Summit Time

On Building the Inaugural Midwest House Summit in 2025

Yesterday morning I had to present a proposal to our local “SmartZone” (it’s a Michigan thing) about future plans for founder trips, SXSW, and the Midwest House Summit later this year. As generally happens with these things, the conversation quickly turned to ROI and what value these touchy-feely plans were going to bring to the region.

I think about value and impact a lot. In the case of yesterday, James Mikrut, founder of Payload CMS, happened to be in the room to tell the board that he never would have applied to Y Combinator if he hadn’t gone to Midwest House in 2022. Payload was acquired by Figma earlier this year, so, yeah, we had a pretty good “value provided” argument. Can you build an event that guarantees James will get convinced to apply for YC? Probably not. Can you intentionally design an environment where creative and innovative people can inspire each other?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Midwest House Summit 2025 (pre-sale tickets for Substack readers are available HERE).

Date: December 3–4, 2025
Location: Bamboo Grand Rapids, 2 Fulton St W, Grand Rapids, MI
Tickets: MIDWEST HOUSE SUMMIT 2025 - TICKETS · Luma (Pre-Sale for Substack Readers open now until Sunday 8/17. Early Bird tickets for the General Public open 8/18.)
Hotel Info: Coming Soon (hold tight, y’all) Parntership Contact: partners@midwesthouse.org

After 10 years of bringing the Midwest to the world in Austin, TX. Midwest House is bringing the inspiration home. We are going to be very intentionally going to make it as easy as possible for our community to attend (think buses from Detroit, Ann Arbor, Chicago etc;think hotel discounts), and we are going to be very intentional about connections (think speakers who’re looking to partner in the region; think curated tables for 10 at restaurants all over GR).

We’re scratching our own itch here and designing the Summit that we’d want to go to. Think big ideas that show off the best of the Midwest. Think groundbreaking innovators who want to impact our communities. Think two days that you’ll be talking about all winter long.

Speaker announcements will start dropping next week. Partners from 5 different states have already signed on. It’s going to be a good one, y’all.

Grab your tickets while you can (and while they’re cheap): https://lu.ma/event/manage/evt-l8a3r67VFIEBBsc/guests