Graeme Thickins

TruScribe and Weird Al Yankovic Take a Shot at Corporate America

July 21, 2014 By Graeme Thickins

In a post today in the Wall Street Journal “Speakeasy” blog (which covers media, entertainment, celebrity, and the arts), the latest music video from Weird Al Yankovic — called “Mission Statement” — was featured. It’s hilarious!! Take a look (length is 4:34)… I’ll wait.

What’s cool is that the video has a Minnesota connection. It turns out Yankovic and his longtime coproducer tapped TruScribe to make it — starting some ten months ago. TruScribe is headquartered in Madison WI, but also has an office in downtown St. Paul. (In addition, it maintains international operations through many key European partnerships.) Andrew Herkert, who’s VP of sales and a cofounder, heads the St. Paul office and helped launch the company while a student at the University of St. Thomas about five years ago. TruScribe has grown significantly since then.

An excerpt from the WSJ post:

The song, from Yankovic’s new album “Mandatory Fun,” is in the style of Crosby, Stills & Nash… (it) features Yankovic harmonizing with himself on lyrics constructed of corporate jargon, like “operationalize our strategies” and “leverage our core competencies,” while the animated whiteboard video depicts a live-action hand that is drawing illustrations to go with the words.

“I wanted to do a song about all the ridiculous double-speak and meaningless buzzwords that I’ve been hearing in office environments my entire life,” Yankovic says by email. “I just thought it would be ironic to juxtapose that with the song stylings of CSN, whose music pretty much symbolizes the antithesis of corporate America.”

I laughed out loud at one comment on the post (from a guy named David): “Weird Al hits all the right points. Anyone who has written a press release should hang their heads in shame.”

TruScribe is getting a ton of praise today (including from Al himself), as you can see on its Twitter account.

And here’s a great blog post TruScribe published today, Weird Al is making fun of you! And us, too.

TruScribe’s technology is called “Scribology,” and the company has built an impressive client list.

I had the pleasure of meeting cofounder Andrew Herkert at the most recent University of St. Thomas “Fowler Business Concept Challenge” (a student competition), where we were judges on the same team. Here’s what he had to say about the news today:

“Weird Al is a creative powerhouse, with a decades-long influence on pop culture, and that makes it an honor that we were selected as vendor for his whiteboard-animation project. The TruScribe team is optimistic this is just the beginning of a deeper relationship with the media industry. … I have high praise for Jay Levey of Imaginary Productions for catalyzing the vision for this video. Jay is Al’s business partner and manager/agent/fellow visionary — they’ve worked together for many, many years. In fact, Jay discovered Al some 30 years ago.”

TruScribe is another great example of Minnesota creativity and technology innovation! Okay, Wisconsin claims them as well. We hate to admit it — but, yes, occasionally, cheeseheads can be creative, too… 🙂

NOTE: This post first appeared earlier today on my personal blog, GraemeThickinsOnTech.

Technovation[MN]: Helping Young Women Discover Entrepreneurship

April 19, 2014 By Graeme Thickins

There’s an awesome new organization in Minnesota that’s inspiring middle-school and high-school girls to explore technology or entrepreneurship as a career. And thanks to my membership in CoCo, I had the good fortune recently to meet the cofounder of the Minnesota chapter of this global organization, which is called Technovation. Her name is Shawn Stavseth. The global organization is supported by technology leaders from MIT Media Lab, Google, Twitter, Dropbox, and Andreessen Horowitz.

Shawn recently left a career in marketing for Thomson Reuters and is now devoting some of her (extensive!) energy to this local chapter. At Thomson Reuters, she created and executed a mobile strategy, including adoption of native apps, mobile website, SMS, in-app ads, mobile payment, as well as gaming and ebooks, so this volunteer work is a natural for her. Follow Shawn here on Twitter and follow Technovation[MN] here.

Earlier this year, she and cofounder Matt Johnson began forming the Technovation[MN] chapter to bring the “Global Technovation Challenge” to Minnesota. This initiative is the largest and longest-running global technology competition exclusively for girls, to inspire their pursuit of STEM — science, technology, engineering, and math. For the year 2014, Minnesota will have a total of 18 teams participating in this competition for young women.

Through an intensive three-month, 50-hour curriculum, teams of young women work together to imagine, design, and develop mobile apps, then pitch their startup businesses to investors. Some 1,374 young women from 19 countries have already completed Technovation’s curriculum, thanks to dedicated local volunteers worldwide.

