The Badger Startup Summit is Wisconsin’s premier gathering for entrepreneurs, innovators, and supporters of the startup ecosystem—and the official kickoff to Forward Fest 2026.
Founded over 14 years ago, the Summit brings together founders, builders, investors, and community leaders for a full day of ideas, insights, and connection that set the tone for the entire week.
The program features a curated lineup of talks and discussions designed to be both inspiring and practical, covering topics such as: • Lessons from experienced founders (“Chapter Zero”) • The future of AI and agent-driven technology • Real-world startup journeys—from bootstrapped to venture-backed • What it actually takes to raise capital in today’s market This year, the Summit will feature interactive programming designed to engage attendees more directly, including opportunities for founders to share ideas, get feedback, and connect with peers and experienced operators in a more open, collaborative format. The Summit also includes a VenFair and networking lunch, connecting attendees with valuable resources, partners, and fellow entrepreneurs. Whether you’re launching your first idea, scaling a company, or supporting the innovation ecosystem, the Badger Startup Summit is where Wisconsin’s startup community comes together to kick off Forward Fest.
Join us for coffee and networking hosted by StartingBlock Madison to kick off the 2025 Forward Festival! Come at any time to say hello to fellow Festival-goers.
*Note: if you purchased a Forward Pass with Swag, your items will be available for pick up during this time. Attendance is not necessary, pick up is available all week.
After several months and tens of pitches, your MVP is done and ready for prime time. Entering the commercial stage of your business requires another adaptation: you need to ditch the pitch and learn to guide a conversation with your ICP. It's not about you anymore, now it's about them. Who needs your product? ... for what, when, and how? Start developing a sales strategy that will lead you to find the answers and activate that much needed cash flow. In this interactive workshop you will discover a few insights to translate your features into crisp business messages for your client conversations. Drop by, bring a pen, and get ready to draft your next sales call.
Sales Coach and Consultant. I took what I learned in 25 years of selling telcom gear and now work with growing tech companies to build an impactful sales strategy. Goals: shorten sales cycles and build meaningful relationships with higher-ups.
Monday August 17, 2026 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT StartingBlock Madison821 E Washington Ave 2nd floor, Madison, WI 53703, USA
Join us as we kickoff the 2026 Forward Festival with a free pint of the latest Forward Festive-Ale at Delta Beer Lab! A free SupraNet + John Kovalic pint glass and a pint of Festive-Ale will be provided for the first 75 attendees, hosted by SupraNet Communications!
First In Breakfast is a gathering designed to bring together founders, investors, and operators from across the Midwest startup ecosystem. The event is intentionally structured to maintain a strong mix of builders and capital providers, creating an environment where meaningful conversations and real relationships can take shape. The format includes a short, insight-driven discussion followed by open networking.
Madison’s startup ecosystem operates under intense pressure to: • Accelerate timelines to market • Deliver strong financial returns • Compete for capital in a demanding investment environment
However, herein lies the problem: Financial results are not delivered through physical effort alone. More hours, more hustle and more pressure often produce exhaustion not outcomes.
Because money doesn’t just follow effort. Money follows energy.
And without disciplined financial systems, even high momentum turns into waste.
The entrepreneurs who apply both the Laws of Energy and financial discipline will outperform the market. This event will guide them to that competitive advantage by introducing a new operating model for founders and growth leaders navigating today’s reality:
A Dual Engine for Modern Growth • Applying the Laws of Energy → Drives productivity, momentum, and speed without burnout • Applying Financial Discipline → Drives measurable returns, capital efficiency, and investor confidence
Presented by MJ Reiners, Founder of Summerland Education and Victoria Thayer, Founder of Novii CPA, this session bridges the gap between: • Why growth is slower than expected • Why hard work does not create burnout and what does • And how to accelerate both execution speed and financial performance
A practical workshop for Wisconsin founders deciding whether government sales can become a real growth channel — and which path to pursue first.
Agenda: The Wisconsin Opportunity Map What Wisconsin companies already sell to the government, including defense manufacturing, food/ag, healthcare, logistics, construction, technology, and professional services.
The Founder Decision Tree Should you pursue direct federal contracts, subcontracting, prime-supplier channels, SBIR/STTR, state/local contracts or hold on government contracting for now? Government Revenue Fit Canvas
A hands-on exercise to map your customer, end user, buyer, funding source, channel partner, compliance gaps, and next test.
