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Inspiring Growth for Made in Minnesota Software

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Vidgrid

Vidgrid Q&A

MESA sat down with Nick Stokman, CEO of Vidgrid (formerly Ilos), to ask him about his experience working with MESA.

Tell us a bit about your background, your career history, and your business. What prompted you to get involved with MESA?
I am an entrepreneur from an early age and, by end of high school, had a lawn service business with 30 accounts generating about $20K each summer. In college, I majored in accounting to “learn numbers” but, in taking my first job out of college, found corporate America un-satisfying and wanted to go the entrepreneur route. I had the idea for Ilos when in college and made the move to get Ilos going on a full-time basis. Ilos is a software platform for businesses to seamlessly record, share, and store videos and is growing rapidly. Icontacted MESA on the recommendation of Harold Slavik of New Counsel. Harold stated that “MESA is the one true mentoring program in the Midwest” for software startups.

What was your biggest business challenge before working with MESA? Has MESA been able to help you work through it, and if not, what happened instead?
The biggest challenges were to figure out what market to go after first and to accurately identify key roadblocks to address to grow revenue. MESA has brought discipline to the Ilos planning effort. MESA has also introduced Ilos to and insisted on the use of “best practice” marketing techniques especially towards growing upper funnel leads.

What, specifically, is your favorite part about working with MESA, and why?
MESA is fully dedicated to mentoring and nothing else. Different than others, MESA pays more attention to a company’s operating details and follows up.

If you were going to recommend MESA to a colleague, what would you say?
MESA is dedicated to your success. Recognize that getting mentored is time consuming so get the most of it. MESA creates dialogues with its mentees that makes the relationship feel 2-way.

What three words would you use to describe your experience with MESA?
Dedicated. Generous. Experienced.

Anything else you want us to know about your experience with MESA?
MESA’s dedication is awesome!

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Recent News

VidGrid, a MESA Group Graduate, Acquired by Paylocity

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Testimonials

  • The MESA mentors are one of the most trusted advisors a founder CEO can have. MESA brings both trust and clarity to help a founder address challenges and determine what actions are best.
    Chad HalvorsonCEO, When I Work
  • MESA provides a unique perspective that we don’t get elsewhere. We have experience doing product development but not in operating and running a business. Our MESA mentors provide us with the operational guidance we need.
    Matt RongeCEO, Astro HQ
  • Our MESA mentors were able to articulate proven strategies that we implemented to improve internal alignment. Very quickly the team was more in sync as the new strategies allowed us to have a clear line of sight to where we needed to go.
    Sameer KumarCEO, HabitAware

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VidGrid, a MESA Group Graduate, Acquired by Paylocity

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BuildTools, a MESA Graduate, announces it will be acquired by ECI Software Solutions

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