“The closest a human can be to a deep thinking a.i Garrick has been helpful in all of my businesses. His secret sauce is listening better than most and has proven repeatedly to avoid answering the wrong questions, but instead to frame a better question and hence ALWAYS be giving the best advice. I write this recommendation so others can more easily trust the wisdom in his approach to business obstacles. His speciality is getting pricing right in the context of the received value of the right target customer. If you aren’t sure if you are charging enough, or charging in a less well aligned manner today, may Garrick be your first call for tomorrow!”
garrick van buren
Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
3K followers
500+ connections
3K followers
500+ connections
About
Most SaaS founders built their pricing once, when they first launched. Then their market…
Services
Experience
Education
Licenses & Certifications
Volunteer Experience
-
Energy/Water/CleanTech Judge
Minnesota Cup
- less than a year
Science and Technology
• Conducted multiple rounds of startup evaluation
• Collaborated with fellow category judges on startup advancement -
Mentor
Techstars
- 3 years
Provide mentorship to founders in Future of Food, Minnesota Twins, Columbus, Alabama programs focused on B2B, customer discovery, go to market, pricing, and founder work/life balance.
-
Strategic Advisor, Presenter, Startup mentor
ILT Academy
- 2 years 1 month
Mentored multiple start-up founders 1:1 through ILT's Introductory and Advanced programs.
• Presented group and individual training on; executing early customer interviews, determining pricing, articulating value propositions, defining low cost experiments.
• Advised ILT leadership on curriculum recommendations based on cohort-wide progress during program. -
Mentor
US Agtech Canadian Technology Accelerator
- 1 year 5 months
Mentored Canadian agtech startups as they increase their presence in the US, focused on defining value propositions, customer discovery, and pricing.
-
Presenter and Mentor
BETA
- 1 year 9 months
Present to entrepreneur cohorts on early stage customer discovery, problem definition, and go to market strategies.
-
Judge: National + Mead, Grader
Beer Judge Certification Program
- Present 13 years 11 months
Arts and Culture
• Judged 50+ homebrew competitions
• Organized judge training for beer and mead exams
• Proctored beer tasting exams
• Graded 36+ written and tasting exam sets -
Technology Chair
St. Anthony Villagefest
- 10 years
Arts and Culture
• Managed and coordinated web presence including implementing ecommerce for event registrations, sponsorships, and donations
• Implemented credit card processing online and in-person
• Shifted organization to Google Workspaces for Nonprofits for collaboration and document storage.
Publications
-
Rebuilding Blocks: Garrick van Buren’s Success Story
Experience Life
See publicationMagazine-length version of my book, 'Rebuilding Blocks'
-
Rebuilding Blocks: How the Game of Kubb Put My Life Back Together
Working Pathways
See publicationA burnt-out small business owner and father is introduced to the traditional Swedish lawn game of kubb. His training for the highly competitive US kubb tournaments becomes a catalyst for his personal growth and recovery.
Projects
-
For Starters
Email newsletter focused on techniques and approaches to define and capture customer value, without over-investing in product. "Getting to customer value before we get too much further"
-
DÉJÀ BRÜ - The Homebrew Competition for Lost and Forgotten Beer Styles
Homebrew competition focused on lost, forgotten, and historic beer styles
-
Planet Kubb
The best place for Kubb news, tournament games, scoresheets, and answers to all your kubb questions
Other creators -
-
Nature Scale
-
A marketing and discovery platform for common sense, nature-based, climate solutions providers providing real, measurable on-farm impact.
Other creators -
-
Typerighter.com
-
See projectConceptualized and launched Typerighter as a quiet, fast, responsive, browser-based, writing environment. It's been called - "the perfect web based writing tool".
-
Kernest
-
See projectConceived, built, and launched one of the first two commercial web font services in 2009, alongside the VC-backed Typekit. Delivered font pairing, subsetting, and on-demand CSS delivery before commercial licensing frameworks existed. Open-sourced the underlying serving engine (Fontue) in 2010. Wound down after Google Fonts' launch and Adobe's acquisition of Typekit structurally compressed the market. Cited in five published books on web typography.
-
First Crack Podcast
-
- One of the first podcasts produced in Minnesota.
- Hosted and produced 127 episodes of interviews with business leaders, technologists, and musicians around Minnesota and around the United States. -
Fontconf
-
Organizer, The Typography Unconference
-
AM950 Quick on the Uptake - Technology contributor
-
Each week, I researched and prepared a 10-minute cutting-edge technology news segment for 'Quick on the UpTake' on AM950. Segments included; reviews of the newest mobile devices, comparison of subscription sock services, the Minnesota Historical Society's efforts to digitize legislative records, and the FCC's national broadband plan.
-
Cullect.com
-
Conceptualized and built a collaborative, RSS feed reader focused on delivering relevant and interesting items - rather than timely. Then extracted the engine to form the basis for MinnPost's RealTimeAds social advertising platform.
-
Exhibit A
-
Design competition highlighting the business value and business outcomes of good design
Recommendations received
26 people have recommended garrick
Join now to viewOther similar profiles
Explore more posts
-
Jennifer Darmour
Design is evolving fast. We’re no longer just shipping artifacts, rather, we’re shaping intelligent systems that learn, adapt, and co-create with us. This next era asks more of us: more judgment, orchestration, contextual intelligence, and the ability to guide systems that won’t stay static. Our work now is to design conditions for emergence and to keep humanity in the loop. Here’s my take on what’s ahead: https://lnkd.in/gjbey3nZ #designexcellence #designleadership #humancentereddesign #designingwithAI #enterprisedesign
6 Comments -
Artemi Vaarakallio
infinite canvas as the future interface for AI workflows. this is exactly what we're solving for product design teams at siltai.app. product teams waste countless hours rebuilding context because decisions are scattered across Docs, Slack, and Notion. nobody knows why decisions were made. siltai.app pulls everything into one canvas. use templates from the gallery (JTBD, Double Diamond) or save your own workflows. we're designing the boundary architecture between human collaboration and AI - one place where product context lives, both humans and AI can read it. your team stays aligned. new members onboard instantly. full reasoning trail for every decision.
1 Comment
Explore top content on LinkedIn
Find curated posts and insights for relevant topics all in one place.
View top content