Madison Entrepreneurs & Civic Leaders Team Up To Create Starting Block

by Kyle in Accelerator, Everywhere Else, Startup News, Wisconsin
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Starting Block, Madison startups, Startup, gener8tor,

Madison, Wisconsin has a budding entrepreneurial and startup community. Last year, on our sneaker-strapped startup road trip, we had an impromptu trip to Madison, and they assembled about 40 startup founders in less than 3 hours to meet with us. The following day we toured their startup ecosystem, and we were quite impressed.

While the startup ecosystem in Madison continued to grow, they lacked an epicenter like Chicago’s 1871 or DC’s 1776.

Well, a few weeks ago, Madison Alderman, entrepreneur, and founder Scott Resnick told us they were working on something big and now that has become a reality.

A group of Madison entrepreneurs and civic leaders announce the formation of StartingBlock Madison and the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the property owner to explore development of the Kleuter Building (former Mautz Paint building) into an entrepreneur center. StartingBlock Madison has solicited requests for proposal for development from leading development companies and anticipates selecting a development partner later this summer.

gener8torsmallStartingBlock Madison’s goal is to create a centralized location for the Madison region’s entrepreneurial activities.  The facility will provide Madison-based startups with affordable, flexible office and co-work space, accelerator support, peer and mentoring resources, education and training, and community building activities.

StartingBlock Madison’s facility will provide:
• a permanent home for Sector67, Madison’s successful makerspace/prototyping center for next-generation manufacturing technologies
• a location for gener8tor, a startup accelerator that provides expertise, mentorship, and capital through a 12-week intensive curriculum
• subsidized office space with short-term leases and flexibility for young startups
• quality at-market office space for high growth companies
• a healthcare IT incubator to support the growing number of healthcare IT startups
• space for other entrepreneurial resources, such as funders, investors, law firms, and other professional service providers
• community and auditorium space for Capital Entrepreneurs and other entrepreneurial activities and events.

“gener8tor is thrilled about the possibility of harnessing the cumulative brainpower, innovation, and array of resources from across the Madison entrepreneurial ecosystem into one unified, community hub. We anticipate the synergies and random connections that will be created by StartingBlock will lead to exponential benefits for Madison and the surrounding region,” gener8tor co-founder Troy Vosseller told Nibletz via email.

Resnick says that they hope to open the doors on the new Starting Block next fall.

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Madison Wisconsin Hosting User Experience Conference UXMAD July 19-21st

by Kyle in Events, Everywhere Else, Wisconsin
Comments Off on Madison Wisconsin Hosting User Experience Conference UXMAD July 19-21st 0 Like 1,386

Seasoned business and technology event planners Jim and Jennifer Remsik have brought some great events to the city of Madison Wisconsin. Now they’re venturing out for another new conference which we’re sure is going to be a hit. The UXMAD conference is being held at the Overture Center on July 19-21 and is all about user experience.

Day 1 which is Thursday July 19th will feature a day filled with hands on workshops provided by top user experience talent including Ben Reinhart and Todd Larsen. Their workshop, which runs all day with a lunch break in the middle, is on Javascript. The other all day workshop is “Guerilla Design & Research Methods”.

Day 2 and 3 will feature top notch speakers including Andrew Maier, Founder of UXBooth; Jina Bolton, Product Designer at DO; Dale Sande, User Interface Engineer at Getty Images; Jeanne Carpenter, Founder of Wisconsin Cheese Originals; Carl Smith, Chief Keeper Upper at nGen Works and Jessie Shternshus, Founder of the Improv Effect.

Of course the conference also has great after parties on all three nights.


In an interesting twist the Remsik’s want attendees to experience all that downtown Madison has to offer. Instead of a traditional brown bag or boxed lunch, or even a catered lunch, UXMAD will have an extended lunch period and attendees will be given a food allowance to experience the food carts and restaurants in close proximity to the conference. Jim Remsik said: Madison is a city that is easy to fall in love with, all we had to do was play matchmaker.”

On our recent trip to Madison Cameron and I had great food from restaurants like Merchant and the Dane and we were even able to take in a few food truck delights because our trip to Madison was during their first concert on the square of this summer season. Madison is indeed one of the coolest and nicest cities we’ve been too.

It’s not too late to get signed up for UXMAD. The entire conference package is $299 which is a far cry from what a conference of this type would typically cost. Also the organizers tell us there are easter egg tweets available for $50 off, if you check out the speaker list. Links are below.

Here have some links

For information on the UXMAD event click here

To find those easter egg $50 off tweets go to the speaker page here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” check out some of the stories from our sneaker-strapped road trip

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