A Focus on Local Community Problems
The 2014 program theme challenges young women to develop an app to solve a real problem in their community. And, because Technovation’s curriculum teaches both technology and entrepreneurship, the program is accessible for beginner computer science students, yet still challenging for advanced students. In 2014, the program will award $20,000 in funding to the winning teams to use for further app development. No prior programming experience is necessary for students, or for teachers. The program is free to all participants.

At the culmination of the Technovation Challenge, Technovation[MN] hosts the “Appapalooza,” where it celebrates and congratulates all Minnesota Technovation Challenge teams on completing the 12-week curriculum, and then submits their work to headquarters. This year’s Appapalooza event will be on April 27 at TIES Education Center in Falcon Heights.

This fall, Technovation[MN] will again be hosting “App Days” to enable teen girls to build mobile apps, and to inspire them to participate in the Technovation Challenge. Since the launch of Technovation[MN], it has hosted three such App Days, during which it’s trained more than 100 teen girls and mentors from all over the Twin Cities area.

More Sponsors, Mentors, and Volunteers Needed!
If you’d like to explore how you could participate as an individual or company — whether at the upcoming event or in general — there are still opportunities for sponsorship  and/or for participating as a mentor or volunteer.

Can’t participate in person? Then please donate here to this very worthwhile community cause!

For the full story on this month’s event, here’s the press release:

Technovation[MN] Appapalooza:
“Tapping into an Aptitude for Apps”
Event For Young Women April 27

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn., April 7, 2014 – Minnesotans are invited to celebrate young women in technology by attending the Technovation[MN] Appapalooza event on Sunday, April 27, 2014 from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. at TIES Training Center, 1667 Snelling Ave. N. in Falcon Heights, MN. This event features young women pitching their mobile app idea as part of the Technovation Challenge, a global technology entrepreneurship program.

Technovation[MN], which is launching the Technovation Challenge in Minnesota, inspires girls in middle and high school to dream up, design, code and pitch mobile phone apps that help their communities. The Technovation Challenge program is designed to attract and encourage the next generation of women technology entrepreneurs.

Twelve teams of girls, ages 10 to 19, from Twin Cities area middle schools and high schools have spent the last three months building their mobile app to compete in the international app building challenge. Each team builds an app that solves a community problem. Teams can choose to build an app for a non-profit or address a teen or womens’ issue.

The Challenge culminates with the April 27 Appapalooza event where participants will “pitch” their apps and unveil their work. Ten teams from the United States and other countries will then be selected to fly to Silicon Valley, CA to present their app ideas to real venture capitalists; the winning team will be awarded $10,000 to help commercialize their app.

“We’re working to close the gender gap in computer science by teaching girls how to code and how to be successful entrepreneurs,” explained Shawn Stavseth, Co-Founder of Technovation[MN]. “Designing mobile apps is real and tangible for these girls because their phones are something they use every day. We want girls to understand the powerful role that technology can play in solving world problems.”

The April 27 Appapalooza is free and open to the public. Donations are welcome. Register to attend the event by visiting http://technovationmn.org.

Redfin Launches in the Twin Cities: A Tech-Powered Real-Estate Brokerage Founded by Software Engineers

February 25, 2014 By Graeme Thickins

Attention anyone buying or selling a home in the Twin Cities metro, or who may be someday: a new alternative is available starting today — and techies will especially appreciate it. Redfin is in town.

Based in Seattle and founded in 2004, Redfin was actually the first company to put homes for sale on a searchable map online. It represents people either buying and selling a home. Founded and run by technologists, it has a team of experienced, full-service real estate agents who are advocates, not salespeople. Get this: they earn customer-satisfaction bonuses, not commissions.

“We selected the Twin Cities as our first new market to open in 2014,” said Bridget Frey, Redfin VP-Seattle Engineering. “We chose it because of the strength of the economy there, the concentration of universities, and a population that knows technology.’

Redfin’s web site features not only all the broker-listed homes for sale, but for-sale-by-owner properties as well — the ones that don’t pay brokers a commission. The other cool thing is Redfin has a variety of online tools and mobile apps that make the entire process of buying or selling a home “easier and more fun.” The company serves 23 U.S. markets (see map) and has closed some $13 billion in home sales since its founding.

On its web site, the company says “Technology is why our agents get you into a hot property faster.” And “it’s how we promote your listing to the most buyers.” But what really got my attention is how it promises to “put money back into the pockets of both buying and selling customers.” Redfin refunds homebuyers a portion of the buyer’s agent commission. For a $500,000 home, a Redfin homebuyer in the Twin Cities would save more than $4,000. For listing clients, Redfin agents charge 1.5 percent rather than the typical 3.3 percent of a traditional agent, “while providing the full listing service, from pricing and staging advice and professional photography through the negotiation and closing processes.” For someone selling a $500,000 home, that equals a savings of $9,000.

