Twin Cities
Startup Week

Where

MCAD, College Center

This session is confirmed for the official week. Full details are still coming together. Check back as the schedule fills in.

Where

University of St. Thomas, Schulze Hall (Minneapolis)

Who it’s for

Founders and students

Bringing back a long-standing TCSW staple, Mentor Morning is a casual gathering space for founders and experienced business leaders to connect one-on-one, talk through real challenges, and build relationships that can continue beyond the week.

Where

University of St. Thomas, Schulze Hall (Minneapolis)

In a world where AI has made everything faster and easier, it’s easy to think a computer can also write a serviceable brand strategy. But while AI does a great job of analyzing data and driving efficiencies, building a successful brand and creating compelling ways to connect with people is (so far) best done by smart people, not smart machines. In this session, long-time agency veterans, Kara Buckner (former President and Chief Strategy Officer at Fallon) and Michael Hart (Founder and former Chief Creative Officer at MONO) share five lessons they’ve learned from working with brands like Apple and Nordstrom that they now apply to startups in their new company, The Reversal Collective.

Where

University of St. Thomas, Schulze Hall (Minneapolis)

This session is confirmed for the official week. Full details are still coming together. Check back as the schedule fills in.

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Twin Cities Podcast Studio started with three founders, an empty room, a lease, and no experience running a podcast studio. They signed the lease in September, brought in their first paying client by November, and were profitable within six months. In this talk, Karl Ness will use Twin Cities Podcast Studio as a case study for how to take a service-business idea from “maybe this could work” to something people will actually pay for.

Where

University of St. Thomas, Schulze Hall (Minneapolis)

Risk shows up in a startup in more places than cybersecurity alone. In this rapid-fire Ignite series, three speakers will each have five minutes to share one lesson on identifying and managing risks before they become expensive problems, followed by two minutes of audience Q&A. The talks will look at risk from three different angles: operational and compliance systems, privacy and cybersecurity, and the human decisions that affect how a company executes and grows.

Where

University of St. Thomas, Schulze Hall (Minneapolis)

Building a company rarely goes exactly as planned. Sometimes the market isn't responding, sometimes the business is growing in a direction you didn't expect, and sometimes what you built simply isn't the business you want to keep building. This panel brings together founders and operators who have had to make decisions in that ambiguity: whether to keep pushing, change direction, rethink the business, or walk away altogether. They'll talk about recognizing the signals that something needs to change, separating a difficult season from a fundamental problem, and making decisions when you don't have enough information to know for certain that you're making the right one.

Where

University of St. Thomas, Schulze Hall (Minneapolis)

Who it’s for

Everyone

Open to anyone attending Startup Week. You'll be paired with other attendees for a series of quick, timed conversations. No awkward mingling, no standing around: structured, low-pressure intros that rotate every few minutes.

Where

University of St. Thomas, C127 (Minneapolis)

This session is confirmed for the official week. Full details are still coming together. Check back as the schedule fills in.

Where

University of St. Thomas, Schulze Hall (Minneapolis)

Women are not just advocating for better healthcare, they are building it. Across research, care delivery, technology, and investment, women are creating new models designed around needs the traditional system has too often overlooked. This conversation will explore what it takes to turn insight into innovation, innovation into scalable solutions, and better solutions into better outcomes. We are going bigger than the typical niche of Women’s Health to create a more inclusive and accessible future of health for all.

Where

University of St. Thomas, Schulze Hall (Minneapolis)

This session is confirmed for the official week. Full details are still coming together. Check back as the schedule fills in.

Where

University of St. Thomas, Schulze Hall (Minneapolis)

Who it’s for

Founders and students

Hear from founders who got their earliest exposure to entrepreneurship through student programs, in this case the MN Cup Student Division, and went on to build growing Minnesota companies. The founding teams behind Minneapolis Cider Company, Refr Sports, and Charm Social Tonic take the stage in succession. Moderated by Lauren Mehler Pradhan of Tesser Advisory.

Where

University of St. Thomas, Schulze Hall (Minneapolis)

Building with AI in healthcare means working within an industry where speed and experimentation have to coexist with regulation, risk, clinical accuracy, and real-world usability. In this rapid-fire Ignite series, four speakers will each have five minutes to share one lesson from their work across healthcare AI and MedTech, followed by two minutes of audience Q&A. The talks will explore applying AI to complex clinical information, designing AI-enabled healthcare products, navigating FDA requirements, and identifying product and regulatory risks early enough to make better decisions.

