Monthly Archives: May 2011

Project Skyway joins CoCo at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange

May 25 in Bootcamp Weekend, CoCo, entrepreneurship, Minnesota Technology, tech accelerator by CMurphy | No Comments

We’re excited to announce that Project Skyway will be joining CoCo in Minneapolis on the Trading Floor of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange.

This historic space was built in 1903 to house the economic engine that built this region and helped build great Minnesota companies such as Cargill, General Mills and Pillsbury. Now, it is being repurposed to become the hub for entrepreneurs to come together and exchange ideas and build the next-generation of great Minnesota companies.

Or as we like to say…it is time to move from the Grain Exchange to the Brain Exchange.
Minneapolis Grain Exchange
Here is a link to the official press release sent today to the news media.

We will be announcing later this week the 25 companies selected to go through a bootcamp weekend on June 10-12. From this group of 25 companies, 10 will be selected to participate in Project Skyway’s inaugural three month class beginning in August at the new Minneapolis Grain Exchange location.

Minneapolis Grain ExchangeMinneapolis Grain Exchange

What Happens Next: A Guide for Contenders to the Project Skyway Selection Process

May 3 in Applications, Bootcamp Weekend, Contenders, entrepreneurship, Selection Process by CMurphy | 3 Comments

With applications for the first cycle of Project Skyway now closed, the process to select our Contenders (that would be what we call every entrepreneur who applies) for the boot camp weekend now begins. The boot camp weekend is the second phase in the selection process when a selected few will go through fun and challenging activities to help our judges learn more about our contenders’ businesses and them as entrepreneurs. Before we get into that, we first want to thank everyone that took the time to apply for our inaugural cycle beginning in August. We know how busy many of you are running your companies.

Our selection committee is extremely impressed with both the quality and quantity of applications we received. Here are a few highlights from the applications we received:

  • One of every six companies hail from outside of Minnesota.
  • We received applications from Canada, Chile, Brazil, Italy, Spain, and the UK.
  • The vast majority of applicants are far beyond the concept stage and able to demonstrate a beta of their product or working website. That’s awesome!

Now comes the tough part, as our selection committee must now go through and review all the applications to determine the top applicants that will be invited to attend our boot camp weekend being held June 10-12. We will be notifying applicants that made it to the second round no later than May 31. Every Contender not accepted to the second round is invited to attend the opening night party being held on Friday, June 10th. Everybody that applied will receive more info via an invite in coming weeks. We hope you will join us to further improve your network and meet the people behind Project Skyway.

After the bootcamp those Contenders will find out by June 17th if they are one of the lucky few companies accepted into Project Skyway’s first cycle starting on August 1st.

Meanwhile, we just added another rockstar captain, we continue to have our doors broken down with interest from investors, and we’ve received news now that several early stage funds are being created in the Twin Cities to focus on nothing but tech companies like yours. Minneapolis early stage tech isn’t just accelerating, it’s blowing up.

Stay tuned for further details on our boot camp weekend.

Questions? Hit us up over Twitter or via email join@projectskyway.com in that order of preference.