The Readiness Check What you need before pursuing this channel: customer fit, delivery capacity, compliance, registrations, certifications, working capital, insurance, cybersecurity, and sales-cycle tolerance.
How Deals Actually Happen A candid conversation with a founder/operator, prime or supply-chain buyer, procurement expert, and capital provider.
90-Day Action Plan Each founder identifies one target customer segment, one likely entry path, three next steps, and one thing not to waste time on yet.
Cloud Native Madison presents the AI & Open Source Mixer!
Following a massive Agentic AI Summer, we’re heading to The Rigby Pub for a night of technical networking focused on the real-world side of innovation. Talk shop with experts from Red Hat, Solo.io, and more while enjoying complimentary food and refreshments, plus a drink ticket to get you started. We’re also giving away a $999 Ardan Labs Mastery Bundle (Go, Rust, and K8s) to one lucky builder. If you’re building, engineering, or interested in experimenting, come hang out, meet the community, and become part of an ever-growing local ecosystem.
About the Community Cloud Native Madison is the official Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) chapter for Madison, WI, fostering collaboration, innovation, and community growth in cloud-native technologies. CNCF projects are the foundation of cloud native computing. As part of the Linux Foundation, we provide support, oversight and direction for fast-growing, cloud native projects, including Kubernetes, vLLm, kServe, Kubeflow, kagent, and more.
Find our LinkedIn, CNCF Page, and more on our Linktree.
Ryan Etten builds cloud-native systems and rebuilds the communities that run them. A Senior Architect and Team Lead at Red Hat, Red Hat Certified OpenShift Architect, global speaker, and certification exam developer, he leads secure cloud-native digital transformations across the... Read More →
Join other founders, investors, and innovators in the Wisconsin ecosystem for breakfast with Hyde Park Venture Partners, a Chicago-based early stage venture capital firm who invests in midwest-based companies, for a community event focused on helping companies raise their first or second round of institutional venture capital.
Know someone who would be interested in joining? Feel free to share this invite!
Ever had a product idea but didn’t know how to begin building it?
This live, interactive session is for startup founders, creatives, makers, and curious people who want to explore physical prototyping without needing deep technical experience or a big budget.
Building on last year’s event, we’ll start with a basic introduction to AI-assisted hardware prototyping, then move into group ideation, whiteboard brainstorming, and a vote on which idea to pursue. From there, we’ll use tools like ChatGPT or Claude to help plan the prototype, choose affordable off-the-shelf parts, figure out how to connect them, generate code, troubleshoot, iterate, and test the result live on real hardware.
I’ll be bringing a variety of sensors, electronic components, microcontrollers, displays, motors, lights, and other parts so we can build and adapt on the fly instead of just talking about the idea. Think of the microcontroller as the “brain” of the prototype, with sensors as the inputs and lights, motors, displays, or other parts as the outputs.
This is not a polished engineering lecture. It is a live prototype build where the group helps shape the direction. Some things may work right away. Others may need debugging, rethinking, or a quick pivot. That is part of the process. Attendees will see how an initial idea can move from rough concept, to hardware plan, to wiring, to code, to live testing. The goal is to make hardware prototyping feel approachable, creative, and possible, especially for people who have ideas but do not yet know how to turn them into a working proof of concept.
You’ll walk away with: -A clear example of how AI can help move from idea to prototype -Insight into early proof-of-concept hardware design -A better feel for sensors, boards, wiring, code, and live testing -A look at how messy, iterative prototyping really works -Inspiration to start testing your own ideas with affordable tools and parts
From zero to prototype. Experience it live with AI and real hardware.
In today’s dynamic marketplace, standing out is essential for success. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned business owner, or a creative professional, a branding can be powerful in your organization. Join us for an immersive and interactive workshop designed to equip you with the tools and strategies to build a strong and compelling brand identity.
Led by Ibrahim Harun of IH Concepts with 18 years of experience in branding and marketing, this workshop will delve deep into the core elements of effective branding. Through a combination of an insightful presentations and collaborative discussions, you’ll learn how what goes into a brand so you can hit the ground running.
Whether you’re looking to launch a new venture, bring more life into your business, or simply refine your marketing strategy, this workshop will provide you with the knowledge and insights you need to elevate your business and drive meaningful connections with your audience. Don’t miss this opportunity to take your business to new heights!
