Milwaukee-based startup accelerator gener8tor has announced the second location for its gALPHA program will be the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The gALPHA program is gener8tor’s newest, and was first offered this summer in Beloit. The three-week Madison program will be offered twice in this academic year, in partnership with the UW-Madison Computer Sciences department and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, as gALPHA+CS. It will focus on helping computer science students and industry experts from across campus partner to build companies.
“This is an exciting development because two of the best and most proven catalysts for entrepreneurship in the Madison area are coming together,” said Jignesh Patel, professor of computer sciences and chair of the department’s entrepreneurship committee. “By joining forces, we can accelerate the growth of tech entrepreneurship in Wisconsin, with the ambitious aim of pushing Wisconsin to the frontline of technology startup growth in the country.”
gALPHA+CS will begin recruiting students soon, and will launch the program in October.
gener8tor’s eponymous seed accelerator program, offered in Milwaukee, Madison and Minneapolis, accepts just five companies in each city per year, and invests $20,000 in each in return for an equity stake. The fall gener8tor program kicks off today in Milwaukee. Five companies will complete the accelerator program over the next 12 weeks. But gener8tor declined to name the participating companies until later in the program.
gBeta helps fledgling businesses with local roots become competitive for angel financing or accelerators, and is offered three times a year in Milwaukee and Madison, twice a year in Beloit and once a year in Minneapolis.
And gAlpha goes a step earlier in the process and helps creative, innovative people with ideas see if they could be developed to form a company. So far, gAlpha is offered just in Beloit and Madison, but the hope is to offer it in Milwaukee and other cities eventually, said Abby Taubner, managing director of gBeta.
“We’re open to expanding that similar to how we’ve launched gBeta. It’s just a matter of whether we can find sponsors in those markets to cover the costs of gAlpha. With gener8tor, gBeta and gAlpha now, we can really plug someone in at any point, so it’s really suited to any community,” especially those with universities producing strong technical talent, Taubner said.
