Getting Connected & Giving First. What Matters.


When do great things happen? What success factor is unanimous and in every single scenario?
It is when people come together. No civilization, business, or movement involved just one person. It started with one but always grew to a combined constructive effort.

When people come together is when the magic happens. And not just come together, but unite together.

The story of the Belgian Draft horse is an impeccable one. That a single horse has its own immense power, but when you connect two horses together they not only produce the power equal to their individual selves, they multiply their power. By conjoining into a shared harness they produce around 3x in force. Even more fascinating, when horses develop a camaraderie and understanding for each other they develop further synergy and can create 4x the power when deciding to move together!

Humans are the same way! For something to grow or become great it has to have a harness available for others to connect, unite, develop synergy, and produce power together.

Every community is built on this building block foundation of connection, collaboration, togetherness, and being a united force. And we all know community is infinitely important, no metaphor or demonstration story needed.

The organization Techstars was founded on the sole premise to bring communities together and build them up. In many of their graphic materials, office walls, and logos you’ll find the hashtag GiveFirst. They advocate and live with the purpose to live by giving. That a world of giving turns into a world of positive movement, and when you give you team-up with someone else’s movement.

Sioux Falls is proud to host a Techstars Unsummit event. It provides that harness for people to come together, make new introductions, relationship build, share experiences, share learning, combine efforts around certain topics, and #givefirst.

The Unsummit will be a  two and a half day gathering of a mix of Techstars, host city, and neighboring leaders & creators to unite on individual passion points, enjoy some arts, entertainment & culture, and team up on some masterminding on an assortment of attendee produced topics and activities.

Sioux Falls is a model of a little-city big-town in the dead middle of the Americas. The largest city in the “friendly faces state” of South Dakota. Half flyover country, half hustling and bustling hidden gem with record breaking construction development every year for the past 5 years and a center point between Minneapolis and Denver via I-90 & Omaha and Fargo via I-29. 

Industry wise, Sioux Falls, is a mix of business sectors just like the mixing-pot of the population it has become. The staples are big corporation moguls in healthcare, banking, and insurance; and surprisingly South Dakota is the nation’s leader in banking and trust holding. Yes there are more assets held in South Dakota, the 46th populous state, than any other in the great 50.

Along with the moguls there’s a fun mix of tech startups, biotech or biomed impressives, and uniquely innovative agriculture and aquaculture based organizations.

Balance is a theme of Sioux Falls. There isn’t an outright standout of a core organization or industry, and that is a good thing. There is a balance between the livelihood of the people and their professions. It isn’t the music capital of the world or the venture capital capital of the world and as a population belief most are certainly alright with that and actually fight to keep the community in order, safe, and prosperous in its current growth trajectory.


But there is a current state of inflection leadership, a to-be-determined status. It is said the upcoming 5-15 years of movement and development will define a massive section of what Sioux Falls is known for and its makeup and culture.  Will Sioux Falls be a biotech authority, an agricultural innovation staple, a small time tech powerhouse, or something else? The future is to be written!

The future needs unified collaboration. It is present in Sioux Falls and its people, but it can be more prevalent. It will be a goal of this Unsummit to uncover opportunities for further collaboration and unite some silos not yet involved with the grassroots business sector of their community, but want to be.

Attending this Unsummit will give a fun, constructive, and forward moving journey between relationship building, a revisionist history of Sioux Falls, expert led discussions, mini-hackathons, lightning presentations, discussions around conducting the best Techstars programs, attendee driven content, with a mix of arts & culture intertwined.


Each day will have an ending highlight of entertainment. Friday evening will conclude with a visit to the music recording studio and concert venue, The White Wall Sessions, for a private showing. Saturday’s longer day will end with a group outing to the city’s marquee festival Downtown Sioux Falls Inc’s RiverFest.

The Unsummit is primarily hosted at the Zeal Center for Entrepreneurship, a suiting host of a nonprofit business incubator and business conference space. Zeal’s mission is to foster and grow entrepreneurship activities and opportunities, which will tie in perfectly with the Techstars initiatives.

If you are attending this first of the six North American Techstars Unsummits, you may be in for a pleasant treat and a rewarding weekend. Creators, grinders, visionaries, supportives coming together to be united to connect, build, and move things forward together.


Get involved if you feel compelled, August 17th in Sioux Falls, SoDak.