and then if you need a connection any of these so again i might not understand all the nitty gritty and details of some of the programs right you know the more i do it the more i learn that's just the nature of our job it's a knowledge relationship based job is what we have um and i never claim to be an expert or anything like i'm never one of those people that will just try to talk smart i'll just say hey i don't know that answer but let me let me connect with someone who does you know right so i mean you kind of answered my next question a little bit but i'm sure you have more on the topic but we talked about how having a conversation is a great place to start but this question again was just that with someone would have first moved to the community where should they start what should the first step they do uh be my opinion basically for any community you're in um i would start with the most common to be especially if you're pretty early on start with the score chapters so scores kind of funded through the sba and it's on the re on the score used to stand for retired executives and it's basically a mentor system and it doesn't have to be just retired executives it's a mentor system that can help people with kind of the business planning kind of work through some of the formation and well you have a local chapter that you can kind of sign up for there's a national network that so if you for example we have one mentor here that he had started up and ran like a packaged food business so he he gets questions from people all across the country because he's like that kind of expert so they have this network of you come visit with score and they figure out what they need and they're like well someone in fargo-moorhead doesn't ha e that but we know this guy in utah that does so they'll connect you so score and then the sbdc which is small business development centers those are all over the country too um they specialize more probably in health in like your financial forecasting helping you figure how much cash flow you're going to need what's your runway do some market research those are like the most common um again kind of like your earlier question they'll depend a little bit on the on the type of business and your geography again if someone is coming here i would say stuff like uh follow emergent prairies newsletter get on the website and sign up uh the north dakota state university nice center their entrepreneurship center get on their newsletter i run the techstars startup digest here sign up for that connect with the north carolina women's business center i mean we have a lot of them like that and they're we're always sharing information out and then um kind of pre-culvert i'd say like go to events we we're event heavy here and now they're more online but that's just a great way um to learn but also to meet people because as we all we tell the startups is like don't go at this alone like don't just work out in your basement kind of thing reach out tell people what you're doing ask questions the people here are very whether it's someone like me who's paid to do it in the ecosystem or just people here generally they want to help and and it's much easier and faster to to go at it with others helping you than just kind of especially people that maybe have done things before and they can tell you like hey don't do this like i did it because i spent this much time and money and i wish i wouldn't have and people are good about giving that advice but so i would just say at a minimum if they moved here just contact me and i'll tell them all this stuff oh my goodness yeah we'll have your contact information in the description here's his linkedin uh this is the first time that i've ever heard of a mentorship program and did you said this was score and it's a national program as well that is so like fascinating because as i'm making connections as well that's one thing i always ask is like what's one thing you wish you had known before you know doing x or y z uh no i'm definitely i'm gonna tell my co-host about score because usually him and i connect after uh the interview so i'm definitely gonna tell him a little bit more about score uh awesome so then you touched briefly on how covid has changed the way we approach startup communities and the way that we connect so one of my questions was which coffee shops did entrepreneurs typically hang out at pre coven well we have a ton of coffee shops here like i'm sure a lot of people do um and really the ones you know some of it again is is based on if you're kind of more in the downtown or if you're maybe kind of in our in our burbs a little bit um the ones i would say um 20 below coffee they're kind of our local like they were ones that pioneered the craft coffee here like that made did it for the first time and like made us all not be able to drink normal coffee anymore because it tastes so good so there's 220 below coffee locations and they're actually like the sponsor of coffee sponsor of our 1 million cups so anyone who's gone to women cups for the last four or five years they drink one twenty below coffee and um so that's a good one uh there's one called young blood coffee which is just a couple blocks from my work here and when i i would run into so many people oh that's part of the reason i liked going to young blood was that just all the people i run into and coming in sitting down it's just a grip thunder coffee which is in west fargo which is part of our suburbs they're awesome and and with them is that the ownership is very super friendly and engaged into the network as well um sometimes atomic coffee on me on broadway here atomic all they have the best seating that they're the biggest for seating sometimes what i'll do too is um especially if i'm meeting with maybe a startup that i'm like you know what i kind of want to get introduced or sometimes if people are moving here or looking for a job i'll meet with them and i'll sometimes i'll pick atomic because that's where i'll might meet a lot of the maybe some of the people that are more influential or connected because i it might be like hey if i'm meeting with this person and that person walks through the door i can say hey why don't you come up here and meet this uh so-and-so so i'm a little bit strategic that way it's not just because they have plenty seating but sometimes i think ahead of like who might i run into that could potentially help this person but uh and then i mean there's just so many i