Widely recognized as a “Top 15” national venture accelerator for the last three years, gener8tor has graduated 65 companies in its flagship program since 2012. Combined these companies have raised more than $150M in follow-on financing. Since the early days, Venture Best professionals have been important partners with gener8tor, serving as portfolio company mentors before, during, and after graduation. Venture Best lawyers have been featured speakers on business and investment topics, as well as legal issues, at gener8tor events.
“Venture Best has been there for us since the beginning” according to gener8tor co-founder Joe Kirgues. “We proudly display a blog Paul Jones penned about us for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel way back in 2011 where he wrote that – perhaps to his surprise – gener8tor was proving that high impact entrepreneurship could really happen here in Wisconsin.” “Indeed,” Jones says today, “the gener8tor team did something right here in Wisconsin that I didn’t think could be done outside of places like Silicon Valley: they took really raw entrepreneurs and turned them into fundable deals in twelve weeks. And they’ve done it consistently for years now.”
“While we are pleased to represent quite a few companies that have gone through the gener8tor program – companies like EatStreet, for example – what matters most is maximizing gener8tor’s success in growing the high impact entrepreneurship community not only here in Wisconsin, but across the Midwest as gener8tor has expanded to Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and Indiana” says Venture Best Chair Melissa Turczyn. “In emerging markets like those we serve, all of us in the food chain have to focus on growing the market more than dividing it up: creating more success stories – whoever their lawyers are – is the metric for gener8tor and we think it is for smart lawyers, too.”
In addition to supporting gener8tor with time and talent (and, of course, some capital), Venture Best professionals have helped gener8tor grow its capital base. gener8tor Co-founder Troy Vosseller notes that “Angels on the Water, a seed fund that Paul Jones advises on investment matters, was the first investor to publicly commit to providing capital to our companies based on their graduation from our flagship program. That was a real turning point for us.”
Wisconsin – and now Indiana, Minnesota, Michigan and Ohio – are fortunate to have a world-class accelerator like gener8tor sowing the high impact entrepreneurship fields. Venture Best is pleased and privileged to help them make the effort a winning one for gener8tor’s entrepreneurs, investors, and communities.