How did the long and twisted path of one man lead to a new product and business? By combining little bits of information and experience from each of his stops into something new and powerful. Have you ever asked yourself the "How did I get here" and "How will I ever use that chapter" questions? Come hear how it has come together for one and be encouraged that "it" is coming together for you as well!
I have designed a Cooling garment that outperforms all of the commercially available Cooling products currently available. Based on the technology used in hospitals and the military i have brought definitive care Cooling to the job site, sideline and community center.
This dual-track workshop is designed to help attendees build a business that sustains them rather than breaks them.
Hollie H. Hollister and Ross Larson will co-facilitate this community learning exchange by bridging insights from Psychological Resilience and Heart-Centered Leadership.
Solo founders and small business owners will learn how to scale their impact without the soul fatigue of misaligned growth.
Hollie H. Hollister is a pragmatic visionary who aspires to combine the personal with the professional to bring fresh thinking, unique insights and holistic solutions that help heart-based small business owners grow their businesses and themselves (all without stifling who they are... Read More →
Wednesday August 19, 2026 4:30pm - 7:30pm CDT 100state17 South Fairchild Street fl 7, Madison, WI, USA
Come enjoy a beautiful Wisconsin evening and engage in lively conversation about the Money for Minnows investment strategy and the future of venture capital in Wisconsin.
Join us at the Jazz at Five performance on the King Street Walkway of the Capitol Square, where Venture capital fund managers from eight Wisconsin-based funds will be in attendance. the Jazz at Five performance. The Badger Fund of Funds is sponsoring the event and will provide free pizza and beer for attendees.
Technical expertise gets you in the room. How you show up determines what happens next.
In this interactive session, consultants will examine the attitudes, assumptions, and habits they bring into client and colleague relationships, and how those choices shape trust, collaboration, and results. Through meaningful dialogue with peers, you’ll uncover blind spots that may be limiting connection or effectiveness in your work.
You’ll leave with practical tools and simple mindset shifts you can apply immediately to improve communication, foster more inclusive relationships, and create better outcomes for your clients and your business. Because in today’s marketplace, how you work with people is just as critical as what you deliver.
Owner | Cultural Engagement Specialist, Yes...And LLC
Kim Walters is the Owner and Cultural Engagement Specialist of Yes...And LLC, a boutique consulting firm that helps organizations build cultures of respect and belonging through leadership development and self-awareness. She partners with leaders and teams to strengthen communication... Read More →
In this interactive panel and workshop, Araceli Esparza and Aida Leflore are joined by graduates of the Voices & Dreams Academy to share how storytelling translates into real-world outcomes—from building confidence to generating income, clients, and community impact.
Participants will hear directly from Latina and Black women founders who have used storytelling as a tool for outreach, brand-building, and economic mobility. Then, through guided reflection and small-group activities, attendees will begin applying these strategies to their own work.
This session is designed for founders, creatives, and community leaders who want to build authentic outreach strategies that go beyond visibility and create lasting trust.
Join us for a special Cup of Joe conversation featuring Oscar Aguilar, founder of Novel Minds, a Wisconsin-based technology consulting firm focused on innovation, strategic leadership, and custom technology solutions. Oscar will share his entrepreneurial journey—from building a business around problem-solving and technology to helping organizations turn ideas into action. We'll explore the challenges, lessons learned, pivotal decisions, and opportunities that have shaped his path. As always, Cup of Joe is an authentic conversation between entrepreneurs—no presentations, no scripts, just real stories from the trenches.
As a woman with over 10 years of experience in the highly male-dominated engineering world, I wish to share insights that have helped me stay. This field is, at times, unwelcoming or even outright hostile. A key to my success has been developing business acumen, sometimes learned through entrepreneurial events including Forward Fest! Key topics:
• Why gender bias is so sticky in fields like engineering and law, and why we can't expect to solve this problem with more pipeline
• How to get past broken rungs in the corporate ladder by thinking of yourself as if you were a one-person business
• Develop your personal brand to bounce back from setbacks such as non-inclusive workspaces, gatekeepers, or reframe inappropriate attention.
The Becoming Experience is an interactive workshop and networking experience designed for entrepreneurs, creatives, and purpose-driven individuals ready to transform their story into impact.
Hosted by entrepreneur, speaker, and founder Tennisha Loggins, this experience blends authentic storytelling, business strategy, mindset transformation, and practical tools to help attendees move from survival mode into purpose-driven entrepreneurship.
