7 Ways to Reframe the Startup Mindset
More than five years ago, a coalition of startup founders, investors, corporate leaders, university officials, and support organizations united to make Minneapolis-St. Paul a top place to start and scale globally relevant companies. This effort, known as Forge North, established regional objectives aimed at growing early-stage startup capacity.
It made a difference. Forge North was not designed as an incremental program, but a hub where leaders could exchange ideas, draw inspiration, and build initiatives that their organizations could lead. Within a couple years, this directly catalyzed or indirectly inspired new venture funds, angel investment networks, and programs focused on early-stage founders, including an explicit lens on racial equity.
Organizational participants like gener8tor and Groove Capital, Bread & Butter Ventures, Brown Venture Group, MN Cup, and dozens of others have made a tangible impact.
Yet despite these gains, MSP still lags other regions that were originally benchmarked. Denver’s startup ecosystem now boasts a $286 billion valuation, and Columbus, Ohio—recently far behind MSP—grew its ecosystem by more than 1,700% in the past seven years. MSP grew too, reaching $59 billion and retaining its No. 2 Midwest spot behind Chicago, but the trajectory shows that without a strategic pivot, that position won’t last. Leaders of the Forge North coalition took notice.
Innovation over founders
Many startup ecosystem frameworks, often visualized as wheels, place the entrepreneur at the center, surrounded by the resources they need: capital, big-company connections, government, talent, and more. That makes intuitive sense. Founders have the hardest job and deserve celebration. For years, I championed this view.
Eventually though, I started to wonder whether these startup ecosystem champions (including me) weren’t a little bit like fans of the jam band Phish. Phish fans are wonderful and loyal. They can make an event feel like a spiritual celebration. (Like startup community folks, they also own a lot of T-shirts.) The thing about Phish concerts though, is that while everyone in the arena is having a blast, nobody else has any idea they’re happening.
The startup ecosystem’s problem isn’t filling the room with acolytes. The problem is that the rest of the economy isn’t listening to the music. Events like Twin Cities Startup Week hit natural ceilings not because of effort or quality, but because the framing limits who engages.
The truth is that startups don’t operate in a vacuum. They need customers, capital, mentors, lab space, regulatory insight, government support, and cultural buy-in. But the rest of the economy doesn’t exist to serve startups. Investors answer to their LPs, corporations to shareholders and customers, governments to voters, universities to students and budgets.
The real center of the wheel in the broader marketplace isn’t the founder. It’s the market opportunity—the specific problems that need solving and that, when addressed, create value. While startup ecosystems often ask, “What can you do to help startups?” the broader economy asks, “How can startups help us?”
It’s one economy
In the early days of Forge North, we met with Doug Baker, then CEO of Ecolab. He said something that stuck with me (paraphrasing): “There isn’t a startup ecosystem and a corporate ecosystem—there’s just one economy.”
That perspective is crucial. Our startup strategy must be integrated with the rest of our economy. The most promising efforts today don’t isolate startups—they align them with broader economic priorities.
Take the example of MedTech 3.0, a Greater MSP-powered campaign to create the future of medical technology. It’s a joint effort by leaders at organizations like Medtronic, Mayo Clinic, HealthPartners, Medical Alley, Destination Medical Center, and the University of Minnesota, alongside startups and investors, startup support organizations, and even Gov. Tim Walz and the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. The U.S. Department of Commerce recognized it as one of America’s best innovation ideas, with a federal Tech Hubs designation.
MedTech 3.0 is strategy to grow the entire economy. It’s about connecting all parts of the economy more intentionally: researchers, hospitals, investors, regulators, manufacturers, and yes, startups. A win-win-win could include a university licensing its tech, a big medtech company eventually acquiring a new capability, a health system improving its operations and outcomes, a patient getting better or more affordable care, or a strategically motivated investor exiting with financial returns.
In this scenario, people are motivated to move faster because everyone has an incentive to address a similar set of issues. Phone calls and emails get returned quicker. The introduction gets made or the insight gets shared with more urgency. That wheel starts turning faster and faster.