Where

University of St. Thomas, Schulze Hall (Minneapolis)

You don’t have to be a software engineer to start building with AI. In this fireside chat, Kathleen will share how she took an idea rooted in a problem she understood deeply and began turning it into a real product, despite not having a traditional coding background. Her approach to “Mom Coding” is less about letting AI build whatever you ask for and more about knowing what expertise you already bring to the process. She’ll talk about using domain knowledge, judgment, intuition, and curiosity to guide AI, learning enough to question what it produces, and recognizing when a product has reached the point where deeper technical expertise needs to come in.

The conversation doesn’t have to end when the session does. Speaker Office Hours give attendees a chance to continue learning from TCSW speakers in a more personal, informal setting. Come ask the question you didn’t get to during Q&A, dig deeper into something you heard on stage, get perspective on a challenge you’re working through, or simply meet someone whose experience sparked your curiosity. No formal presentation, no additional prep. Just a dedicated space for good questions, useful conversations, and connections that can continue well beyond the week.

Where

University of St. Thomas, Schulze Hall (Minneapolis)

Growth looks different depending on what you're building. A strategy that works for a consumer product may fall flat in manufacturing, healthcare, or MedTech, especially when startups are navigating long sales cycles, complex buyers, regulated industries, and limited resources. This panel brings together leaders across industries to explore how startups can build marketing strategies that actually support growth. They'll dig into finding the right customers, testing new approaches, using AI and emerging tools effectively, and knowing when it's time to invest more seriously in marketing.

Where

University of St. Thomas, Schulze Hall (Minneapolis)

Social media has changed how companies find customers, but the old playbook of posting from a brand account and hoping people pay attention isn't working particularly well anymore. People follow people, algorithms determine what gets seen, and content that feels personal and unpolished can travel much further than traditional company marketing. This panel brings together three different perspectives on how businesses can build reach through social media today.

Where

LaSalle Plaza, 800 La Salle Ave

This session is confirmed for the official week. Full details are still coming together. Check back as the schedule fills in.

Where

University of St. Thomas, C127 (Minneapolis)

This session is confirmed for the official week. Full details are still coming together. Check back as the schedule fills in.

Where

University of St. Thomas, Schulze Hall (Minneapolis)

There isn't one right way to fund a startup. This series of rapid-fire talks will look at different pieces of the capital stack and the decisions founders make about how to fund their companies as they grow. Speakers will bring perspectives from raising equity and non-dilutive funding, preparing companies to raise capital, investing from the VC side, and understanding how equity functions when ownership is shared with employees.

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Early-stage founders have to make a lot of go-to-market decisions before they have the budget or team to do everything the “right” way. What positioning work actually matters right now? What can you do yourself? When do you need a salesperson? Which parts of your marketing can wait? And where is outside help actually worth paying for? Erin Miska and Barbara Knott will walk through the early-stage GTM process from both the marketing and sales sides, including what founders can skip, what they should own themselves, and where getting help can make a meaningful difference. Then they'll turn the second half of the session over to founders in the room for open Q&A.

Where

University Enterprise Labs (UEL)

Minnesota has one of the strongest healthcare and MedTech ecosystems in the country, and for one night during Twin Cities Startup Week, we're bringing as much of it together as we can. The Mega Med Social is a gathering for the people building, funding, supporting, and advancing what's next in healthcare. Founders, clinicians, researchers, investors, corporate innovators, medical device professionals, healthcare leaders, and the healthcare-curious are all invited to come meet one another, discover what people are working on, and make connections across parts of the ecosystem that don't always end up in the same room.

This session is confirmed for the official week. Full details are still coming together. Check back as the schedule fills in.

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Building on the success of last year, Startup Connect returns to TCSW to sit down with two founders for a candid conversation about their journeys and what they attribute their success to. We'll kick things off with 30 minutes of networking in MCAD's beautiful art gallery, followed by a 60-minute live founder conversation exploring the lessons, decisions, and experiences behind building their businesses.

Where

MCAD, Auditorium 150

This session is confirmed for the official week. Full details are still coming together. Check back as the schedule fills in.