you know beans is another one that they're out and kind of on the burbs a little bit i see a lot of startups there if i pop into that one mm-hmm makes me think about coffee shops and make me miss them even more that's probably like one of the things about cole but i miss the most is i really miss sitting in coffee shops like that's where you would see me a lot and this emergent prairie kind of had this joke that's what all i did is that they'd introduced me oh this is john and he just drinks coffee he has you know he meets people in coffee shops but it's just such a great a great uh way for for you know the comfort level especially in business the startup when you're at a coffee shop it's just we're more relaxed but also it provides so much more serendipity opportunities so like like instead of bumping into people um coffee shops are just way better than just coming to my office and meeting and where it's just you and i and it just uh i really miss that yeah takes a little bit away the intimidation factor away a little bit yeah um so i guess like on that social communication interaction what what would somebody like typically do because we're all going to need to get assimilated to like you know being in public again uh would you say it's okay to just approach them with like a friendly conversation it's like oh i overheard you saying something about this startup i actually work in entrepreneurship is that something that would like be an appropriate conversation starter um if you'd asked my daughter she'd say no it's not appropriate because she's been she's like i've been on the the end of doing that a lot because she'll be with me and i if i i just can't help but help people now and so i'll like stick my nose into conversations like that um but um i don't know i mean i to me it's like just try it like what's the worst that can happen i mean um some people might look at you like who the heck are you asking me this but uh i don't know it's just like you know any like having an idea in your head it doesn't do any good if it's just in there and you never verbalize it or do anything um if you don't just you might go try to talk to that person and they look at you like you're a freak but you that but they might they might make a great connection and um that's just something i've put on to myself too over the years as i push myself to get better at that like i used to not be very good at networking in that and and i basically kind of pushed myself and trained myself to be better at this and then now my brain's basically rewired sure one of the subliminal mesh messages i would do is i you know have stickers on my computer of something like things that i'm interested in and so i just very casually like ah look at this sticker i've got uh you know tech stars on there so i feel that one's more on like the passive side uh in opening up a conversation gives you an um excuse to start it so then um in addition to these uh coffee shops are there any co-working spaces in uh fargo eat the fargo ecosystem yeah we we have a few the the main one in the kind of the first one is called prairie den and it's downtown here we're actually run by immersion prairie um it started out being run through an organization called cocoa the headquarter in minneapolis and then they i think they're called field collective now but coco came and opened it up here kind of took the leap we actually as an in edc we helped kind of provide some seed funding for that we helped pay for some of the fit up because we wanted to get one here um they ended up closing it so merchant parade said well we don't we don't want to see it shut down so they took it over called it the prairie den and they've had it for probably i don't know four or five six years now and then um and then like the we have a regis but regis is like they're all over the world they're they're more corporatey kind of um some of it you could call co-working some of you just call like shared office space so we have a regis here and then the newest one is called rail yard offices that just opened up not long ago and it's it's it's a beautiful facility and it helps the sister companies like a high-end uh office furniture store so it's just beautiful and that's next door to drecker brewing which is this amazing brewery we have here that's it it's a and also beautiful and um i'm sure once colbit is is better like you'll see more influx than that but uh so yeah those are basically the three we have right now so then uh you had touched on a mill one million cups and i know that they have a calendar of events and things that they can go to so uh aside from that where can people go to learn about upcoming events in the startup community i'd say number one and i'm not just saying this because i curate it but i'd go to that techstar startup digest so it's you know startupdigest.com fargo because that again i try to purposely curate the stuff so it has some advanced stuff in there but it has also some certain articles on it so startup digest um the i already mentioned like the merchant prairie like getting on their newsletter you know they'll have some of that stuff a lot of our events here that get scheduled they either use eventbrite or they use like facebook events so you can search those two and you can find a ton of them um and then yeah i'd say those are the probably the main ones um to find things because some of there's other sites out there that have some of that information but you really won't know how to find if you follow a startup digest or you follow me prayer you'll learn all those other ones those are the mains what i would i think i would think of no i think eventbrite has also been on the rise as a scheduling platform uh i knew that it was around here before coved but it's just been insane on the amount of things that are now available i did a little bit of checking and we talked about eventbrite a little bit um before so that was something i kind of like looked into and i was like dang they really do have a lot of stuff and you can customize it too of like what you're looking for yeah meetup.com was was big here for a little while but it's been a number of years where that kind of slowed down where i think once because i think you can do it free for so long and i think it's once these groups had to start paying for things and it's like oh maybe i'll just put this on facebook events and do that instead yeah so what are some of the most like successful or or notable startups