Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

MPR: Where is innovation in Minnesota?

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Minnesota Public Radio has a subsite called MPRNewsQ with an online poll for ‘select’ Minnesotans: Where is the innovation in your field?

At the head of the poll they state, “Innovation: The health of the economy depends on it. Our schools are meant to encourage it. But innovation isn’t a widget that can be stamped out on the assembly line. It’s the product of a delicate recipe of education, technology and entrepreneurship. We’d like your help exploring where innovation is happening, and where it’s not, but should be.”

When I received an email invite today to respond to the poll, I was initially excited since I assumed (wrongly) that this was open to general public and/or MPR members at large. As it turns out I received the invite since I’m one of a select number of “Public Insight Network” contributors to yet another subsite on MPRNewsQ called “Minnesota Today“.

Minnesota Today is a crowdsourced article input site from a number of people who (hopefully) have insight in to important and interesting we all come across daily while reading online. We submit links to a moderated queue and they’re looked at and posted periodically throughout each day. I’m expecting this connection might enable me to obtain the results of this poll early—or at least be able to publish them quickly here on Minnov8—and I’ll try to let you know what people say as soon as possible.

Though I’m a contributor and fan of MPR, the website has so much going on and is so layered and nuanced, it’s a real challenge to find anything…including my modest contributions at Minnesota Today. In fact, I’ve talked to about a dozen hard-core MPR and Twin Cities Public Television members who had no clue Minnesota Today even existed and for a couple of others who did, had no idea I contributed. Others are taken aback that there are “special” polls like this that are not open to the public at large and I’d have to agree.

Still, this is a good start on an innovative use of the web and crowdsourcing and I applaud MPR for the effort.

Why Small Business Needs to Innovate

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It is likely you’ve heard many times that small business is the engine of the U.S. economy and employs more than 50% of workers in our country. Over a recent 15-year period small businesses created some 65 percent of the net new jobs in the private sector according to a report, “Analysis of Small Business and Jobs” (PDF) from the Small Business Administration office of Advocacy—it’s equally true that the net job losses due to our economic downturn have hit small business hard in many ways.

Many Minnov8 readers automatically assume that startups and new businesses are the key to being the growth engine the U.S. and Minnesota needs. While that’s absolutely true, the Advocacy’s analysis of the quarterly Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that over the 15 years from 1993 to mid-2008, 31 percent of net job gains (jobs created minus jobs lost) came from the creation and destruction of businesses (net employment change from business entry minus business exit) BUT an even larger share—the remaining 69 percent—were from businesses that were not new, but survived.

Small business has been hit just as hard as the rest of the economy and oftentimes cannot withstand recessionary forces as well as bigger businesses with either deep pockets or access to capital. As a consequence, many are turning to powerful and inexpensive methods to get the word out about their businesses, engage their loyal users and build a following, and are doing so in some unique ways.

For those of you who are actively using social media—blogs, Twitter, Facebook, even the old standby, email—you know that more of us than ever are paying less attention to traditional media and more attention to new forms of media and communications and therefore coming across businesses who are using it for communicating with us. Some local savvy small business leaders are taking matters in to their own hands with interesting results and to make certain they’re one of the 69 percent that survive our economic downturn….  [Read More…]

Minnov8 Gang 86: Small Business is Social

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Friday found the Gang at the Social Media Breakfast/Minneapolis & St. Paul (SMBMSP) for a fabulous panel on small business and social media. It was led by Jason DeRusha (who is employed doing something at WCCO-TV & is at @DeRushaJ) with panelists Julie Warner of WarnersStellian (@WarnersStellian); Aimee Pelletier of DarnKnitAnyway (@darnknitanyway); Naomi Williamson of Sanctuary Restaurant (@SanctuaryRest); and Dan Marshall of Peapods (@PeapodsNatural).

The festivities were kicked off by fun video introductions by “Dream Team” leaders for UnitedWay fundraising and you can see all of the team leaders at Dreamteam2010.org and you, yes you, can get in on the action by corralling your friends and family to signup for one of the four teams. As part of our podcast, we invited Bob Brin (@eBob) from Padilla Speer Beardsley (and specifically Padilla Gorilla) as well Mykl Roventine (@myklroventine) who is a co-organizer of Social Media Breakfast – Minneapolis/St. Paul, co-founder/organizer of Ignite Minneapolis and UnSummit, as well as running the local chapter of TechKaraoke Minneapolis.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins was off this week).

