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A Letter From the President: Scalerator


We all agree that growing jobs is the key to a vibrant economy and Milwaukee's future. But where will the jobs come from? The structural change to our economy has created the slowest job growth in decades throughout our country. How do we jump start jobs and businesses?

In our region, we have a number of M7 partners utilizing a combination of effective strategies to help the entire region meet its collective job growth goals by attracting new companies, retaining companies and supporting a strong entrepreneurial community.

We are creating jobs through startups assisted by BizStarts, WWBIC and MEDC as well as the accelerators and our cluster organizations -the Water Council, the Food and Beverage Council (FAB), and the Midwest Energy Research Consortium. We are attracting companies and jobs through M7.

But what else can we do to catalyze job growth with our existing businesses and grow the startups and later-stage entrepreneurial-led companies in sufficient numbers to quickly fuel the level of job creation?

The Be Bold: The Wisconsin Prosperity Strategy report by Competitive Wisconsin, Inc. noted, "The public and private sectors must also focus now on encouraging and enabling current employers who have expansion and growth potential to maximize that potential as quickly as possible."

We believe the greatest velocity of job growth will come from small entrepreneurial-led companies that have the ability and leadership to scale up. In April we laid the foundation for this growth potential when we launched Scale Up Milwaukee. Scale Up focuses on companies that already have revenues of $500K to $10M led by entrepreneurial leaders who are incredibly ambitious and WANT to grow and have a business with the POTENTIAL to grow. Our goal is grow the revenues of these companies by 20% per year.

Scale Up is neutral on sector or cluster and focuses on six strategy areas:

  • Policy

  • Finance

  • Culture

  • Supports

  • Human Capital

  • Markets

Scale Up is not just a GMC project but part of a national partnership with American Express OPEN led by Dan Isenberg, an entrepreneur and professor at Babson College.