in your community um i guess it depends on how far you the person goes back he like if you want to go really far back and you can you can look at like bobcat for example the company that makes the construction equipment you know that started here um in a small town outside of here and um you know it's still it's headquartered here still and um and then you know on the retail side for this is more of a midwest and western thing but like shields for example the shields hardware stores they're headquartered here um the the actually the guy that started bobcat his grandsons this is like howard and brian doll they're like kind of like legendary entrepreneurs here and they've started uh kind of all in that agricultural equipment space they had started a company called concord which ended up getting bought out a number of years ago then they started a new company called amity technology which has farm equipment that they sell all over the world and then now they have a software company called farm qa that they started that does analytics um you know i mentioned microsoft kind of great plains things that's probably like our poster child for like entrepreneurial successes great playing software getting started in the 80s basically came in accounting software they were even big before microsoft acquired them and then and then again the spin-offs for that um some other ones i can think of so like phoenix international but they ended up being acquired by john deere so like a lot of the technology that's in say track john deere tractors around the world that technology is primarily developed made here in fargo uh with a you know john deere's three facilities here that are developing the technology for those electronic systems for tractors that started here um wax health is another one that bought some we had a couple startups that wax health ended up buying so we had discovery benefits which was uh well it's just first there was evolution one which is the software for like flex benefit systems kind of things that when you're you know it's hr related and then there's a company called discovery benefits kind of use that software and they had that people can do the flex vince's all over they both actually got acquired by wex health i want to say evolution one is like 500 and some 530 million i think it was the acquisition uh discovery benefits was about a little over 400 million uh so notice they're still here now too and they i don't know they probably together employ 50 deploy um aldebaran's another one here that they they're a good perseverance one so they're kind of a life science-based startup they do they manufacture like dna and plasmids for like a lot of vaccine work and they you know they were a small company for a long time and then also they just kind of blew up and you know right now they're building this like 200 000 square foot building um on like 14 acres i think they're up to like 350 employees and they're projecting they'll be at a thousand soon and they're just doing awesome stuff um and then i know there's just there's so many examples uh current ones too like i think a prx performance here they manufacture um exercise equipment they were on shark tank and it was kind of a big boost for them and they they've exploded as well especially with covid because they they specialize in equipment for your home like their sales just went like beyond through the roof i don't know and then those are just some of the ones that are like have grown a lot of it and there's just a whole ton of them that are you know still more earlier stage well fargo does it all uh they got your ag tech in addition to all the sites this is this is awesome that's really cool so then uh you know i asked about the notable startups are there uh any notable entrepreneurs that you've worked with um you know that so the ones i've kind of mentioned for the most part i haven't worked as close with lava because they're more established um aside from like the prx like brian brosh is the ceo of prx and he you know when i i've been working with him and actually kind of when he even had like a company before prx that kind of led into it i've been working with them and and our organization works with all these companies as an organization but for me on the entrepreneurship side so there's many that like outside of here you know they wouldn't be notable because like here people know them and they understand like these are awesome entrepreneurs so like they're more fargo famous but so i think of like brian brosh and then um you know i mentioned the doll brothers howard brian just they continue to innovate you know jake jordanstad who's with bushel which is a fast-growing egg tech software company and i should say egg tech it's ag so they don't think it's egg like egg technologies with eggs so ag tech like ray berry with omnibite uh nick horeb who he's in agricultural kind of analytics he and he actually just got acquired by john deere a couple months ago uh garrett and justin from co schedule which is cool marketing software david acheler from aparrio which is awesome stuff in aviation and um and and egg and those are yeah those are some and i'm sure i'm missing some and it's been cool to see too like more traction now like in our startups getting to the tech stars and the plug-and-plays and that kind of things with like you know walk-wise and light and farm qa pro power egg genesis feed tech like oh they probably like the ones that people won't know about but they're doing awesome stuff in the space and they're going to be doing even more you know through these accelerators and the connections they're getting through them so then uh kind of going we i should have asked this question earlier but uh we talked about eventbrite we talked about uh where people can go to find these events but are there any classes or seminars offered in your area regarding entrepreneurship and ecosystem building oh yeah we like i mentioned us being event heavy yes there's there's tons of that stuff too um gosh there's the uh there's one called and this is an example two of the how collaborative we are here there's something called these business builder workshops they always have a different topic but basically it's their sbdc's our sba our score our women's business center our veterans business they all basically got together and they do all these workshops together kind of tackle it so there's always business builder workshops happening at least once a month uh i