Midwest Moxie

NutriSense was first to provide continuous glucose monitors to consumers.

Improve the health and performance of specialty crops around the world through advanced tech.

Connecting manufacturers with live data for faster decision-making and improved processes and products.

The Silvas developed headsets to allow doctors to see the heart they’re working on floating in front of them.

How a company's work is transforming diesel to use clean-burning, renewable, alternative fuels.

After exploring all seven continents and dozens of countries, Corey Jaskolski started Synthetaic to create the ChatGPT of image data in Wisconsin.

Arnab Nandi’s research into spatiotemporal data spawned Mobikit.

Eric Christopher founded Zylo and, in the process, invented the category of software subscription management.

Jian-Ping Wang’s years of research paid off when the world's first ever earth-free magnet was developed.

Jacob Babcock and his team are helping to free us from cords and make wireless charging more prevalent.

Monika Roots is a child psychiatrist who has co-founded two telehealth startups.

Cory Scott stumbled into a pitch contest and emerged with first place, a pre-paying customer and the beginnings of LiveBy.

Chris Goode leaned on 30 years of work experience in weather to start his company, Climavision, which raised $100 million out of the gate to improve weather forecast speed and accuracy.

Amy Brown quit her high-level executive job to start her own venture that helps companies to improve customer relationships and profitability.

After focusing on scalability and profitability Ben Schmidt's Pittsburg-based Roadbotics, which provides image analysis of road infrastructure, was acquired by Michelin in 2022.

After founding four companies, including Ann Arbor-based Accuri Cytometers, which was acquired in 2010 for $205 million, Jen Baird is now she's helping other young startups grow.

Dr. Garry Cooper started with research lab materials but has grown Chicago-based Rheaply's digital resource exchange platform to find next uses for industrial and IT equipment, building materials, furniture and more.

Sankalp Arora figured out while in graduate school at Carnegie Mellon how to make robots curious.

Danny Ellis and Kurt Heikkinen know first-hand how difficult, and ultimately rewarding, a startup can be.

Nicole Atchison and Francis Wang are both building a more sustainable future.

Tyrre Burks' desire to create the safest environment possible for a young athlete to play the sport they love resulted in forming an insurance company.

Nancy Benovich Gilby and Katie Thompson have both figured out how to bring unique products to market in business.

Greg Piefer's company, Shine Technologies, has about 400 employees and $700 million of funding directed at harnessing the reaction that powers the sun.

Shane Farritor and Josh Riedy have small town roots and big tech attitudes.

Matt Rubin and Gordon Daily are using their technical skills to build growing businesses.

Jake Joraanstad knew about row crops and grain elevators. Julia Regan understood getting patients on specialty medications. Both saw an opportunity to digitize a paper process and seized it.

Mike Evans turned a desire to order take-out food more easily into Chicago-based GrubHub, which raised $200 million in a 2014 IPO. Now, Evans' insights are informing his latest startup, Fixer.

The first season of Midwest Moxie produced a treasure trove of tips from experienced founders about how to be an entrepreneur. The problem is we didn’t get to air all of them, so this special episode brings you tips from some of the founders ranging from startup finances to company culture and vision.

Jon Pearce got an internship with a startup while still in college, setting his path toward becoming a founder. Valarie King-Bailey spent more than 20 years working for other companies before starting one of her own. Despite different timelines, both found their calling.

Mo Faisal set out to build better and more energy efficient semiconductor chips. Lindsay Tjepkema wanted to update the business-to-business marketing playbook. Both founded startups to do it.

Niko Skievaski and his co-founders started building an interface for accessing health data so members of their coworking space could more easily grow their tech companies. But the interface itself turned out to be the basis for a scalable tech business that would provide a platform developers can use to build and distribute software that is revolutionizing healthcare.

Sridhar Deivasigamani knew the world was ready for smarter, more efficient water heaters. Zach Halmstad knew businesses needed more software tools to manage their Apple devices. It turns out that both of them were right.

Brian Wiegand started his first company in the early days of the internet, which he’s been mining ever since. Craig Markovitz found his success with medical technologies. They share one important characteristic: A willingness to take risks — over and over again.

Alisyn Malek has impacted sustainability as an engineer and innovation leader at General Motors, as co-founder of self-driving shuttle startup May Mobility and now as head of the nonprofit Coalition for Reimagined Mobility. Her work has influenced not only how new transportation technologies are being developed, but how they are being integrated into our social fabric.

Ankur Gopal struck out into the world but returned home to Kentucky to start his companies. Michael Chambers stayed in North Dakota and built a high-growth company right there in his own backyard. Both of their home states have benefitted.

Christopher Day grew up in rural Indiana without much visibility into any career. Tom Gajewski grew up in Chicago with his eye on a medical career. Both became serial entrepreneurs.

Jim McKelvey was a nationally known glass blower, but blew past that accomplishment to grow an even bigger reputation with Square. The company Jim co-founded forever changed the credit card industry, and perhaps even more amazingly, successfully fended off competition from Amazon.

Taralinda Willis never imagined she would start a company; Norman Sadeh never imagined he wouldn’t. Despite those different perspectives, both founded startups and built them into successful businesses.