MILWAUKEE-­‐ November 20, 2012 – gener8tor, a Wisconsin­‐based accelerator program, today announced that its portfolio companies have obtained investments or investment commitments of more than $2.5 million from private investors. gener8tor anticipates that these investments will lead to the creation of over twenty full-­‐time jobs in Wisconsin with the potential for many more as the companies grow.

Said gener8tor co­‐founder Troy Vosseller, “We’re proud to have been the initial investor in these great companies that have raised significant amounts from investors including local and regional angel groups, venture capital firms and individual investors from around the country.” Vosseller added that “we know these companies will continue to enjoy great success as they use this capital as a foundation for future growth.”

gener8tor is now accepting applications for its Winter Program, which will be headquartered in the heart of Madison at their office … Read More »

We’re in the process of settling on dates for the next batch of gener8tor companies.  Looks like the deadline for applications will be near the end of the year – and that will come up fast.

We’ll post information on the exact schedule as we nail it down for the Winter 2012 program.

In the mean time, get yourselves ready… gener8tor is building a reputation fast, and we’re confident we’ll see lots of great Wisconsin entrepreneurs in this new cycle!  We’re really pumped about the buzz around our launch (see http://bit.ly/NsLoQY) and Madison is gearing up for our Launch Day there.  We’re also very proud of our companies – they’re doing great things and getting support from the investor community!

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Thanks to everyone involved for making the gener8tor Summer 2012 Launch Day a huge success!

After a few bites to eat and a drink or two, Dan Armbrust took the stage with Mike Cudahy for an interesting conversation on entrepreneurship.  Then the gener8tor companies took the stage – by storm – and showed how it’s done.  We’re proud!

Read about it here:  http://bit.ly/NsLoQY

From our perspective at gener8tor, a fundable startup features five essentials:

A hustler
A visionary/operations person
A brilliant user experience lead
A great hacker
An innovative business model*

In other words, the startups that grab our interest are four-fifths people and one part business model.  This plays out in practice as startups offering ‘A’ execution of a ‘B’ plan appeal to us far more than those promising ‘B’ execution of an ‘A+’ plan.

The hustlers lead it off for us and for good reason – they verify, validate and sell.  We know our hustler-led teams because they’re the ones grabbing revenues, getting attention, and securing follow-on funding before the others.  More philosophically, hustlers fit our model of customer-driven development through minimum viable product and quick customer feedback loops. From an investor’s perspective, the hustlers just make you feel better about the whole endeavor. Hustlers live on what … Read More »

We’re excited to introduce gener8tor as the culmination of a lot of work in putting together an ecosystem to build scalable, innovative startups in Wisconsin.  gener8tor’s work began with its founding team members from Granite MEDSystems and 94labs.  Together we’ve worked with dozens of startups and learned first hand what differentiates the winners from the losers and how to become one over the other.  What we want for gener8tor is quite simple: to win.  And for us to win, we need our startups to win.

Our customers at gener8tor are the entrepreneurs and investors.  Our goal is to put them together in a way that drives value for both.  And we want it to be sustainable.

For Granite, it began thirty-years ago with two entrepreneurs, two filing cabinets and a door for a desk.  Today it’s a global operation that has provided … Read More »