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For this week\u2019s City Spotlight: Minneapolis, I had the honor of interviewing Mary Grove, managing partner of Bread & Butter Ventures, and Justin Kaufenberg, managing director of Rally Ventures, about their investment strategies. Both are based in Minneapolis, and they are using the city as a lookout tower for what\u2019s happening across the US.<\/p>\n
Those not familiar with the Minneapolis ecosystem might scratch their heads, and wonder why not be based in the more traditional epicenters of investing \u2014 Bay Area, New York, or Boston. It may have been true in the past that that\u2019s where the bulk of the opportunities are, but in our interview, Grove and Kaufenberg explain that a lot has changed in the last 10-15 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the Midwest, broadly, and in Minnesota specifically, I\u2019ve become obsessed with the opportunity that exists here,\u201d says Grove, \u201cOne opportunity is the diversity of the economy. We happen to be focused on the three sectors: food tech, digital health and enterprise SaaS, but if you look at the titans of industry, we have Ecolab, Cargill, General Mills, Mayo Clinic, United Healthcare, Target, Securian, US Bank\u2026 I could go on and on. Minnesota is a headquarters economy: we have 57 companies based here that do north of a billion dollars in annual revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we spend time talking to investments on either coast, more often than not we\u2019re actually talking to them about things like considering opening a sales hub or a second office in Minneapolis to take advantage of the local labor market,\u201d says Kaufenberg. \u201cSales talent is an area where we found Minneapolis without comparison. We\u2019ve actually got a number of companies on both coasts who have effectively decided to build their entire go-to-market sales organization based in Minneapolis. You can get a disproportionate amount of attention here, and it\u2019s much easier to get your fair share of press, to have incredible visibility with prospective employees.\u201d<\/p>\n
Check out the full panel here:<\/p>\n