Through guided reflection, interactive activities, networking, and actionable business insights, attendees will explore how healing, identity, and lived experiences can become the foundation for leadership, confidence, community impact, and profitable growth.
This event is ideal for aspiring entrepreneurs, women in business, creatives, side hustlers, and individuals navigating personal or professional reinvention.
Attendees will leave inspired, connected, and equipped with practical next steps to begin building intentionally, confidently, and purposefully.
I'm Tennisha Loggins, Founder & CEO of Loggins Family Business LLC, an entrepreneur, speaker, and storyteller. I help people turn ideas into income and purpose into action. Let's connect if you want to talk about entrepreneurship, food trucks, pop-ups, small business growth, coaching... Read More →
Thursday August 20, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm CDT Leflore Accounting Services306 E Wilson St #2e, Madison, WI 53703, USA
Today’s workforce is more diverse than ever before, with six generations working side by side, each bringing unique perspectives, experiences, and relationships with technology. While this diversity creates incredible opportunities for innovation and growth, it also introduces real challenges, especially when organizations are implementing new tools, systems, or digital strategies.
Bridging Generations at Work is a dynamic, beginner-friendly session designed to help leaders, entrepreneurs, and professionals successfully navigate generational differences while driving meaningful progress through technology. This session will explore how communication styles, expectations, and comfort with technology vary across generations, and how these differences can either hinder or accelerate success.
Attendees will gain practical strategies for leading multigenerational teams, fostering collaboration, and implementing technology initiatives in a way that brings people together rather than creating friction. We’ll also explore the power of mentorship (including reverse mentorship), inclusive leadership, and cross-generational collaboration as key drivers of innovation.
Whether you're leading a startup, scaling a business, or managing a growing team, this session will equip you with actionable tools to strengthen your workforce, improve adoption of new ideas, and unlock the full potential of your team.
Agentic AI UW is a new club founded just this April. The purpose of the club is that there's a missing opportunity on campus. There are a lot of engineering clubs on campus that focuses on a single project where a team of engineers work together. However, UW-Madison lacks that kind of project-based clubs for CS students. We're at a turning point in history where three things converge into one, the massive amount of GPUs for compute, the massive amount of image/text data on the internet, and the innovational Transformer architecture. With the help of the Large Language Model (LLM) and Vision Language Model (VLM), the possibilities of AI becomes tremendous. AI agents is able to use tools inside your browser and inside your OS to help you complete the most boring/redundant tasks. Come here to learn about how Agentic AI is catalyzing in UW-Madison and what this club has done over the summer and is planning to do starting in the Fall.
The venture capital landscape is being reshaped by digital assets, tokenized equity, and an evolving regulatory environment — and Wisconsin's entrepreneurial ecosystem needs to be part that conversation. Future of VC: Digital Assets & Policy is a forward-looking forum bringing together founders, investors, and policy advocates to explore how emerging digital asset frameworks are transforming capital formation, fundraising strategy, and startup growth.
Attendees will hear from practitioners at the intersection of venture capital and blockchain policy — examining how legislation like federal stablecoin bills, SEC guidance, and state-level digital asset law affect the way startups raise and deploy capital. Whether you're a founder navigating your first raise, an investor evaluating on-chain opportunities, or a policy stakeholder shaping Wisconsin's innovation landscape, this event delivers the intelligence and connections you need to stay ahead.
Hosted by Awen, Wisconsin Blockchain Business Council
Ambitious founders have gone through the Level Up! Pre-seed Accelerator at a WiSys VentureHome location across Wisconsin. Whether you are an investor, a founder, or someone interested in entrepreneurship, this pitch day will provide a sneak peek at Wisconsin's emerging tech startups. The pitches will each be 6 minutes, followed by 4 minutes of questions from the audience. The event will be fast-paced, captivating, and open to anyone who would like to attend.
Join SupraNet Communications and Yahara Software for the 25th anniversary of High Tech Happy Hour! Raise a glass, network and help us celebrate 25 years of connecting the Greater Madison community!
Hosted by SupraNet Communications, Inc. and Yahara Software
As entrepreneurs, you work to build a better world. Forward thinkers and innovators have always been a key to social change and community well-being. Join one of Madison’s top rising philanthropists, Dan Rashke, Chairman of the Board at TASC, to discuss innovative philanthropy. He will joined by a fellow philanthropist and financial advisor.
