SG Madison hosting Mark Bakken - ranked Inc. Mags 46th fastest growing US company in 2014

Startup Grind Madison will host Mark Bakken, founder of Nordic Consulting, on March 18th at 100State. Bringing his experiences personally working with Eric Schmidt, Bill Gates and Scott McNealy (CEO of Sun) to Madison, Mark has become a leader in Madison’s startup arena. A serial entrepreneur, Mark enjoys creating and growing companies from the ground up and bringing together talented people to solve a problem in new ways.

In 2001 his first company, Goliath Networks, was named by Inc Magazine as the fastest growing company in Wisconsin over a five year period. They were recognized by Microsoft, Novell and Sun as their largest partner in the Midwest. His second company, Bedrock, was started in 2004 and grew quickly with the help of Microsoft to become the defecto standard for how to package and deliver managed services to Microsoft customers.

After selling Bedrock in 2008, he decided to focus on what IT can do for healthcare. Recognizing the explosive growth of that industry, and with Epic Systems in nearby Verona, Mark launched Nordic Consulting in 2010. Currently, Nordic is the largest Epic-only consulting firm in the country and has been ranked #1 in KLAS for Epic Staffing and consulting since 2012.

Recently in 2014, Nordic was also ranked by Inc Magazine as the 46th fastest growing company in the country. Mark prides himself on helping organizations across 40+ states deliver safer healthcare while driving down unnecessary costs.

Now that Mark has seen the mountain top, he works hard to help other entrepreneurs get there too. Last month Mark started HealthX Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests in startup and early stage Healthcare IT companies. He brings his wide variety of expertise to help local Madison startups thrive. He’s another great Madisonian helping build our startup ecosystem, come join us!