We start this episode talking about Redbrick Health… a frequent topic on our show and a group we had been thinking would have an “event” of some sort later this or next year. Out of the blue they are acquired by private equity and merged with another group.

Casey walks us through why this is a bummer. It’s not a great exit and he talks about who did well or in this case not well. The one bit of good news is it appears to some extent the Minneapolis office will continue on.

I of course go on to who is next to have a bell ringing moment… seems like this leaves us with Code42 as “next team up” and a few groups down the road including Calabrio.

You will hear why Casey calls Digital River the JCPenney of Minnesota SaaS.

Kathy brings us back to Redbrick and how corporate wellness programs may not be as cool a business as once thought.

We move on to the Gravie funding announcement (note, I am a customer/user) and speculation on who would be interested in buying them.

And the Reeher acquisition that we all agree was a sweet win… a bootstrapped group and a buyer who will continue to grow the team in St Paul.

Good news… I talk about how the recruiting recruiters trend is continuing and how this is a predictor of how the economy is going.

Bad news… the Capital One layoffs and ONE20 “shutdown”.

Casey talks a bit and is real direct about how a CEO should handle bad news or the closing of a company.

We talk about the startup career fair at WeWork.

Kathy made a “mistake” and asked if I had anything else to rant about… I mentioned I had written about Amazon HQ2 => A Bunch Of Thoughts… Minneapolis And Amazon HQ2