On U Campus, "Bridging for Growth" Event Links Nordic Tech Companies, State of Minnesota
If a foreign tech company wants to establish a business center in Minnesota, how does that happen? And is Minnesota the right place for foreign companies to land?
Eric Butterwick, a 3M employee and TLI alumnus (MOT ‘23) organized a meeting on campus last month – called “Bridging for Growth” – to answer that very question. Entrepreneurs from Estonia and Finland met at McNamara Alumni Center with officials from TLI, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), MNDOT, clean tech entrepreneurs Grid Catalyst and Minnesota-based Norway House to discuss how foreign engineering and technology companies can do business in our state.
Speakers took turns presenting what their organizations could offer. As it turns out, Minnesota is a pretty friendly place for foreign entrepreneurs, especially ones from Nordic countries, which are culturally similar to the Upper Midwest.
Butterwick says he became involved with the Nordic business community because of his TLI connections. During his final year in the program, he and his classmates toured two European nations to learn about the business climate abroad.
“We went over to Estonia for six days, and to Finland for four, and we were meeting with companies in the morning and companies in the afternoon, and it was a wonderful experience,” said Butterwick.”
“On the last day in Tallinn, Estonia, we sat in on a four-person panel. One of the women on the panel said that she works for a start-up, scale-up incubator type program within Estonia, Bridging for Growth, and they were looking for mentors. I thought it would be cool to get involved with them. I've got a pretty strong background in marketing and sales alignment. I've deployed that approach framework to a couple different companies, including 3M where I've worked.
“I was accepted in the summer of 2023 to this mentorship program, and I've been working with six different companies in the Nordic region – and by the way, they include Estonia and Latvia in that category. The Estonian culture, in particular, is quite similar to that of what we traditionally call Nordic countries.”
It was the representative of a Finnish company, TT Gaskets, who spoke first to the gathering at McNamara. The company was founded during WWII to meet the maintenance needs of Russian military vehicles. While TT Gaskets is well-established in Europe, it’s hoping to move into the lucrative U.S. market.
This was followed by the founders of a much newer company, 10Lines, founded only six years ago in Estonia. 10Lines builds robots for the paving and striping industry. “Paving and striping” in the private sector refers to painting parking spaces for corporate clients.
The 10Lines reps explained that while the demand is great for this kind of work, scaling up such companies is difficult, because it requires small, mobile crews that don’t spend much time at a single location. The work is labor-intensive and turnover is a constant problem. 10Lines cuts back the time required by providing robots to do the painting. A single robot can cut down the monotonous painting work by days, leaving planning and setup the human component of the work.
The car-friendly U.S., they said, is a enviable market for the company, with an estimated 800,000,000 parking spaces nationwide. They currently have five robots in the U.S. now, with more planned in the next year.
Nate Long, a regional trade specialist with the Minnesota Trade Office, described his shop as the state’s international business consultants, who provide resources at no cost to foreign entities interested in doing business here.
He spoke about Minnesota’s enviable business climate to the visiting entrepreneurs, noting that the high quality of life, the large number of successful businesses, the world-class infrastructure and educated populace make it an attractive place to set up shop.
“We’re a state of tinkerers, and we like to share those products with the world,” Long told the foreign visitors. “We’re home to 17 Fortune 500s. We’ve got a great mix here of really big corporations, small startups, and everything in between. We punch a little above our weight in terms of corporate entities.”
“We’re home to advanced manufacturing, the sciences, clean technology, agriculture and iron mining,” he aid.
He described Minnesota as having a robust infrastructure (including the port of Duluth, the furthest inland freshwater port in the United States) and a regulatory structure that makes opening a Minnesota office a quick and easy process. He also described Minnesota to the foreign visitors as a “relationship-based culture”, as opposed to the more transactional way of doing business on the coasts. “If you’re in New York,” he said, “you might get five minutes to make a pitch and want to have a deal closed. Minnesotans want to sit down and have a cup of coffee and a couple of meetings and get to know you, and that can lengthen the process. But I think it speaks to why we have a really good business retention rate here.
The representative from Norway House described their organization as a nationwide “network of networks”, providing advice and support for Nordic businesses interested in finding a foothold in the U.S. marketplace.
After the tour of Minnesota, the Nordic entrepreneurs moved on to Chicago for a similar discussion with representatives there. Butterwick was at the Chicago presentations, but said the business leaders were more impressed with the reception they got in Minnesota.
“They told me they were really blown away by the way Minnesota officials had rolled out the red carpet for them.”
TLI faculty member Randall Ross, one of the attendees, called the Twin Cities event a success.
"Eric's ability to bring these companies in the door is a great example of the powerful networking opportunities that students acquire through the TLI program," said Ross. "His experience benefits not just himself and the Nordic companies he's made contact with, but our university partners and the state of Minnesota as a whole.”