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 26:28 — 15.4MB)

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Minnov8 Gang 85: Are Angels Crying?

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After yesterday’s post, “Is Perception the Reality with MN Venture Funding?” we received a lot of email and some comments about the state of angel and venture investing in Minnesota. There is a lot of buzz amongst startups (and wannabees) who feel like this State is risk averse and a place where angels and VCs focus on the ‘easy’ spaces: medtech and healthcare.

Pete Birkeland

Is that true? We talk with Pete Birkeland, CFO at RAIN Source Capital, the largest network of Angel Investment Funds in US. Pete is part of a team that manages 23 funds in 6 six states with $40 million under management and is a guy who has worked in this area for 10 years on both the entrepreneurial and investor side.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott & Graeme Thickins (Phil Wilson is off this week).
Music by The Varatones and their song, “Surf Blaster” from Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 59:59 — 34.7MB)

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Discussed During the Show:

Is Perception the Reality with MN Venture Funding?

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All the effort underway to kickstart innovation and entrepreneurial activity ((e.g., MHTA; MNCup; MOJO MN; Minnedemo/Minnebar; Minnov8; tech.mn) is clearly a reaction to the nearly terminal decline of risk taking and venture funding in Minnesota. Wherever there is a vacuum, something will fill it!

How true is the perception that Minnesota lacks funding and risk-taking venture capitalists? If you read these three things below, you’ll see that it’s highly likely perception is reality.

  • Having Eric Caron (@ecaron) point out this thread to me at Hacker News which was sparked by someone submitting this tech.mn article for discussion. While commenters have usernames vs. real ones and there is a lot of anecdotal discussion in the thread, it’s a troubling read since this is how many startups feel about being here in Minnesota
  • Next I fired up my iPad RSS reader in order to skim the top tech sites I read at breakfast each morning. I immediately was presented with an incredibly contrarian-to-Minnesota-VC-funding-experience in an article on the tech site GigaOM entitled, “Seed Stage Investments Jump Sharply in Q2 2010.” It begins with this: “If there were any doubts that the entrepreneurial activity is hitting new highs, then the new data from the National Venture Capital Association puts them to rest –venture capitalists invested $6.5 billion in 906 deals during the second quarter of 2010, thanks to a renewed interest in seed and early stage companies along with new found enthusiasm for clean technology-oriented startups. This is in sharp contrast to a slowdown in the new money flowing into venture funds themselves.“
  • In a pretty clear sign that everyone’s perception is reality came when I popped open StarTribune.com’s business section this morning and this article leapt out at me, “Venture capital still scarce in Minnesota.” It led with this: “Venture capital investments in emerging Minnesota companies perked up a bit in the second quarter but remained on track for the weakest year in 15 years of record-keeping, according to data being released Friday.“

The passing of the Angel Tax Credit will go a long way to tap in to the seed stage momentum GigaOM reported on this morning. Read Why Now? MN Legislature Passes Bill w/Angel Investment Tax Credit and Angel-backed Startups 30-50% More Likely To Be Successful to learn more about seed stage investing in Minnesota…

…but then tell us what else needs to be done? Make your voice heard in the comments!

Method Patents: Good or Bad?

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On July 31, 1790, the first U.S. patent was issued to Samuel Hopkins for an improvement "in the making of Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process" and signed by then President George Washington.

Let’s say you’ve founded a startup and think you have a completely original idea no one has thought of before with new approaches to the way an old process works. You might then think all you have to do is patent that process and you can achieve the protection patenting is all about: excluding others from copying you.

Oh, if it were only so simple. The world of patents has become incredibly complex and is a minefield just waiting for a startup to get traction selling their offering before the unaware entrepreneur takes a step, hears a click, and thinks “Oh-oh” just before the “patent landmine” blows up. This is especially true in the area of method (i.e., process) patents but there’s hope.

Ernest Grumbles III

Ernest Grumbles III, an intellectual property attorney with Merchant & Gould and co-founder of MOJO MN, has one of the best posts I’ve read yet at StarTribune on the current state of method patents (and it’s obvious why you need somebody like him to ensure your idea is capable of being patented or even worthy of protection). As Ernest points out, method patents are neither good nor bad and are granted based on the merits of the claim and its level of abstraction. If you have a method idea you’re already moving forward on (or are about to) then you owe it to yourself, and your current and future investors, to make certain you are protected and that you wrap that idea in a way that minimizes abstraction and ensures you’re granted that patent!

