It was early 2016 and A Couple of Gurus was a couple years into using the entrepreneurial operating system, commonly known as EOS, to get a better handle on its business when Upsize last visited with the company. Founder and CEO Keith Schoolcraft, at the time,...
Catching up
StemoniX founder now heading up breath-using Vocxi Health
When Upsize talked to Ping Yeh in late 2019, he was on a winning streak. His company, StemoniX, was the defending Minnesota Cup champion and had also just been named one of five companies to win a MEDy Award, which recognizes companies creating new solutions to...
The art of collecting
Cathy Sedacca seems to have a habit of starting businesses her clients wish they didn’t need — but then really coming in handy when they do. In addition to contributing a couple articles in recent years, Sedacca appeared in Upsize as part of an Upsize/Club...
Bending brewing boundaries
A previous version of this story erroneously indicated Bauhaus has created and is considering further alcohol-based THC beverages. Its THC beverages are non-alcoholic. Upsize regrets the error. Since Matt Schwandt visited with Upsize in 2017 for a story on...
Still popping
Angie and Dan Bastian started Angie’s Kettle Corn in 2001 out of the garage of their Mankato, Minnesota house with little more than a desire to work together and build up college funds for their three children. By the time they sold what became Boomchickapop in 2017,...
Stutrud stepping down
When Mark Stutrud decided in the early 1980s to pass up a master’s degree in social work to open a microbrewery, the initial feedback wasn’t good. His father thought he was crazy. And the head of the Brewers Association of America, to which Stutrud was applying for...
Kristal ball
Back when Upsize last visited with David Kristal in 2004, he was helping retool Embers, the restaurant chain his father, Henry, co-founded in 1956. The family had also gotten into franchising Joey’s Only Seafood and Grill restaurants, a Canadian chain, as its U.S....
Salonek overseeing record years at Intertech
Tom Salonek founded tech consulting firm Intertech in 1991 out of his spare bedroom after finding his previous job demoralizing. The first man in his family to go to college, he’d built the business to 70 employees and $14 million in revenue by 2017, when he was...
Learning how to pivot
When Jamin Arvig told Upsize in 2014 that his company, WaterFilters.net, was in its first chapter and that the book was certain to be a page turner, he was not kidding. The primarily e-commerce-driven water filter company had hit $37 million in revenue, up from $17...
Capitalizing on the Cup
We’re tweaking the standard definition of our “Catching Up” article in this issue. David Goldfeld has not appeared in the pages of Upsize in the past.
But he and his colleagues at BKB Floral Foam, where he is the chief technology officer, did win the Minnesota Cup last year and received a lot of publicity in so doing.
With that competition coming around again here soon, we decided to catch up with him and see what kind of a difference the exposure and lessons learned have made.
Turns out, the experience helped quite a bit.