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

You're scrappy. You're moving fast. You and your cofounders wear multiple hats. That's not the problem. The problem is when building at AI speed creates quiet, expensive ways for someone to take over what you're building - and a single security failure can stop the company. Nathaniel and Clea will draw on deep experience in cybersecurity and digital entrepreneurship to show you how to build and maintain continuity and security in the AI age. In a world where Stripe tokens are stolen in 40 seconds, software supply chains are compromised weekly, and AI-built systems are too complex to fully understand, make sure your company can survive its own speed.

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Crowdfunding can do more than raise money. For the right product, it can be a way to validate demand, take preorders before producing at scale, build an early customer base, and turn those customers into people who actively help spread the word. In this session, Valerie Blomberg will break down what goes into a successful crowdfunding campaign across platforms like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and BackerKit, including the biggest dos and don'ts she's learned from a decade of running campaigns that have raised as much as $5.3 million.

Where

MCAD, Entrepreneurship Center

This session is confirmed for the official week. Full details are still coming together. Check back as the schedule fills in.

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Every founder thinks their startup is interesting. But getting journalists and the media to actually care is another matter. The panel will explore what founders really need to know about PR, media and communications: When should a startup start thinking seriously about PR? What actually makes a company newsworthy? What do journalists care about, and what do they ignore? What communications mistakes do founders repeatedly make? How should the story change as a company moves from startup to scale-up? And how do you build visibility and credibility without wasting money or simply creating noise? And when can PR really help a company punch above its weight?

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Deep tech companies face a different path from idea to market than most software startups. The technology may begin in a university, research lab, or highly technical field, but proving that it works is only one part of building a viable company around it. This panel will look at the path from technical innovation to commercialization, including where founders can find technologies worth building around, how hardware moves from prototype to something that can actually be manufactured at scale, and what founders working in areas like cleantech can expect when bringing complex technologies into established industries.

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Building a business affects much more than your work. It can change your relationships, your routines, how you spend your time, and even how you define success for yourself. This panel brings together women founders for a candid conversation about the parts of entrepreneurship that happen outside the pitch deck and business plan. They'll talk about wearing multiple hats, navigating relationships with friends and family, managing burnout, dealing with outside expectations, and figuring out how to keep building without losing themselves in the process.

Where

MCAD, Auditorium 150

Who it’s for

Founders and students

Your deck is done and you are dressed for the occasion. Now prepare your voice, your body, and your authentic self. Quick, accessible theatrical techniques for managing nerves, strengthening presence, connecting with an audience, and landing a pitch with confidence.

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Come for an exciting community-driven accountability space for tech enthusiasts and professionals to build projects, exchange skills, and expand their networks. Bring your laptop and active projects to work alongside fellow builders, share live demos for real-time feedback, and troubleshoot together. Whether you are looking to code, collaborate, or simply enjoy the tech-forward atmosphere, you are welcome to attend all or part of the session. Facilitators: Marlaina Love: Founder of The Diamond Resilience & Chapter President of Blacks In Technology - Twin Cities Devin Boeing: Founder & CEO of Cryptic Institute

Where

MCAD, College Center

During this shared showcase, meet student entrepreneurs from Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) and St. Catherine University and get a look at the ideas, ventures, and creative projects they’ve been bringing to life through their respective entrepreneurship programs. Students from both campuses will be tabling throughout the showcase and eager to share what they’re building, what they’ve learned, and where their ideas could go next. Come support the next generation of Twin Cities founders, discover what’s emerging from two distinctly different campus communities, and meet some of the students who could be shaping the future of our local entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Where

MCAD, Auditorium 150

This session is confirmed for the official week. Full details are still coming together. Check back as the schedule fills in.

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Some of the world's most enduring musicians have spent decades doing many of the same things founders and leaders are asked to do: perform under pressure, build fiercely loyal teams and audiences, reinvent themselves as the world changes, collaborate with different personalities, and recover from failure in public. In this talk, Bethany Wrede Peterson looks outside the traditional business leadership playbook to explore what rockstars can teach us about sustainable leadership and high performance.

