Startup accelerator gener8tor LLC, which has offices in Milwaukee and Madison, today announced it will launch a third office and programming in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota.
The company, which was recently honored as the 2016 BizTimes Regional Spirit Award winner, was founded in Milwaukee in 2012 to recruit, mentor and train entrepreneurs from around the world. Its 42 portfolio startups have raised more than $75 million in follow-on capital and have created more than 400 jobs. The Seed Accelerator Rankings Project pegged gener8tor last year as No. 14 in its ranking of the top accelerators in the country.
Both the six-week gBETA pre-seed program and the 12-week accelerator program will be offered in the Minneapolis area. The company did not give a specific location for the Minneapolis/St. Paul office.
Mark McGuire has been hired as managing director of gener8tor’s Minnesota program. He previously served as entrepreneur-in-residence at American Family Ventures, the strategic venture capital division of American Family Insurance. McGuire, a University of Minnesota Law School graduate, has co-founded companies including NameProtect.com, Alice.com and Jellyfish.com. Microsoft purchased Jellyfish.com for a reported $50 million in its second year.
“Adding Mark to the gener8tor team and joining the Minneapolis startup community is a great
opportunity for gener8tor to expand its services to entrepreneurs,” said Troy Vosseller, Co-Founder of gener8tor. Added gener8tor’s Minnesota Managing Director Mark McGuire, “I’m incredibly excited to be joining gener8tor and getting the opportunity to work with startups emerging from Minnesota’s colleges and universities and the Minnesota startup ecosystem at large. There is a tremendous amount of startup velocity and energy here, and I’m excited to add our nationally ranked programming into the mix.”
