The MOJO MN initiative (that does outreach to the innovation community with speaking events and lobbying) held an event on the evening of January 12th featuring Steven Schussler, founder of Rain Forest Cafe and author of a new book "Its a Jungle in There." The event was co-sponsored by the Minnesota High-Tech Association and underwritten by the Eide Bailly accounting firm.
Brad Lehrman said of the event:
"It was an amazing standing room only event. With an invite only capacity of 110, 125 people attended. The audience was mainly entrepreneurs. There were two young men who drove from Chicago because of their interest in meeting the speaker. Steve did a fantastic job of highlighting his career, both the successes and failures. This is the third large public event for MOJO MN and the community response has been very positive. We have a group of ten 'agitators' that lead this outreach programming and we have a bold agenda for 2011."
Brad Lehrman received the following note from a client who attended the event:
"It was a great event. Thank you very much for your personal invite. As we talked, as a first-time entrepreneur and probably always true for even a few first timers, I would like to gain more insights about failures or mistakes. One thing I totally agree and appreciate from yesterdays talk was about his note on "passion". I know now from about a year doing this that the only thing that sustains me is my passion. A year ago even when I started working on this, I didn't even see or appreciate how important "passion" was, not only for startup, but for anything in life. Nonetheless, I would like to personally thank you for creating this. I think it is a great platform."
Steven Schussler posted this blog on the event:
"I was a keynote speaker at a recent MoJo Minnesota event. What a great group of agitators and entrepreneurs. Thank you Bradley Lehrman and Ernest Grumbles for hosting this event and Cathy Paper for facilitating. We had a great time and you had a great audience with a lot of great questions."
(Left to right) Tim Bachman, Primordial Soup LLC; Cathy Paper,
RockPaperStar; Steven Schussler, Author; Ernest Grumbles,
Merchant & Gould; and Brad Lehrman, Lommen Abdo.
Tim, Ernest and Brad are all "agitators and founders" of MOJO MN.
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Brad Lehrman of Lommen Abdo and Ernest Grumbles of Merchant & Gould are founding "agitators" of MOJO Minnesota.
MOJO Minnesota is an innovation advocacy force comprised of like-minded business leaders working to fuel entrepreneurship and reignite Minnesota’s culture of innovation. We are business advisors, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors and attorneys passionate about creating jobs and economic growth through the power of Minnesota based technology companies. Our goals are to provide a unique voice and support to Minnesota-grown innovation and shine the light on amazing new technologies developed here that will propel us into becoming a top 5 nationally ranked state for innovation and growth. We will do this through state policy advocacy, creating and hosting unique and interactive events and fostering an active and growing dialog that connects like-minded entrepreneurs, investors, industry groups and corporate partners in bringing Minnesota’s rich innovation heritage back into national prominence.
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