Innovation

Minnesota Cup Division Winners

September 10, 2016 By Steve Borsch

The Minnesota Cup is thrilled to announce eight division winners who will compete for the grand prize title on September 22. The winners, one from each division, were pared down from an initial, record-breaking participant pool of 1,500. They are:

Activated Research Company, Energy/Clean Tech/Water, seven county metro
SelfEco Garden, Food/Ag/Beverage, seven county metro
Berd Spokes, General, seven county metro
Vugo, High Tech, seven county metro
StemoniX, Life Science/Health IT, seven county metro, minority-led
Asiya, Social Entrepreneurship, seven county metro, woman-led, minority-led
Minnealloy Magnetics, Student, seven county metro, minority-led
ExpressionMed, Youth, seven county metro, woman-led

Each division winner has been awarded up to $30,000—and is now in consideration for the sought-after MN Cup grand prize, which comes with an additional $50,000 in seed capital. In its 12th year, the MN Cup is giving away a record amount of prize money: $405,000 total.

Go here for more information and to register for the final awards event.

TruScribe Kickstarts ‘Global Visual Language’

April 8, 2016 By Graeme Thickins

Thought you’d heard it all on Kickstarter? Well, how many times have you run into a project there that’s about launching a language? You read that right. Get your credit cards out, Minnesota startup lovers! Here’s your chance to say you were there back in ’16 when history was made.

But here’s the deal: you gotta tell a lot of your friends, because the folks at TruScribe have set a pretty hefty goal for this one: it’s $100k. Of course, that’s befitting the ginormous implications here — I mean, how often do you get to impact the entire freaking global community, with that single audacious goal to allow everyone on the planet to communicate visually? This is big stuff, people!! What’s a lousy little 100 Grover Clevelands?

TruScribe, as you’ll recall, is a whiteboard video animation company that was cofounded in Minnesota. (We wrote about them here back in 2014.) A large part of its staff is in Madison WI, but Minneapolis became its headquarters a while back, with great new digs at International Market Square. It was named the 253rd fastest-growing company on the Inc. 5000 list in 2015, which was understandably touted far and wide. (As a point of reference, crazy-fast-growing LeadPages of Minneapolis was #220.) In February 2016, TruScribe announced the first part of its new initiative to transform into a full-fledged software business, with a new iOS app called TruGlyph. (You can download the app here.)

What’s coming next you can see in their new (and very first) Kickstarter project. Here’s an excerpt from that page on what it’s all about:

“We’re asking creatives – artists, word nerds, and everyday folk – to join our community and contribute to our efforts through our TruGlyph app. And we need your help to create the TruGlyph Marketplace that will reward those that contribute in the most meaningful ways.”

On communicating visually:

“While the internet and social platforms help us reach people anywhere on earth, we are worlds away from the technology helping us be understood across languages and cultures. People are visual observers and learners, but we’re often limited to text and audio when we want to communicate in meaningful ways. We believe that a Visual Language is the first step in allowing people to communicate visually.”

On the big goal of a global visual language:

“Visually representing even a single language is an incredible undertaking and even more so as we’re reaching across the world. Which is why we can’t do it alone, nor should we do it alone and why crowdsourcing is the only way we will accomplish it. Language isn’t defined by the dictionaries that print it, but by the people that use it.”

About the Glyph, the building block of this language:

“A Glyph is a simple image that animates as if drawn and is associated with words and context. The community is already using our TruGlyph app to draw glyphs, tag them with words, and play games that pit glyph versus glyph asking the player to decide which has more meaning. When a glyph increases and meaning and rises up to become part of the Global Visual Language, it’s because of their efforts — which is why we need to reward them..(our) marketplace will be a system that allows creatives who contribute to the global visual language, in the most meaningful ways, to be rewarded and compensated for their efforts.”

And here’s more about TruScribe software:

“It’s an innovative platform designed to let you communicate via video using the TruGlyph global visual language. Send a video message to a friend; create a video to market your business; your ideas can be understood by anyone, anywhere. Backing the Kickstarter gives you a FREE subscription to the TruScribe software and the new frontier in worldwide communication and understanding.”

So, there you have it, crowdfunders — get your credit card out, back the project, and grab your reward!

——-

[Disclosure: TruScribe has been a client of mine.]

App Developers, NativeX Has an Education for You

February 11, 2016 By Graeme Thickins

Graphic: VentureBeat

If you publish apps (and it’s hard to find a company these days that doesn’t), you’d better be up on the new science — and art — of App Store Optimization. Yes, say hello to another acronym: ASO. We all know about SEO — it’s such common practice, we do it like breathing. But when the whole world has gone mobile, when everyone and their mother are publishing apps, if you aren’t into ASO – well, you’re falling behind. It’s a major new focus for app developers and publishers, and one of our most successful Minnesota startups is ready to take you to school on it.

ASO is the direct result of a phenomenon VentureBeat calls “invisible app syndrome.” In a post today, it explains: “With over 1.5 million apps in each app store, it’s easy for apps to disappear and never be seen… App Store Optimization (ASO) can bring your app out of hiding, placing it squarely in front of the customers who need or want it, and keep them clicking through.”

St. Cloud-based NativeX is an experienced player in helping app publishers optimize for the app stores. You know them well. We’ve certainly written about the company before. It lately describes itself as “the premiere ad technology choice of top-charting mobile games and apps.” It has an expert team of engineers, data scientists, account managers, and designers, and has been recognized as a leader in effective monetization and user acquisition.