Redfin has many online and mobile technology tools. For example:

• Home Value Tool – lets customers estimate the value of their home based on up-to-date home sale prices, details, and photos used by real estate agents.

• Search by School – shows all homes for sale within the boundaries of a particular school with one easy search.

• Instant Updates – immediately alert home-buyers about new listings and price drops. People using Redfin to search for listings in a given area will get an alert 15-30 minutes after a real estate agent lists a home for sale. Users of any other major real estate website have to wait till the next day. Either smartphone or email notifications are sent when new homes are listed or when the status or price of a “favorited” home changes.

For its debut in the Twin Cities market, the company said more than one million homes have been added today to its searchable database of active listings and sold homes in parts of Hennepin, Ramsey, Anoka, Washington, Dakota, Scott, Carver, and Wright, counties that make the largest portion of the Twin Cities metro area by population. For parts of these counties that Redfin doesn’t service directly, customers can work with Redfin’s partner agents. The company will expand its direct service to include the entire 13-county metro area as its business here grows. It is actively recruiting more agents. In addition, the company just told me, hours before their debut today, that “we have now successfully enabled state-wide search for Minnesota. That means that you can see and search for all the homes for sale anywhere throughout the state.”

I asked software VP Bridget Frey to describe further how her team works. “Our model is very different. We break down every step of the process. It’s all based on continual conversations between agents and developers. We make sure they work closely together.” She said Redfin’s product managers and software engineers both regularly travel throughout the country to “shadow” agents in their daily work. “It’s all about getting an optimal experience for the buyer or seller. The best solutions are often not what the developer first envisioned, and in many cases what neither the agent nor developer would have thought.”

The company employs hundred of engineers in Seattle and the Bay Area, as well as hundreds of agents throughout the U.S. The Redfin model is different from that of other brokerages in the way it “aligns agent and customer interests.” Unlike traditional real estate agents, Redfin agents are paid a salary and benefits, with customer satisfaction ratings – not transactions – determining the agents bonus. All reviews for all Redfin agents are published online. More about the Redfin model here. And about its data quality here — which it says is a major differentiator: “We make it our business to have the most accurate data out there, updated every 15 to 30 minutes so you’ll never miss out.” Other sites that provide online listings nationally include Zillow and Trulia, but they have very different models, said Redfin’s Frey.

“We are a ‘real world’ real estate brokerage,” she said, “which means we have a local presence where we operate — local people, who know the local market.” To that end, Redfin hired Chris Prescott as its Minnesota market manager. “When I heard Redfin was coming to Minnesota, I knew I had to be part of their mission to change real estate here in the Twin Cities,” he said. “After being in the business for 20-plus years, I am very excited about the opportunity to change the way real estate is done and make it better for buyers, sellers and agents.”

Redfin is recruiting more agents in the Twin Cities metro area. Its pitch: “We believe real estate should be built on exceptional client service and advocacy, and we need passionate agents like you to advance our vision. Motivated clients come directly to you through our website, so you can focus on providing impeccable service — not selling yourself. Come hungry: Redfin Agents close an average of three deals per month versus the industry average of six deals per year.”

Here’s the full news release about Redfin’s Twin Cities launch.

A Fix for US Under-Employment?

October 29, 2013 By Graeme Thickins

vBENCH thinks it has one solution. The startup, cobased in the Twin Cities, announced today a U.S.-only “talent exchange” that seeks to counter the massive amount of contract work that Americans lose out on, year after year, due to “offshoring.” Yep, let’s hear it for “onshoring” — keeping more of that work here in the good ol’ USA!

The wave of contingent workers continues to build, says vBENCH, with many reports citing a shift away from the 40-hour work week to a more flexible, on-demand workforce. Cofounder JT Eberly (based here) notes that, though the official U.S. unemployment rate is now around 7.2%, “many experts believe the actual figure is in the mid-teens when you look at those who are underemployed and have stopped looking for work.” A large number of those have either done contract or freelance work in the past, or could start doing it — IF there was a better, more efficient way for them to find work and get paid for it quickly and efficiently.

“We believe a significant number of highly skilled U.S-based professionals remain undiscovered, underutilized, and unemployed,” Eberly said. ” At vBENCH, we’re out to empower this onshore talent pool with a platform to establish themselves as ‘solopreneurs’ — so we can keep lots more income here at home.” Beginning today, at www.vBENCH.com, any hiring company can post a project for no cost, and independent contractors in a wide variety of professions can sign up for a free profile. Read today’s full news announcement here.

