One of the most challenging things to do as a startup, entrepreneur, or any leader looking to manifest a vision or outcome in software, is finding a trusted partner with whom to turn that vision in to reality. MentorMate, a mobile, application & web software development company in Minneapolis, does this sort of work all the time and might be a firm you’ve never heard of before!
CEO Björn Stansvik and I grabbed lunch last week to discuss his company, their approach, some of the things they do and where they’re headed. To say they’re accomplished is an understatement (the firm is on the State of MN approved vendor list; they’re delivering numerous mobile apps and focusing on cell phone application development; and even creating translation apps) Stansvik himself has quite a list of accomplishments himself.
Björn Stansvik, CEO
Deciding to come to this country as a tourist many years ago, he was focused on getting a work visa and staying in this land of opportunity. He ended up finding a company for whom he wrote an 80+ page market analysis of opportunities for their product in another country and politely inserted himself in to their company by asking for a computer and desk. They declined, but he appeared anyway and worked for free for two weeks. They sponsored and hired him.
The way he tells the story you can see how this is a man who becomes totally focused and consumed with a goal, achieves it, and goes on to the next one. Quite impressive but the proof is always in the deliverable for a company in this space, right? Let’s take a look at two that are public and visible.
One of MentorMate’s “paying forward” products is called SpyderMate. This search engine optimization (SEO) tool is free (registration required) and crawls your site. I did ours and was surprised to learn that our Google pagerank is “3” for our categories and it linked to several competitors.
SEO seems like a black art and one that assumes you’re willing to hand over your soul to the devil in exchange for meaningful data and guidance. While most of us are self-taught in this arena—and tools abound to ‘help’ us get better at it—it’s a beautiful thing to start with a free tool and migrate up from there.
Take a peek at this presentation (PDF) that contains some solid information about SEO and the reasons behind the creation of this tool.
The other paying it forward offering that caught my eye is MigraineMate, a free iPhone application for tracking and managing migraine headaches (iTunes link). If you haven’t suffered from migraines or know someone who has, then you should know that changes in weather and barometric pressure is quite often a trigger for these headaches to occur. Nearly 12 million people will experience these debilitating migraines on an almost daily basis and this app can help them prepare for migraine onset, track its onset and course, and thus work with their caregivers to create strategies and tactics to mitigate their effects.
Some screenshots of MigraineMate, an iPhone application for migraine sufferers
It’s good to see this kind of giveaway strategy since MentorMate should be on my radar screen (and yours) more so than it is. As I read through several case studies on their website one theme stood out: companies “discovered” MentorMate through a Google search or at an event. While this is a positive for their own use of SEO and a willingness to network, I always wonder why companies and people of high intrinsic value are too often flying below the radar of those of us who could utilize their services and why MentorMate (and Stansvik) didn’t register on my metaphorical radar.
With work that encompasses multiple visions turned in to software—from Living Tradeshow to an employee tracking iPhone app called LocationMate, to MobileInspector, a Minnesota Dept of Health & Human Services mobile application to collect data on the 24,500 services providers in our state—I’m certain that you’ll be hearing a lot more about this company going forward and Stansvik’s reaching out to Minnov8 is one such example that he has a clear, overt strategy to get the word out on their accomplishments.
Stansvik is an avid conservationist (and quite interested in green technologies) and a lover of kayaking. So much so that he’s about to embark on a trip for which he’s been training for over a year: the Yukon 1000, a canoe and kayaking journey up the Yukon river for 1,000 miles (I get sore just thinking about it!). But it’s this sort of laser focus on achievement that makes me suspect he’ll be highly successful in making us all aware that there is a firm right here that can turn our vision for a product or service in to software.