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

It’s easier than ever to turn an idea into something real. But moving faster doesn’t necessarily mean you’re building the right thing. Before founders invest in prototypes, engineering, manufacturing, or AI-generated code, there are critical decisions that determine whether a product has a real chance of succeeding. This panel brings together product builders across physical products, medtech, SaaS, and AI-built consumer technology to explore what actually deserves your attention before and during the build. How do you know what customers really need, especially when they can’t articulate it themselves? Which assumptions should you validate before investing resources?

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Finding your first customers usually isn't about doing more outreach. It's about knowing who you're trying to reach, where you're most likely to find them, and having a process for turning conversations into actual opportunities. This workshop will help early-stage founders build a practical approach to finding their first 10 customers. Tim Bursch will walk through the go-to-market decisions that help founders identify and reach their earliest customers, while Christina Pecoraro will focus on building a business development system around that work so networking, referrals, outreach, and follow-up aren't happening as disconnected activities.

The conversation doesn’t have to end when the session does. Speaker Office Hours give attendees a chance to continue learning from TCSW speakers in a more personal, informal setting. Come ask the question you didn’t get to during Q&A, dig deeper into something you heard on stage, get perspective on a challenge you’re working through, or simply meet someone whose experience sparked your curiosity. No formal presentation, no additional prep. Just a dedicated space for good questions, useful conversations, and connections that can continue well beyond the week.

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Following Federal Funding Mechanisms You Didn’t Know You Had Access To, stick around to strengthen the connections that make those pathways possible. Meet founders, federal funding experts, researchers, ecosystem partners, and others working to turn innovation into commercialization opportunities, and build the relationships that can help move ideas forward.

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Moving an AI product from prototype to production introduces problems that aren't always visible while you're building it. This panel will look at some of the most common ones: infrastructure that needs to support AI at scale, unexpected behavior and bias in AI outputs, cybersecurity and organizational risk, and the human challenges that come with introducing AI into the way people work. The speakers will share what they're seeing in their own work, where companies tend to run into problems, and what founders and AI teams should be thinking about earlier in the development process.

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

When should a founder actually bring in a lawyer, and what should you have figured out before you do? Join Avisen Legal for a practical conversation about the legal decisions that show up as a company moves from idea to startup to growing business, including formation, fundraising, contracts, governance, protecting what you're building, and preparing for opportunities you may not see coming yet. Avisen knows that journey firsthand. The firm worked alongside Minnesota startup 75F for more than a decade, from its early financing and growth through its eventual acquisition by Carrier Global in 2026.

Where

Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Founders often know they need to create more marketing content but get stuck trying to figure out what to say. The answer may already be inside the business: why you started it, what your customers experience, how you work, what you've learned, what you believe, and the moments that demonstrate what makes your company different. This workshop will help founders connect what their business stands for to the stories they should be telling.

Where

MCAD, Auditorium 150

This session is confirmed for the official week. Full details are still coming together. Check back as the schedule fills in.

Where

MCAD, Auditorium 150

This session is confirmed for the official week. Full details are still coming together. Check back as the schedule fills in.

Connect with the people investing in and supporting Minnesota’s startup ecosystem. Gopher Angels, J.P. Morgan, Avisen Legal, Great North Ventures, Capita3, and Idea Fund come together for a casual happy hour where founders and investors can meet outside the pitch room. Grab a drink, make a few new connections, and get to know the people helping fund and grow companies across the region.

Where

Macalester, JBD Lecture Hall

Who it’s for

Investors and founders

Building the right board and advisor bench can be one of the highest-leverage moves an early-stage founder makes, and one of the easiest to get wrong. This panel brings together experienced founders and investors to talk through how to identify the right board members and advisors, structure those relationships (equity, time commitment, expectations), and get real value out of them as your company scales.

Where

Macalester College (St. Paul)

Successfully implementing AI is as much about the people and systems around the technology as the technology itself. This panel will look at how organizations can introduce AI in ways that reflect how people actually work, where human judgment and connection still matter, and what needs to happen for new tools to become part of everyday operations rather than another pilot that gets abandoned. The conversation will cover understanding the business before automating it, preparing people for changes to their roles and workflows, measuring whether AI is actually being adopted, and deciding where human involvement should remain central.

Where

Macalester College (St. Paul)

There comes a point when doing everything yourself stops being scrappy and starts holding your company back. But building beyond yourself doesn’t necessarily mean immediately hiring a team or raising a round. This panel is for founders navigating that transition from “I can do this myself” to “I need other people and resources around me.” How do you figure out what your business actually needs next? Is it your first hire, a co-founder, an advisor, specialized expertise, outside funding, or simply the right connection? And how do you bring those resources in without adding unnecessary cost or complexity before you’re ready?