AdWords Is Too Complex – Adagogo is a Better Solution

October 21, 2013 By Graeme Thickins

What if you could post an ad in three minutes and geo-target it to mobile users in a given radius around you — or across an entire network of 45 to 50 million of them — then start seeing results minutes after that? Well, you can — I know, I did it, with a new self-serve ad service called Adagogo, soft-launched in recent days by mobile app platform company DoApp Inc. (www.doapps.com), based right here in Minnesota (Rochester and Minneapolis).

DoApp founder Joe Sriver began working at Google in early 2001 and knows a thing or two about online advertising. “After joining Google, I found out that I’d been about the 20th advertiser to sign up for Adwords. Also, I learned that Adwords was the reason my hire date was pushed a few months, as they were so heads-down developing it.” As Google’s first UI designer, he soon became steeped in AdWords himself. “It’s a great product, and I’m proud to have been part of its history,” he said. However, it’s become complex, really complex. It’s gotten so new users either need to spend days trying to understand all the options it now offers, or hire a professional to manage their ad campaigns.” He doesn’t think that’s right.

“What’s been missing in all this,” says Sriver, “is an easy method to just get your web site, business, blog, or app in front a lot of people quickly.” (Hello, startups!)

“I think we’ve developed the simplest way to quickly place your ad within thousands of local and national apps, on all the major mobile app platforms,” said Sriver, “Our network of users today is substantial, between 45 and 50 million people, and it will continue to grow rapidly.”

Because you can target locally or advertise across the entire network, DoApp says Adagogo is “great for everything from getting traffic to local garage sales to building national brand awareness.” How’s that for a bold addressable market?

Sriver recounted how he experimented with a lot of new ideas since he launched DoApp in early 2008. The company’s main app platform business (both Mobile Local News and Real Estate) continues to grow rapidly. (See my previous coverage of the company here, here, here, and here.) But, of all the new side-project ideas he’s played with over the years, Joe says Adagogo is the one he realized had the most potential to get traction.

How to Post an Ad with Adagogo:

> Choose geographically where you want your ad displayed
> Enter your ad copy and add a picture
> Select the amount of ad impressions you want to display
> Add a web site URL, phone number, and/or location
> Enter your credit card info
> DONE!

I Did My Own Self-Serve Ad Test
I set up an ad on Adagogo the other day just to experiment with it myself. And I must say, it was quite easy. Nice, intuitive UI — really simple and clean. My ad is the shown here with the headline, “Learn About Big Data.” The goal was to drive traffic to a Flipboard magazine — which I had launched a while back on a lark — just to see how many people I could get to subscribe with a mobile ad. Joe told me that 1000 ad impressions, the option I chose (price: $25) would go quickly on the DoApp network — in about 2-3 minutes. He was right. I watched as my subscriber count went up 20%+ almost before my eyes. Once my ad impressions were used up, my click-through rate was 1.2%. Not bad, as the ad was just promoting a web site — to get people to subscribe to a free mag — not some giveaway, coupon offer, or contest.

So, across what geography do users see the ads? “Many of our apps are local or regional news apps,” says Sriver, “but we do have a number of national and international news apps as well. You can either choose to advertise locally within a 5, 10, or 50-mile radius around a location specified by you. Or you can have your ad displayed ‘Everywhere,’ which means wherever our apps are used around the world.” One of DoApp’s widely distributed news apps, with a worldwide footprint, is called Headlines.

“Across iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, and mobile web, we currently have more than 1500 apps,” says Sriver. “That number will be going up significantly, as all our real estate apps will soon have access to the Adagogo network. So our total number of available apps where Adagogo ads appear will grow a ton – stay tuned!”

Seriously, I can see Adagogo used for garage sales, fundraisers, local mom & pop stores, online businesses — even big brick-and-mortar retailers and, heck, ecommerce giants, for that matter. A Best Buy, for example, could advertise individual store deals using local-radius targeting, but could also do general brand advertising across the entire 50-million user base – say, to hype a Super Bowl commercial, or a contest or sweepstakes. No special expertise required — really anyone can use the simple Adagogo interface.

“From our start, DoApp’s mission has been to help in the growth and success of communities and local businesses through new technology,” says Sriver. “Adagogo builds on that mission.”

A Special Offer This Month
In announcing the Adagogo soft-launch, Joe offered up a special promotion for Minnov8 readers. With any ad package you purchase, the company will double your number of impressions. For example, buy the 1000 ad impressions package, get an addition 1000 for free (2000 total). Buy 5000, get a total of 10,000. This “buy one get one deal” is available only until October 31, 2013, and is for ads that are specified to run “everywhere,” as opposed to a specific location. Just place your ad before midnight Central time on October 31 and you’ll automatically get double ad impressions.