This interactive session is led through the framework of the Dan & Patti Rashke (TASC) Family Foundation 10-year matching gift to United Way of Dane County, a first-of-its-kind gift that is structured to elevate the nonprofit sector and leverages giving on all levels across the community. This $10-$15 million commitment is not where Dan’s philanthropy started. It’s the culmination of a commitment to philanthropy and social change that is decades in the making. You’ll leave with concrete strategies to build a roadmap for designing and achieving your own ambitious philanthropic goals. This will include diverse strategies for giving, examples of innovative investments, and some tangible tips to identify which causes align with your passion.
AI can help you generate an application faster than ever. But once the demo works, what comes next?
Join Flexion, a Madison leader in system modernization, human-centered design, and modern software delivery, for a live, interactive session where we take an AI-generated proof-of-concept application and move it closer to something real.
In this hands-on session, we’ll start by exploring the AI-generated starting point: a user-submitted product idea and the proof-of-concept app created from it. Flexion’s engineers, designers, product experts, and attendees will work together to look at what the app already does well, where it falls short, and what it would need in order to become a real product. Along the way, we’ll evaluate the prototype through the lenses of usability, architecture, code quality, security, scalability, and delivery readiness.
From there, we’ll improve the product together. We'll collaborate to refine the user experience, prioritize the most valuable enhancements, and move the app beyond demo-quality functionality. Using AI-assisted development alongside proven engineering practices, the group will iterate on the product live.
Finally, we’ll focus on building for quality and scale. The team will strengthen the application’s architecture, refactor and improve the codebase, and apply practices from agile delivery, Lean UX, ensemble collaboration, and cloud-first development to move the prototype closer to a production-ready solution.
While we should all strive to retain the skills and attributes that characterize us as being authentically human, it is easy to surrender control to technology that makes our lives easier-- but at what cost? Join two experts in artificial intelligence (AI) and psychology as they lead a presentation through conversation, games, and team activities that explores our reliance on technical automation and AI. We'll identify the possible pitfalls that we may stumble into which arise from an over-reliance on the technology. Ultimately, we will introduce a process that one can use to identify when to use artificial intelligence and when to rely on our own native intelligence. This event is suited for anyone who may have roles in the creation of products and services, analysts and technicians, management, medicine, and education.
Time: 1000-1230p
Location: Goodman South Campus, Madison College 2429 Perry Street Madison, WI 53713
You have the big idea, the technical expertise or know-how, and a product or service you believe in and excites you. But if you feel like you haven’t unlocked the same level of excitement and awareness from potential buyers, you’re not alone. Understanding how you can apply principles of marketing strategy in your business could be the missing puzzle piece to fuel the next level of your company’s growth. During this session, you’ll get an actionable crash course in marketing strategy, including understanding what a “market” is and how to define your target audience and create personas, how to conduct a competitor analysis and define your differentiators in order to develop your unique positioning, and more. After the session, you’ll be able to apply marketing strategy principles to connect more often and more authentically with your right-fit potential buyers.
As angels apply more rigorous diligence standards to pre-seed and seed deals, conviction is arriving later in the cycle. The issue is that the very signals investors wait for, revenue, growth rate, retention, are the same signals that attract institutional capital and reprice the round. By the time they appear, much of the upside has already been compressed, leaving angels with institutional-style pricing on early-stage risk.
This panel argues that entry timing is the most underappreciated driver of angel returns. When traction becomes the primary filter, angel investing quietly shifts into a different asset class, with mismatched risk and return.
We will explore:
Why entry timing may matter more than signal density in early-stage portfolio construction How evolving diligence norms may be pushing angels into late-seed economics with early-stage risk What pre-traction conviction actually looks like in practice and how experienced investors form it How founders with high potential are interpreted before traditional metrics exist and what that means for access to capital
A practitioner-led discussion on timing, access, and whether current angel investing standards still align with the return profile they are meant to achieve.
Wrap up an incredible week of innovation, connection, and community at the Forward Fest Closing Happy Hour hosted by 100State.
After five days of events, ideas, and new relationships, this closing gathering brings together founders, builders, and supporters from across the ecosystem for a final opportunity to connect, reflect, and celebrate everything that makes Wisconsin’s startup community special.
Join us for a relaxed and welcoming environment where you can:
* Reconnect with people you met throughout the week * Share key takeaways and next steps * Strengthen relationships and spark future collaborations * Close out Forward Fest on a high note
Whether you attended one event or ten, this is your chance to be part of the collective energy that defines Forward Fest.