Where

Macalester, JBD Lecture Hall

Who it’s for

Investors

Raising money is only half the equation. The other half is knowing what to actually expect from the people who back you, whether that's an angel writing your first check or a VC leading your seed round, and how to pick investors who'll show up for you later, not just write a check now.

Where

Macalester College (St. Paul)

Strong entrepreneurial ecosystems don't happen just because resources, programs, and people exist in the same place. They grow when people intentionally build connections across communities, make it easier for entrepreneurs to find the people and resources they need, and create opportunities for people who have historically been outside the center of the ecosystem to participate. This panel will look at community building as an active part of economic and entrepreneurial development.

Where

Macalester College (St. Paul)

When sales aren't growing, the problem isn't necessarily sales. You might be talking to the wrong buyer, struggling to explain why they should care, losing people somewhere in your funnel, failing to turn interested prospects into actual customers, or leaving revenue on the table once you've won the account. This panel will look at the different places revenue can get stuck and how to identify where your problem actually is. The speakers bring expertise across positioning, sales funnels, founder-led selling, and pricing, giving founders a way to look at their revenue process from the first message a potential customer hears through the value of an existing account.

Where

Macalester College (St. Paul)

During this showcase, meet student entrepreneurs from Macalester College’s Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and get a look at the ideas, ventures, and projects they’ve been bringing to life. Macalester’s entrepreneurship programs are built around turning bold ideas into action through hands-on experimentation, problem solving, and real-world learning. Students will be tabling throughout the showcase and eager to share what they’ve been working on, what they’ve learned, and where their ideas might go next.

Where

Macalester, JBD Lecture Hall

Who it’s for

Founders, investors, and students

Join us in the Investor Arena to watch top early-stage founders pitch their startups to investors from Gopher Angels, Capita3, Bread & Butter Ventures, Mairs & Power Venture Capital, and Idea Fund.

Where

Macalester College (St. Paul)

The things that get a business started aren’t always the things that help it grow. As customers, revenue, and complexity increase, founders have to make decisions about what to standardize, what to delegate, where to invest, and which parts of the business need to evolve before they become bottlenecks. This panel brings together leaders with experience scaling companies, building operational systems, designing resilient business models, and growing go-to-market engines.

The conversation doesn’t have to end when the session does. Speaker Office Hours give attendees a chance to continue learning from TCSW speakers in a more personal, informal setting. Come ask the question you didn’t get to during Q&A, dig deeper into something you heard on stage, get perspective on a challenge you’re working through, or simply meet someone whose experience sparked your curiosity. No formal presentation, no additional prep. Just a dedicated space for good questions, useful conversations, and connections that can continue well beyond the week.

Where

Macalester, JBD Lecture Hall

Who it’s for

Founders

This session gives founders an honest, investor's-eye view of what actually shapes a fundraise, beyond the standard pitch advice: what founder behavior builds investor confidence during a raise, and what quietly undermines it, from communication cadence to how a 'no' gets handled.

Where

Macalester, Mairs Concert Hall

Who it’s for

Investors and students

Twin Cities Business brings venture capital leaders, corporate executives, and the founders building tomorrow's companies into one room to ask why Minnesota keeps losing ground on job growth and capital to smaller markets, and how to unlock $1 billion in new startup capital.

Where

Great Northern Building

Who it’s for

Everyone

This session is confirmed for the official week. Full details are still coming together. Check back as the schedule fills in.

Where

Great Northern Building

This session is confirmed for the official week. Full details are still coming together. Check back as the schedule fills in.

Where

Great Northern Building (St. Paul)

This is where Twin Cities Startup Week ends with something big. Ten startups. One stage. One regional champion. And a chance to represent the Twin Cities on the global stage, competing for a $1,000,000 investment prize at the Startup World Cup Grand Finale in San Francisco. The top 10 startups selected from across the region will take the stage for fast, four-minute pitches, followed by live Q&A with a panel of investors and industry leaders. At the end, one company will be named the Twin Cities Regional Champion and advance to compete against regional winners from around the world. But this isn’t just an event for the people pitching.