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Postscript: See DoApp at MobCon
Wade Beavers, CEO of DoApp, will be speaking at a mobile technology conference coming up in Minneapolis, Nov 7-8: MobCon. (Online registration still open.) His session and description: “It’s all about your latitude and longitude. How location is changing mobile.”
“Location and mobile are a perfect match. Learn more about how device latitude and longitude are changing the mobile game for advertising, social, commerce, personal data, and content distribution. A recent study showed that 43% of users were willing to provide their location to companies compared to less than 11% willing to share their browsing history. Has location information become the new cookie? You will learn: Location Data Trends, Effective Location App Offerings, Location Data Use, Consumer Behaviors, and Location Best Practices.”

Minnov8 will be reporting from the MobCon event, so look for us there!

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Disclosure: DoApp is one of the companies in my client equity portfolio. I helped launch the firm in 2008, serving as its VP Marketing.

So You Think You Can Innovate. Okay, But Can You ‘Cut Cubes From Fog’?

September 3, 2013 By Graeme Thickins

From an image copyright Tony Harris, DeviantArt.com.

The design process taught at Chicago’s Institute of Design has been likened to “cutting cubes from fog,” and the school is coming to Minneapolis this fall to tell you just what that means. Last spring, Stanford’s d.school offered courses at the CoCo coworking & collaborative space. Now, the Institute of Design — a graduate school of the Illinois Institute of Technology, and another of the nation’s top graduate design programs — is offering courses here.

The Institute believes design can help close the innovation gap. It says innovation is often characterized as the “fuzzy front end” of business (I love that!). But it’s out to bring definition to ambiguity. “As the pace of change in the world continues to accelerate, the demand for people trained to take on the ambiguous will continue to grow.”

On its web site, the Institute comments on its mission. “Design is expansive, generating large numbers of new options that can then be prototyped and tested to inform ever better ideas… In an age of uncertainty, having a process for making the unknown known can be of tremendous value and lead to ideas grounded in real unmet needs.”

The Institute’s decision to come to Minneapolis is based on its relationship with a local partner. “These three fall workshops are all about design thinking and design methods — the core of both incremental and breakthrough innovation,” said Rob Davis, director of communications and business development at bswing, which is presenting the the three-part series at its Experience Center at 700 N. Washington Avenue on September 27, October 4, and October 18. Rob formerly was head of communications at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD).

Image copyright Larry Keeley, SketchPlanations.com.

The series explores the fundamentals of graduate-level innovation practice. It’s the first time that IIT Institute of Design, the nation’s top-ranked and largest graduate-only design program, is offering courses here in Minnesota.

Minneapolis is not the only city where the series will be offered, but execs at the Institute of Design said in their prepared remarks why they think our city is a good choice: “Minneapolis-St. Paul is home to numerous world-leading companies and has rebounded quickly from the economic recession. There is a huge opportunity for companies to help make the future,” said Ashley Lukasik, director of corporate relations, communications, and marketing for IIT Institute of Design.

“Minnesota’s savvy business community has a strong tradition in seeing innovation as the path to profits. Companies are seeking to produce new things—reframing the conventional view of their current offering is an effective way to do that,” said Patrick Whitney, dean of IIT Institute of Design.

The cost of the three-part series is $3700, or $1400 for an individual workshop. (Sound like a lot? Not! Stanford’s similar series is $14,500. And Stanford d.school’s courses cost $10,000+.)

More about the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design: Since its founding as the New Bauhaus in 1937, the Institute of Design has grown into the largest full-time graduate-only design program in the U.S., with students from around the world. IIT Institute of Design is ranked number one for research and theory, based on skills sought by recruiting organizations and number six for overall best industrial design graduate schools. The school offers a professional Master of Design degree program with areas of study in communication design, interaction design, product design, strategic design, systems thinking, and user research; a dual Master of Design / MBA degree program with the IIT Stuart School of Business; the Master of Design Methods, a nine-month program for mid-career professionals; and a PhD in Design. The Institute of Design created the country’s first PhD design program in 1991.

More about bswing: Driven by the mission “make tomorrow matter,” bswing helps people imagine and create the future. With years of industry experience in in energy, retail, healthcare, financial services, and higher education, bswing combines a deep understanding of user needs and desires with great design to create better products, services, and experiences. The firm provides concept/prototype development that allows organizations to pivot to meet the needs of changing markets and also designs experiences that help organizations tell their stories and connect with key audiences. bswing’s clients include Landis+Gyr, Room & Board, Oracle, Center for Energy and Environment, Prime Therapeutics, and University of Minnesota’s Center for Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplantation.