mentioned the nice center from there's like several well some nice center does some stuff there with ndsu there's quite a few like in a cohort model like where you basically sign up as a cohort and you go through for x amount of weeks together so you're learning together but there's also kind of that camaraderie you know nice center has done the co-starters which is a national platform for that emerging prairie i think right now they have three co 16-week cohorts going there's a one focused on social entrepreneurs one focused on new american entrepreneurs one focus on women entrepreneurs there's something called the ilt academy which does like a 20 week lean lean training kind of thing and that's more targeted right now towards the minus some minnesota companies there's one called she overcomes which is new it's a women's centric one code of business lending does their activate women classes or webinars um concordia college we're a college town here so we have concordia msum ndcu and a couple other tech schools concordia is getting into the entrepreneurship mindset space so they're doing stuff and that'll be into the community even if you want to go younger the chamber of commerce has the young entrepreneur academy junior achievement has what i think they call ja company which is a pretty cool program that goes into the classrooms sba merchant leaders i mean so yes like the answer is like yes we have plenty and then the nice thing about them being virtual again you don't have the in person but so you don't have a nice face to face but the virtual has made it so much more accessible sure so it's easier and people are like oh like i i can't get there or like i'm 70 miles away or or some people are anywhere across the country and i know i had i held like a q a maybe a month or about a month ago i had the director of fundraising from we funder which is a crowd equity crowdfunding platform so you know had johnny on and just did a q a with him and it was so nice that you know he didn't have to travel here from tennessee and i just had him on zoom and then i could pull in anyone that whether they're from fargo moorhead or anywhere could be on that and and that stuff that's been a positive of the change in things is that they're accessible i remember i was on one for emerging prairie once and like there was also someone like logs in from like london and it's like okay people are finding these things and and you know kind of all are welcome yeah that uh that communication building ecosystem building it's just grown so much that you don't have to physically be in the area to be connected yeah so uh are there any podcasts or blogs dedicated to startups or ecosystem building that you would recommend um yeah we have so i think of like things to learn or to so obviously again i mentioned like the startup digest thing so you have that accessible as an outlet um there's a few different podcasts here um there's an organization called codelation they do like software development they have a podcast they do um basically them kind of interviewing different entrepreneurs or small businesses just to kind of learn more dakota business lending has has been doing some of theirs there's a guy named brian larry who has a tech company called connect labs he just started a new one to about the startup journey um and then like it's actually kind of resources um you know merger prairies they do some short articles occasionally on some things we're working on they're involved in some initiatives like granite farm i mean mentioned grand farm green all this that's a pretty cool thing going on here and and that's like a global egg tech thing um fargo inc magazine so with this company here that puts out these like beautiful magazines the design and the photography are like outstanding um they actually devote a lot of space to startups i'm on their advisory board too and help them kind of pitch ideas and then actually have a feature that i've been in monthly for about the last year called like 10 questions with so i do like 10 questions with a certain entrepreneur and just ask them for that uh one of their companies is called future farmer or the one of the magazines is feature farmer and that is basically specifically in the egg and egg tech scene and another great um avenue to get in so it's it's you know you're you're a bigger fish in a smaller pond here so and again with everybody knowing each other for for the most part or all the right people know each other that it's you know it's easier to get into some of that stuff and it's easier to um for these people to want us to kind of support and talk about those those things because the people are receptive to that and they want to learn more about it yes yes so it's also good to hear that um it's not all club related that you guys are tight-knit but in the best way that you're inviting people in rather than like we don't know who you are you can't come to our club yeah no it's it's not there's i'm sure you know it's not saying it's perfect or anything but it's definitely we're not like a good old boy network or even our startup scene here is not very like we're not very there's not a lot of bravado and it's not like the machismo bro like startups you know kind of like um it's just yeah it's more like hey let's let's get this done and let's get it done well and and collaboratively and um you know we're pretty conservative modest people up here too so yeah just very genuine i love it yeah hard for us to brag you know there's you know it's that's funny uh that midwest you're nice from minnesota so you know i just observing uh we had mentioned like accents and everything and i can kind of hear myself slip into my northern exit a little bit through our conversation um well i love it that's uh all the questions i had for you but i wanted to ask before i let you go do you have any last final thoughts um you know maybe i'll share a few that just came to mind i mean one note i made was like to let people know you know i thought about when you first mentioned like the andy stoll thing and some of the lexicon was that you know if people are in the ecosystem or get into that you know i'd really recommend bradfeld's book startup communities and that was actually something that our community kind of almost as a book club kind of read when we forget cedc was first get into it and it does kind of help you because it's like a guidebook basically for how he did that how they did that in boulder