Hey Everyone,

I recently decided to team up with the Bison Venture Ecosystem. In case you were wondering, BVE is a completely donor driven non-profit startup studio that provides grants to early-stage entrepreneurs and guides them from idea to launch of their company. This ultimately leads to more jobs, spending, and innovation!

Did you know that North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming have dramatically lower numbers of venture capital groups compared to other states?

The SBA report in 2018 stated that there were 467 new businesses started in North Dakota (an increase of nearly 8% from 2017!) while South Dakota saw 1,042 new business start-ups and Wyoming experienced 673 during that same year.

So what’s the point? There are lots of great opportunities in North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming with talented entrepreneurs that need more access to capital!

That’s where the BVE and BisonX non-profit program comes in! We help underserved entrepreneurs by providing a $50k no-strings-attached grant to each company that graduate our startup studio cohorts and we help provide founders with access to people, processes, and capital to set them up for success! Afterwards, those ready for funding can even pitch our VC team.

⚠️ So Why Donate?

✅Charitable Donation There is a tax credit/write-off.

✅ Economic Growth: We believe in spurring economic growth for our founders, community leaders and donors. This means more jobs and a pipeline of vetted employees funneled to our donors, purchases at established businesses where the brand is known through our newsletter, sponsorship information, public messaging and ongoing support for businesses in our community.

✅ Community Presence: We showcase our community leaders and donors that sponsor our BisonX program. Each founder/company knows where the donations come from and keeps that badge with them as they graduate through the cohorts, knowing who in the community has impacted their entrepreneurship. This is a true calling, a reason why people donate, to give back, and see their donation go to work inspiring others.

✅ Deal Flow: Our cohorts are industry agnostic, but companies can sponsor industry specific company's and have access to deal flow. This is the most common way for for-profit entities to see direct results from their donation. We funnel opportunities to our community leaders and donors FIRST before anyone in our network in a "first right" type of access to innovation giving them a leg up on their competitors and business trends.