What’s DoApp Been Doing? Quietly Building a Powerhouse Mobile Business

August 16, 2013 By Graeme Thickins

DoApp Inc., a Minnesota-based mobile app development firm (www.DoApps.com), has come a long way since its founding five years ago. I had a chance to sit down with the management team last week in the company’s offices in Rochester, Minnesota, where most of its employees are based. (Disclosure: I have a small equity position in the company, as I helped it launch in 2008. So, go ahead, call me biased!) It was the first chance I’d had in a while to catch the management team together in one place (left to right in the photo below): Wade Beavers, CEO: Joe Sriver, Founder; and Dave Borrillo, COO. Wade and Dave call Rochester home, while Joe is based in the Twin Cities. (They met when they all worked for IBM-Rochester, before Joe moved West to join Google in early 2001.) DoApp now boasts 19 employees, with a handful located virtually, one as far away as Vancouver. A core group of employees has been with the firm since 2008. This company has had amazingly little turnover, which says a lot in today’s environment. See more about DoApp’s talented team here.

Wade Beavers, Joe Sriver and Dave Borillo

What do I mean by “come a long way”? Well, ever since the company launched its first apps right when Apple opened the App Store in early 2008 (I was there — it was a wild time!), it has been one amazing run for these guys. Here’s how DoApp describes itself on its web site: “Great design and enterprise-level code comprise the core of DoApp. We’ve built over 1500 apps for all major mobile platforms. After millions upon millions of downloads, our mobile strength has been tested. We are a pioneer in mobile app development. We are a leader in mobile app experience.” (Note: about 400 of those 1500 apps are iPad apps.) “We are obsessed with mobile: continually developing new ideas, user experiences, and methods of engagement. This is what we love to do.” That is about the most you’ll ever hear DoApp brag. There isn’t even much detail on its web site. These guys don’t talk a lot about themselves; they just keep executing, signing customers, and building their business. That’s why I had to make my trip to Rochester, to find out more…

So, what did I learn? Well, these guys have way too much fun together — but I seriously believe a sense of humor is mandatory for any startup. And I’m sure that has something to do with how tight-knit the team is. I also gleaned some pretty impressive stats (below). And I learned the company has been profitable for some time, and that applies to both its major businesses: publishing and real estate. The company has had no outside investment, by the way — it was self-funded initially by founder Joe Sriver, and started booking revenues immediately after launch. So, DoApp has been quite a home-grown Minnesota startup success story — even if it has been a bit more low-profile than many. So, about some of those stats…

DoApp’s Publishing and Advertising Business:

The company has customers in 110 local markets across 34 states, and those include 176 TV stations, 58 radio stations, and 110 newspapers. Just search “DoApp Inc.” on the iTunes App Store or on Google Play to see the huge number of apps it has developed for these broadcasters and publishers.

DoApp’s Real Estate Business:

The company also has been building its real estate app business for several years. Recently, it formed a partnership with CoreLogic, a leader in the real-estate market that has an estimated 70% of the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) market in the U.S. DoApp powers all of CoreLogic’s “GoMLS” app offering. The GoMLS app (see the iOS version here) can only be used by real estate agents, brokers, or other affiliated professionals that already have an active MLS subscription for this service. It gives agents a time saving, easy-to-use, data-rich mobile app for access to listing data and more, directly from Apple or Android devices. It integrates with other systems and CoreLogic products to allow professionals to access saved searches and contacts, and edit key fields on-the-go. CoreLogic is a publicly traded firm (NYSE: CLGX) headquartered in California that provides property information, analytics, and services in seven countries.

Separately, DoApp serves as the mobile provider for the MLS organizations in Chicago, San Diego, Tulsa, Georgia, Birmingham, and more. These relationships, along with the CoreLogic partnership, make DoApp the largest provider in the U.S. of mobile real estate solutions for MLS organizations.

In addition, DoApp has 17 of its own branded apps covering sports, weather, news, and tech, which together now boast more than 8 million unique users. Here are a few:

myWeather app (iOS, Android)

Headlines app (iOS, Android)

Sports Tap App (iOS, Android)

Congratulations to the DoApp team for all they’ve accomplished to date! I’ll make sure to follow along and keep you up to date on their fortunes.

(Note: This post also appeared on my personal blog, Graeme Thickins On Tech™.)

