Ryan Weber is an operator turned investor, educator, and ecosystem builder. He co-founded NativeX with his twin brother Rob while students at St. Cloud State, and grew it to a 170 employee, $70M revenue digital media company with offices in St. Cloud, Minneapolis, and San Francisco. After a successful turn as angel investors through the Weber family office, 32 Degrees, the Webers decided to found Great North Labs. Buoyed by exceptional regional returns and the promise of the local ecosystem, they saw a need and an opportunity for a venture capital fund that invests in early-stage tech companies in the upper Midwest region (ND, SD, MN, IA, WI, IL).
As part of supporting early-stage entrepreneurs, and generating more successful startups, Great North Labs runs a Startup School that offers a variety fo classes, including an upcoming Lean Startup bootcamp run by Weber. In addition to this practical support approach, Weber devotes energy to more ambitious pursuits. He is a graduate of Singularity University’s Executive Education program, and a founding member of the local SingularityU chapter.
As co-ambassador of the SingularityU Minneapolis-St. Paul chapter, he promotes education around exponential technologies – technologies that are poised to spread exponentially and disrupt our way of life. The chapter itself is devoted to solving the world’s most pressing problems using exponential technology, and Weber is instrumental in building community around, and encouraging the creation of, local moonshots to take on these problems.
