In March, the Greater Milwaukee Committee along with Governor Scott Walker and Mayor Tom Barrett launched Scale Up Milwaukee, an ambitious, multi-stakeholder effort to catalyze entrepreneurial growth in Milwaukee by helping entrepreneurs scale their business ventures. Based on entrepreneurship expert Daniel Isenberg’s methodology, Scale Up Milwaukee is also actively supported by American Express OPEN, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Administration (WHEDA) and the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee (UWM). Since then, Scale Up Milwaukee has hosted a number of activities to gain a greater understanding of the Milwaukee business landscape and what local entrepreneurs really need to grow their businesses.
Today, Scale Up Milwaukee is launching its pilot scale-up training program (“Scalerator”) designed to give local, growth-oriented businesses in the Milwaukee area access to specific tools, knowledge and connections needed to increase confidence and ramp up sales. The two month program will work with companies with existing revenues to emphasize areas that entrepreneurs tend to undervalue when looking to grow – including the sales process, the right kind of capital and basic business necessities like human resources policies. Isenberg will lead the training using insights gathered from similar programs he has implemented in countries such as Colombia and Denmark. Other experts and Babson College professors will take part as well.
The application and guidelines for the Scalerator program are available at http://scaleupmilwaukee.org/project/scalerator/. Application deadline is August 2, and all participants will be notified of their application status by August 31.The program will select 12-20 companies to participate in this pilot starting September 19through October 31. I’m happy to put you in touch with Isenberg, who can walk you through the program in greater detail.
Scale up Milwaukee is the first project for the national initiative,OPEN for Enterprise: Coalitions for High-Growth Entrepreneurship, created by Isenberg and American Express OPEN to help U.S. cities with strong but untapped growth potential connect a diverse group of stakeholders to stimulate, support and “scale up” new and existing entrepreneurial ventures.