CoCo to Open in Uptown

June 25, 2013 By Graeme Thickins

CoCo, our favorite coworking and collaborative space (both myself and my colleague Phil Wilson are members), has just announced it will open a new location this September in “the booming Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis“… and I would add the adjectives “extremely” and “hip” to that. The news was announced late this afternoon at a special happy hour gathering of members — just called this morning — at CoCo in downtown Minneapolis. The Uptown location will be the third for the three-year-old CoCo organization. [Wait, let me get the calculator — that’s one per year! ] The other sites are the original one in Lowertown St. Paul and the second on the trading floor at the historic Minneapolis Grain Exchange, which opened in late 2011. And, if you’re a member, you can frequent any of the sites.

CoCo Uptown will be located at 1010 West Lake Street, between Hennepin and Lyndale Avenues, and at the junction of Lake Street, Lagoon Street, and the Greenway bike path. “This is an ideal location for many reasons,” said CoCo founding partner Kyle Coolbroth. “We’re close to public transportation and within four blocks of dozens of restaurants, pubs, and coffee shops.”

Artist rendering of the main room at CoCo Uptown.

Formerly an auto repair shop, the 15,000-square-foot space is being completely renovated over the summer. ”We get to start with a blank slate, so we’re taking the opportunity to create surprising new features and valuable amenities for our members,” said CoCo founding partner Don Ball.

Some of those features include:

• The “Garage” – a 3,500-square-foot open space devoted to ideation, prototyping, and presentations for groups up to 100
• A small tap room with craft brews (hold your cheers!)
• A small movie theater, for presentations and pitches
• A billiard room that doubles as a meeting room
• A walkout patio, located within a beautiful green space
• Two large conference rooms
• Seven private booths for phone calls and demos
• A commons area that can be used for 100-person events and meetups

With 160 seats, the new CoCo location will also provide plenty of room for coworking, as well as 24 dedicated desks and nine “campsites,” which seat four to six people each. We know a big question for those of you who drive these things called “cars” (like me, call me crazy) will be parking at the new location, so watch for more information on that forthcoming.

Artist rendering of the Lounge, one of the six meeting spaces at CoCo Uptown.

Although construction is just getting underway, CoCo is already taking reservations for campsites, with preference given to current CoCo members.

About “The Garage”
The Garage is a large open space designed for groups that want to do deep work in strategic planning, ideation, and product or service development. It will be available for fully hosted and facilitated experiences of one-day, three-day or one-week durations. The Garage can also be reserved for self-led groups. In addition to an inspiring environment, basic amenities at the Garage will include work tables and seating, a stage with projection and sound systems, as well as extensive ideation and prototyping supplies.

CoCo Uptown will feature a private patio, located amidst a larger greenspace.

About CoCo
CoCo is a place where entrepreneurs, freelance professionals, small businesses, and corporate workgroups can gather to work, share ideas and team up on projects. For our members, CoCo is an alternative to working from home or meeting at the local coffee shop. CoCo has locations in Lowertown St. Paul and in downtown Minneapolis, on the former trading floor of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. For more information, see the web site.

Congratulations to Don, Kyle, and the entire CoCo team on an amazing three years so far! We look forward to the opening of the Uptown site. See you there!

Minnesota’s Spark Devices Launches ‘Spark Core’ to Enable Wi-Fi for Everything

May 2, 2013 By Graeme Thickins

Minneapolis-based Spark Devices today launched a new project on Kickstarter in a major reboot of the company. The new Kickstarter comes as the cofounders are about to complete an accelerator program in China called HAXLR8R (“hack-celerator” – get it?). It’s described as “a new kind of accelerator program for people who hack hardware and make things.” (Mentors include Brad Feld, Nolan Bushnell, and a host of others.) The Demo Day for the current class is May 13.

“There’s been a lot of excitement around Internet-connected devices, but the barrier’s always been pretty high because building Wi-Fi into a product is surprisingly expensive and difficult,” said Zach Supalla, cofounder and CEO. “We want to take down that barrier so that people can experiment with Internet-connected products as freely as they do with electronics in general using an Arduino.”

Spark Devices is building an open source development kit for Wi-Fi enabled products. “Spark Core” — it’s first product (and the name of the Kickstarter project) — is an Arduino-compatible, Wi-Fi enabled, cloud-powered development platform that makes creating Internet-connected hardware a breeze. The team confidently state on its new Kickstarter page, “There’s nothing you can’t build with the Core.”

How big is this “Internet of Things” (IoT) thing?
How does 24 billion devices connected by 2020 grab you? How does the notion of “transforming everything” grab you? A recent survey on IoT found 66% of IT professionals actually believe it will play a part in business and consumer technology converging within 3-5 years. (More about that SAP/Harris Interactive study in this post from ReadWrite Cloud.)