That said, calls for patent reform are growing louder by the week and many of us who see some patents as ways to extort money from entrepreneurs and innovators or stifle innovation, hope the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office moves faster on reform.

Until there are significantly more precedents set in the area of method patents, people like Ernest will have no shortage of work and startups no end of concern over whether a method idea is too abstract to be patented or likely infringing on some obscure patent already granted.

Congresswoman Calls for Skype Use?

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UPDATE 7/18/10: If this doesn’t prove the point of this article…nothing does. Security expert Bruce Schneier posts, “Skype’s Cryptography Reverse-Engineered” and if this proves to be true, it would be trivial for rogue nations or eavesdroppers to listen-in on Congressional Skype conversations!

A fake Skype call highly unlikely to ever occur

In a time when cybersecurity has become the new battleground among nations and calls for enhanced national defense online are accelerating, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is trumpeting the use of a technology for communications that has an unknown security model and seems at odds with the usual Republican focus on national security.

An article by Jeremy Herb in the StarTribune this morning caught my eye, “Bachmann pushes Congress to embrace Skype.” It outlines the reasons why Rep. Michele Bachmann is calling for the use of the free Skype program on Congressional networks—so she and others can talk directly with their constituents or hold “virtual town halls”—but its use is banned in the House of Representatives.

The article quotes a University of Minnesota computer science professor, Joseph Konstan, who says this about the fundamental reason a peer-to-peer program like Skype is problematic and why it would be banned: “The reason people worry about using tools like these is they are inherently insecure. The design of Skype is something that hasn’t been carefully scrutinized, and so it may very well be there are bugs in there.”

Sure there could be bugs, but the biggest reason installing Skype on Capitol computer networks is a huge problem is because of that unknown security model of Skype. It is not possible to know much about the security of Skype since their code is proprietary and is not open to peer review or close examination of potential security holes.

As a fan of Skype and someone who has used it daily for several years, I evangelize its use constantly. That said, I wouldn’t want my government to embrace it without some very close scrunity and safeguards and I’m puzzled why Rep. Bachmann would now be banging-the-drum for Congress to adopt Skype. Here’s why doing so isn’t wise. …  [Read More…]

Minnov8 Gang 84: Seeing Opportunities for Innovation

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This week’s show theme surrounds seeing opportunities for innovation. We explore many of the events, conferences, and moves made in web and internet technology and also dwell on all the collective energy being expended in Minnesota (e.g., MHTA; MNCup; MOJO MN; Minnedemo/Minnebar; Minnov8; tech.mn). driving toward one thing: sparking innovation in Minnesota. Is it working? What more can be done?

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott & Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off dealing with his woody).
Music by Andre Bisson and the song, “I’m leavin’” from Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 59:22 — 34.5MB)

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Discussed During the Show:

MentorMate: Turning Vision in to Software

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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….  [Read More…]

Powerful Document Collaboration with Redliner

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If you collaborate with others on contracts, agreements, leases, press releases, copy for your website, or any other activity where multiple people have to touch an electronic document, you know all too well the incredible frustration that results from trying to track changes to any of it! Redliner is a new offering, still in beta, that not only eliminates that frustration but does so with enough unique aspects that you’ll likely stop using Google Docs, emailed Word .docs or other means to collaborate with clients or colleagues.

Jerry Grabowski, Redliner’s CEO, carved out time last week to sit down with me and talk about Redliner, their target markets and a bit about the features of the product they’re delivering as software-as-a-service (SaaS). To say that they’ve got a unique opportunity is an understatement.

All the things you’d expect in an online collaboration space are here and then some you wouldn’t expect: Document editing like we’ve all come to know; an audit trail of who has edited the document and when; and even simultaneous editing by multiple users. What I haven’t seen as well executed as Redliner has done it is: The ability to accept or reject changes and (probably my favorite feature) is the ability to make private comments about a proposed change to someone else. I can’t tell you how often I could’ve used this when I was managing dozens of contracts simultaneously while running strategic alliances at Lawson Software and how it would have been enormously useful to be able to coach one of my alliance managers on some salient point within the agreement before our company would propose a change. …  [Read More…]