Too Long for a Tweet, Too Short for a Blog Post VIII

Here's an excerpt from an article I recently read at one of my favorite sites, Next City, called "Tech Startup Accelerator Says Two Cities Are Better Than One":

Gener8tor is an accelerator, a company that invests money and sweat equity in young companies in hopes of a long-haul return on the small equity stake it attains in exchange. Accelerators themselves are nothing new, but what’s interesting about this one is that with each new class of companies, it switches back and forth between Madison and Milwaukee. Every few months, a new crop of companies comes in for a program in which they learn about exploring revenue models, getting investors and acquiring customers.

Gener8tor co-founders Troy Vosseller and Joe Kirgues were successful entrepreneurs in their own right when each wanted to start an accelerator in their respective cities. But with perhaps neither city quite big enough to have all the pieces of a world-class tech scene, the two realized they might be more successful joining forces.

One venture firm executive in Wisconsin said that the concept of shifting between the two cities has had the effect of making the state’s innovation economy feel less like a Madison scene and a Milwaukee scene and more like one Wisconsin. As the cities rise with the rest, it’s begun to appear that embracing regionalism may be the right course for an area with a thinner population to make it.