As Spark Devices aptly puts it, “we’re entering a world where products listen and communicate.” It notes that, so far, the Internet of Things is being driven by startups — think Pebble Watch, FitBit, the Nest thermostat, and others that are disrupting sleepy old product categories. But the founders rightly see a huge opportunity to help thousands of established companies take advantage of this connected-devices movement. [That’s right, so they don’t get disrupted.]

Spark Core works like an Arduino with integrated Wi-Fi. It’s powered by the new Texas Instruments CC3000 Wi-Fi module, and can be easily integrated into any circuit board.

How to manage all these devices?
Spark Core isn’t all that’s being debuted in this Kickstarter project. The company is also announcing it will be building a cloud service to manage its Wi-Fi enabled products in the field. The “Spark Cloud” is a scalable, managed infrastructure for communicating with all Spark-powered devices — an open but secure system, with a developer-friendly REST API. A key point: this cloud will enable over-the-air firmware updates to improve products over time. Read the FAQ on the Kickstarter project. If you’re a hacker, it will blow your mind.

How to back Spark
Spark Core is being sold for $39 on the company’s Kickstarter project page, and later will be sold on its website and through electronics distributors. But if you move fast, 200 Spark Cores are available for $29 each on Kickstarter as an Early-Bird Special. And there are other great options to back the Kickstarter project.

What can you build with Spark Core and Spark Cloud?
Sample products cited on the Kickstarter page include things like a wireless motion detector, a solar-powered security camera, or even, as the Kickstarter video shows, a “pizza orderer.” To say the possibilities are limitless is not exaggerating.

Here’s more on the Spark Devices team:

Zach Supalla, CEO. Formerly worked at McKinsey (operations and product development) and Groupon. Kellogg (MBA), McCormick (MEM), Dartmouth (BA).
Zachary Crockett, CTO. Software developer with broad experience across platforms (Ruby, Java, Objective C). U of MN (Ph.D), Vanderbilt (BA).
Stephanie Rich, VP of Biz Dev. Former director of sales and marketing in the film industry (GreeneStreet Films). Cambridge (MBA), Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism (BS).
Will Hart, Design Engineer. Cook Engineering Design Fellow at Dartmouth College. BE and ME in Mechanical Engineering, Dartmouth.

Recent photo shows the team in China, minus Steph, who stayed home in Minneapolis to hold down the fort. Left to right: Zach, Zachary, Will.

The partnership with the aforementioned HAXLR8R hardware-focused incubator, based in Shenzhen, China, provides Spark Devices an extensive ecosystem of mentors, investors, and fellow startups.

For more on Spark Devices, see its latest web site, and follow the company on Twitter and Facebook. Also catch the founders at the upcoming Bay Area Maker Faire, and (I personally hope) at the Glue Conference later in May. Then, soon, the entire team will be back home hard at work at CoCo Minneapolis at the Grain Exchange.

Congrats to Spark Devices: another great example of Minnesota tech innovation — gone global!

What Comes First in Fargo – the #MidwestMobileSummit or the Spring Floods?

April 14, 2013 By Graeme Thickins

They’re both coming soon! And they may actually be arriving about the same time. But, no worries, the first-year Midwest Mobile Summit will be held April 28-29 in downtown Fargo ND, which I’m told is a pretty safe area of town from the rising waters that come every spring to this city partially bordered on the Red River.

But if you really want to find out when the floods might arrive — well, it turns out
there’s an iOS app for that. Its name? Why, H2O Fargo, of course! And it became available a couple of weeks ago in the App Store, just in time for the inevitable rising waters.

I learned about the app when I met with the guys from Myriad Devices, a mobile app development shop that’s the lead sponsor and organizer of the Midwest Mobile Summit. They developed the flood app as a public service for their community, and Jake Joraanstad, CEO, told me the app was approved by Apple in only one day! I guess they understood the urgency of the situation. (Screenshots of the app shown.)

The MIdwest Mobile Summit has big support of the local community, and will draw a large representation of the area’s significant technology industry, including angels and VCs, Microsoft and ex-Microsoft managers, NDSU officials, and a strong mobile development community. Read more about the the schedule, speakers, and sponsors at the event site — and how to obtain tickets. You can purchase Day One, Day Two, or both days. Overnight accommocations for Sunday, April 28, are availabke at the nearby Radisson downtown (info at event site). Several speakers and attendees are coming from the Twin Cities. See you there if you can make it!

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