Keeping the problem in the center also allows us to reckon with more of the underlying factors that can hold future founders back, such as how much talent is entering the workforce with a key set of skills or an absence of critical infrastructure like labs and facilities that limit innovation capacity. This is what happens when we organize around missions—clear problems that many more people across the economy are already invested in solving.
These concerts fill bigger arenas because more people are interested in the music.
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Focus on strategic missions
This mindset can extend far beyond medtech. Consider global priorities like decarbonizing industries, feeding a growing population, or adopting AI across large enterprises operating in many critical sectors. These are trillion-dollar problems. Minnesota has assets that are relevant to each—but only if we’re intentional.
Startups succeed faster when they’re connected to real market pull. That means we need to align them with industries where Minnesota already has momentum. The blueprint involves defining a mission that matters, identifying shared needs and goals, coordinating resources and incentives, building the case for external investment, and telling the story to the world.
The result is not only support for a startup but the entire wheel in motion, with innovation leading to broader economic impact.
Capital remains a central need, just as it did when the Forge North council assembled to set regional objectives. While there’s more of it now, innovators need still more. But we should ask: Capital for what?
Minnesota-based firms like Vensana Capital and Arthur Ventures recently closed two of the largest VC funds in state history. Their success came not from local boosterism, but from sharp investment theses where being based in Minnesota was a competitive edge.
It’s true—many of their investments are out-of-state. That used to bother me. But here’s the better question: Would you rather have a $10 million fund that only invests locally or a $100 million fund that invests 25% here—and builds global relationships our startups can tap? Or how about both?
“The Fortune 500 companies we revere—3M, Ecolab, General Mills, Medtronic—succeeded by thinking beyond Minnesota’s borders. We should apply the same logic to startups.”
Let’s think bigger
Too often, our startup mindset is hyperlocal. We want startups to stay here, raise capital here, build here. But the Fortune 500 companies we revere—3M, Ecolab, General Mills, Medtronic—succeeded by thinking beyond Minnesota’s borders.
We should apply the same logic to startups. If a founder wants to build something that matters to the world, we should help them scale beyond Minnesota, not constrain them within it.
That doesn’t mean abandoning our local pride. It means realizing that global ambition requires global connection. Startups don’t just need office space and mentorship—they need integrated paths to markets, supply chains, and exits.
The most successful firms here understand that Minnesota’s advantage isn’t just local—it’s strategic. The firms connect founders with national capital, customers, and talent. We should want more of that.
Align around opportunity
The next era for Minnesota’s startup community isn’t just about helping founders, it’s about helping them win where Minnesota is strong.
That means:
- Getting laser-focused on real-world problems
- Understanding market size, competition, and trends
- Aligning startup support with industries primed for growth
- Pulling in corporations, investors, government, and universities not out of civic duty, but strategic interest
Measuring success by outcomes, not inputs
The startup community doesn’t need to shrink—it needs to evolve. We can still build inclusive spaces for founders, foster new ideas, and celebrate entrepreneurial spirit no matter what problem is being solved. But we must also meet the economy where it is and align our startup strategy with the solutions the world is asking for.
A new mindset
Minnesota’s startup leaders have laid important groundwork. But if we want to lead the next decade of growth, we must expand our mental model.
We should:
- “Yes, and” our startup work—supporting founders and aligning with economic strategies
- Embrace our role in a single broader economy, not a separate ecosystem
- Build coalitions around globally compelling missions, not siloed programs
- Attract capital not by making an appeal to sentiment, but a strategic argument about our unique edge
The best founders will still be the heroes of this story. But they’ll go further, faster, when they’re part of a larger wheel moving ahead.
Let’s not only ask what Minnesota can do for startups. Let’s ask, What problems can Minnesota startups solve—for the world?
This article appeared in the August/September 2025 print issue of Twin Cities Business with the headline “Rethinking Minnesota’s Startup Mindset.”
