This Startup Drinks also serves as the after party for one of Fargo’s biggest events of the year: Drone Focus Con 2016. The second annual conference is drawing a crowd of nearly 300 people from across the globe — so this is going to be one heck of a Startup Drinks. We’ll have food, drink and live music by the Cropdusters. Tell us you’re coming here! (It’s free.)
Here’s a few of our Captains:
Shaun Arora
Shaun Arora is coming to visit Fargo from Los Angeles, California, where he is the managing director of Make in LA. Make in LA is an accelerator focused on hardware startups, focusing on 4-6 startups at a time and working on de-risking the process of manufacturing. He is also the director of corporate ventures at NEO Tech, and the director of the Board at Somabar – a robotic cocktail experience.
Ask him about: His surfing experience.
Michael “The Red Hype” Norton
Michael Norton has spent the last few months of his life touring the country as a Startup Weekend facilitator. He’s now facilitated almost 30 events across the nation, spending most of his down time in San Diego and Seattle. And yet, after coming to visit friends in Fargo, then facilitating North Dakota Women’s Startup Weekend, he found a stickiness here. This week he moved into the Fargo Startup House, where he’s doing some mentorship (he’s an expert with Kickstarter), working on a drone startup, and spouting other ideas such as a startup-a-month idea. Follow him @TheRedHype.
Ask him about: Why Fargo?
Jinger Zeng
Jinger Zeng is co-founder and CEO of Las Vegas based company Dronesmith. She and her co-founder Greg Friesmuth got involved with Fargo’s drone industry last year through a connection with Botlink, and have been attending North Dakota’s UAS Day and Drone Focus Con ever since. Jinger is a graduate of University of Nevada- Las Vegas where she studied mechanical engineering and built and award-winning solar house. She says that she is a “futurist at heart.”
Ask her about: The future of the drone industry, and how it compares to indie game development.
Marlo “The Guru of Geek” Anderson
Marlo Anderson is a Mandan native with a whole portfolio of successful projects and companies: he’s the host of the talk show the Tech Ranch; he owns Awesome 2 Products, an IT company; Zoovio Inc., online portal for transferring video files; Talking Trail, a VOIP system that replaces interpretive panels at historic sites; Pakkage, a crowd sourced delivery system; and National Day Calendar, an aggregate calendar that celebrates everything from National Pi Day to Talk Like a Pirate day. The National Day Calendar website is currently ranked in the top 2,500 websites in the world.
Ask him about: The Autonomous Friendly Corridor: a highway for autonomous travel.
Kelvin Hullett
Kelvin is the Executive director and government program market manager at the Bank of North Dakota. Previously he was the President of the Bismarck Mandan Chamber for 13 years.
Ask him about: how he is so skilled at public relations.
