Episode 22 now available! Ep 22 - Rukmini Banerjee, Co-Founder and CEO, CuroNow How CuroNow Brings Family Caregiving Into One Shared Place Rukmini Banerjee read one article and could not put it down. Her first thought was not about her parents. It was about her sister. The article said family caregivers of aging parents, especially parents with cognitive decline, face a 40% higher chance of facing the same struggles themselves later. Her parents live in Melbourne with her older sister. Her...
5 days ago • 5 min read
Startup Wisconsin Blog | August 25 2026 Featured article The Job Is Fine. Idea Fund of La Crosse Thinks That's the Problem. A college friend cut Travis Erath off mid-conversation to say "please, find me a job." Her job was fine. That was the whole complaint, and it turned out two other people in the room felt the same way. Travis is the new Talent Partner at the Idea Fund of La Crosse. He built a prototype of the portfolio career site while he was still applying for the role, and a good chunk...
13 days ago • 1 min read
Startup Wisconsin is organized by Headway, a digital product agency based in Green Bay, WI. Powered by our state sponsors, Nicolet National Bank and gener8tor. Hey folks! Jacob Miller here. Forward Fest starts August 17. Five days, roughly fifty sessions, all over Madison. That's a lot to sort through, so we asked Forward Fest board member Ross Larson which sessions he'd actually build his week around. That field guide is linked below, and every session is listed further down if you'd rather...
about 1 month ago • 14 min read
Startup Wisconsin Blog | July 28 2026 Featured article Your Field Guide to Forward Fest 2026 Fifty events in five days. Forward Fest board member Ross Larson shares the picks worth building your week around, from a sauna happy hour to a practical AI summit. He also tells the story of the 2015 breakfast that landed him the job he's had for 10 years. You cannot schedule the classmate. You can only be in the room. Read the field guide → The Startup Wisconsin Blog is sponsored by A Full-Cycle...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
⏰ Heads up: CDL applications close tonight. Today is the deadline for Creative Destruction Lab's 2026/27 cohort. Applications close at 11:59 PM ET, which is 10:59 PM here in Central. That covers both CDL-Wisconsin streams at UW-Madison, Health and Wellness and Risk, plus every other stream across their 16 locations. This episode digs deep into how the program actually works, so if you have been weighing it, this is the fastest way to know what you would be signing up for. → Apply to CDL...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Startup Wisconsin is organized by Headway, a digital product agency based in Green Bay, WI. Powered by our state sponsors, Nicolet National Bank and gener8tor. Hey folks! Jacob Miller here. We're excited to share that we've added a new publication feed to our website to compliment the storytelling we do with the podcast and make smaller stories more accessible and visible to the world! This is separate from our typical news feed, which is just automatically aggregated from multiple news...
2 months ago • 14 min read
Episode 20 now available! Ep 20 - Jessica Martin Eckerly, CEO and Co-Founder, Forward BIOLABS How Forward BIOLABS Gives Wisconsin's Biotech Founders a Running Start Forward BIOLABS didn't start with a $5 million check. It started with a napkin scratch. When Jessica Martin Eckerly was at WiCell, a UW-Madison collaborator came asking for a little extra lab space to start a company. They made room. Within a couple of years that company had revenue and pharma collaborations, and other researchers...
2 months ago • 5 min read
Startup Wisconsin is organized by Headway, a digital product agency based in Green Bay, WI. Powered by our state sponsors, Nicolet National Bank and gener8tor. Hey folks! Jacob Miller here. I'll actually be in MKE on Saturday June 6th for the Sit By Me - V3 Launch Party. So if you're attending, please come say hello, I'd love to meet you and hear what you're working on. If you haven't registered, this is a great opportunity to get connected. The community wants you there and is here to help....
3 months ago • 7 min read
Episode 19 now available! Ep 19 - Jon Eckhardt, Pyle Bascom Professor, Wisconsin School of Business Inside the Founder Forward Vision for UW-Madison Jon Eckhardt asked one question: what would Google do if it ran this university and wanted to produce more entrepreneurs? His team surveyed the entire student body. 20% had product or service ideas. They were in history, political science, women's studies, engineering, medicine. The university needed to create a better system to support them....
4 months ago • 7 min read
