Project Skyway Boot-Camp weekend was held this past weekend (June 10-12) at CoCoMSP’s downtown St. Paul location. Curt Prins was one of the mentor/judges and asked me to join him in the sales and marketing group for the roundtable sessions. I must say I came away with an even deeper appreciation for the talent, energy and enthusiasm in the startup community here (and there were several from out of State too) as well as the incubator that is Project Skyway.
If you don’t know Project Skyway, it is, “…Minnesota’s first tech accelerator program for motivated entrepreneurs. The program will build connections among entrepreneurs, mentors, investors, and other innovation hubs, and bring them together both online and in physical space. The vision places emphasis on building companies with long-term, sustainable value, ethical practices, mentorship, and strong networks.”
The Project Skyway founder, Cem Erdem, set up this weekend adventure to enable startups to be involved in multiple sessions and venues for learning, honing their value propositions, and learning from one another. Clearly it also would provide investors with those value propositions ready to grow and would separate the “separate the wheat from the chaff“.
I met all the finalists invited in for the weekend and many of them blew me away with the maturity of their vision and beginnings of executing on their value proposition. As a “judge”, I was asked to rank the top ten and it was probably the toughest force ranking I’ve done yet. Too many good ones!
If you have any doubt or concern that innovation is dead in this time of economic uncertainty, a few hours with this group of folks would wipe that right out of your mind.