colorado um and it is good uh language wise too for people to kind of say the same things think the same things understand the path for it so i'd recommend that uh let's see if there's anyone out there listing who are economic developers or like want to work with their economic development like i mentioned before that it seemed it was i didn't know this until like i went to other like either the people came here i went to conferences and i talked to ecosystem people and they hear them from an edc and they're like what you're i mean your edc is like helping lead this or you're putting money into this or because they'd say they're our community they're more resistant like them or the chamber might be saying hey what do you this is our turf like what are you guys doing and um so we've actually had some other edc's in the country come visit us too just to kind of learn some of that so i'm always willing to talk about that i'm willing to help anybody even though my coverage areas fargo-moorhead area i'm willing to help anybody anywhere yeah i don't know it's just uh i'm always willing to talk about that stuff and i don't know i just appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about it and again it's part of it being a good ecosystem person is if you're friendly collaborative you know and genuine like that's what's good about our network here we have all those are friendly collaborative and or genuine it just kind of goes a long way and um yeah well thank you so much for your time i know i had a blast i feel like i learned so much more about fargo than the tv show so again thanks so much for coming on the show today now that we've learned about an ecosystem from the person building it i'm going to link back up with caitlin to clarify some jargon and take a deeper dive into this community caitlin how was your conversation with john it was great um i am super excited to kind of recap with you a little bit what we talked about i am excited to hear it so him being from north dakota i'm sure there was some funky accents between your like thick thick wisconsin and his his north dakota accent i i noticed it um being that so i moved and so i've been trying to like train away the northern accent but talking to him we even joked about it where he was like everyone thought that midwesterners sounded like marge uh from the fargo show and everything class i know right that's it was pretty fun so good to joke about that yes yeah what were some of your biggest takeaways oh totally so i really enjoyed talking about different ways that entrepreneurs can connect to events seminars that are around them so one of the things he like brought up a couple times was uh newsletters is a great way to connect and he actually writes for techstars startup uh techstars startup digest fargo so um that was like fun to get to hear about and uh you know being that he just writes for it every other week i was like hey we're content creators that's awesome yes yeah absolutely um very very similar to like what we're doing here and both the um like as we've talked about a few times on the show of like content in a community and ecosystem is very important like storytelling and um helping both the community tell its story and then helping like people outside of the community know what that community is about super important the events component i'm interested to see as a fingers crossed everyone in the country gets vaccinated and we start hosting those events events again i am eager to do everything from go to a startup event or to uh watch a live concert i'm excited for both of those both of those events to be coming back 100 and then you would have seen in like the interview we went over so many coffee shops and i was like he just boom boom boom one after the other and he was just pointing out like this coffee shop is good for this this one's good for that and i was like wow you know i really missed that about pre pandemic was just those coffee shops yes yeah take me back to the before times um was there any jargon or anything you had to look up after you know not jargon but what i did look up after was score and it is a national mentorship program so this is the first time on the podcast that we actually covered like mentorships that are available for entrepreneurs and i thought that was a great program to even hear about because something when we're connecting with people and even when we connected i always like to ask the question it regarding the field is there something you wish you would have known when it came to the field so he told me there's like executive directors who are retired that are part of this program and then they just kind of help mentor startup people and business leaders so yeah i'd love to look at that yes score and that's um like regardless of the field mentorship is is valuable um so it um it's cool that he highlighted that program um any final thoughts from from a conversation with john yeah so north dakota it is so collaborative um and he joked about how like what people mainly know north dakota like fargo is just the tv show that's all they know about it and um kind of what i knew about it as well i didn't know super like a ton about the entrepreneurship community there but wow it is so inclusive so it has a diverse economy growth it's got ag tech medical that they covered bobcat is from there uh like that's where they headquarter um and that was truly my biggest like final thought they are so collaborative i would honestly like to go visit their ones pandemic kind of chills out a little bit yes yeah i was just gonna ask if you've ever been but but you can't answer that question i have i i haven't even really came close besides going to south dakota but i haven't like been you know north of like this nebraska south dakota line so interesting interesting um anything else caitlyn or can i read this out you know i don't have anything else and i'm totally ready uh read us out okay amazing thank you for listening to to today's episode of the ecosystem builder podcast which is which is a product of of mug.news and hosted by myself nick castner and my co-host caitlin clays if you have any questions about today's episode connect with us on twitter at nick castner at clay's creates or at mugnews official if you if you enjoy this episode please leave a review and share with your friends we release that we release episodes every single wednesday morning so tap that subscribe button so you don't miss a beat [Music]