NativeX has been an innovator as well in redefining native advertising for mobile games and apps. (Worth mentioning here is that this Minnesota-born startup has been profitable for 12 straight years. Yes, you read that correctly. We grow ‘em good here in the cold North – where the firm began life under the name Freeze.com.)

An Upcoming ASO Webinar: “Money for nothing, clicks for free”
VentureBeat is hosting a webinar on February 18th on App Store Optimization. It’s sponsored by none other than NativeX, who will be participating along with Aaron Kardell, founder of Minneapolis-based real-estate apps publisher HomeSpotter.

From the post about the event (where you can register): “Mobile app developers are fighting a fearsome battle every day. As mobile continues to be second nature for us, publishers are releasing countless new apps on a daily basis — almost 1,500 a day are added to Apple’s App store alone. However, only a few will gain the undivided attention of the public.”

ASO Best Practices
In addition to sponsoring the upcoming webinar, NativeX just released an ASO white paper, which is all about best practices to help publishers improve app store visibility. It’s the first in a two-part series. Part 1 focuses on Search Ranking optimization. Part 2 will focus on improving Chart Ranking.

Ryan Weber, NativeX

“With the millions of apps already in the app stores,” said Ryan Weber, NativeX cofounder and chief product officer, “many developers have experienced the crushing reality of publishing an app that never finds an audience because the audience never finds the app.”

VentureBeat says this about the new white paper: “It takes effort and insight to implement the kind of ASO that makes a measurable difference, but the experts at NativeX have broken that process down to four steps.”

Ryan Weber adds: “67% of app users say the last app they downloaded was found through typing their inquiry into the app store search, making search the dominant organic app discovery method. Improving search ranking within those stores has become one of the most critical ASO requirements for publishers.”

Weber said that NativeX published the white paper to answer the questions most relevant to app publishers about ASO and how to improve their app store visibility. Specifically, here are the questions it addresses:

What is ASO?
What motivates users to download an app?
How are users finding/ discovering apps?
What impact do paid installs have on organic installs?
What do you need to measure for effective search discovery?
How do you pick the right keywords?
What tools are available to help with keyword selection?
How does relevance, difficulty and popularity affect keyword prioritization?
What are On-Page and Off-Page influence factors and what improves search rank?
How do you optimize paid campaign delivery for the purpose of influencing Off-Page factors?
What can you do in your app to influence Ratings and Reviews to improve ranking and conversion rate?
What are best practices for optimizing your app store click-through & conversion rates?
What tools are available to help with AB Testing to determine best assets to use?

VentureBeat published an extensive report a couple of months ago on App Store Optimization. In a post describing that report, it says, “App publishers who implement ASO can realistically expect a 20% lift in organic downloads, and can in some cases double or even triple their organic downloads. That’s huge, and reduces overall cost per acquisition of each mobile user.”

That report sells for $499. But you can get a pretty darn good education for free by reading NativeX’s two-part white paper series mentioned above.

Then you can not only be on your way to increasing your own downloads, but you’ll be ready to help your mother when she’s ready to publish her first app, right?

——-

[Note: This post first appeared on my personal blog, Graeme Thickins On Tech.]

Secured2 at Cyber Security Summit

October 13, 2015 By Steve Borsch

Serial entrepreneur Daren Klum‘s company Secured2 will be participating in the Cyber Security Summit 2015 here in Minneapolis on October 20-21. This is a great opportunity for you to learn first-hand about Secured2’s solutions and also delve in to this growing cybersecurity category and hear from thought leaders in various areas. Looks to be a strong event.

Below is a press release on their participation in the summit.

Secured2 Brings its Thought Leadership and Unhackable,
Disaster-Proof Data Security Solution to Cyber Security Summit 2015

Minneapolis, MN (October 13, 2015) – In joining Minnesota’s efforts to establish a multi-stakeholder consortium for improving the state of cyber security on a national and international level, Secured2 Corporation will participate in Cyber Security Summit 2015, which is taking place October 20-21 in Minneapolis.

Daren Klum

Secured2 CEO Daren Klum will join Minnesota’s C-level executives, technology leaders, public policy makers, and other industry pundits to discuss the pitfalls of traditional backup / recovery methods, and present Secured2’s “shrink > shred > secure” methodology which mitigates hacking.

Secured2 is a data security company whose patented process and technology reduces data by more than 90% while simultaneously converting it into a secure format. It then randomly shreds the data into multiple locations, such as multiple clouds, hybrid or local storage environments. Its security solution has been tested, vetted, and refined in lab and real world environments, and is currently in operational assessment by healthcare, financial services and contract manufacturing companies.

Secured2 recently partnered with LiquidCool Solutions, marrying its data security software with LiquidCool’s Rugged Terrain (RT) liquid-cooled, high performance, ruggedized computing system. The combination of the two technologies provides protection from any form of catastrophe whether environmental or well-entrenched hacker groups.

“Cyber security threats that become more plentiful and sophisticated is an ongoing trend, and encryption simply isn’t enough,” said Klum. “Secured2 offers a technology that has not been seen before. Our Shrink>Shred>Secure process, which shrinks data and defeats hackers is rigorously tested, vetted and 3rd party validated by FBI-trained teams.”

Continued Klum, “As Minnesota collaborates on framework and program-based security approaches for threat intelligence, we’re certain Secured2 will stand out as the disruptive technology of choice.”

About Secured2 Corporation
Secured2 Corporation is a data security software company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Secured2 is the pioneer of new data security technology utilizing a ‘shrink > shred > secure’ methodology combined with new compression technology that reduces the size of data by up to 90%. The core product “Data Shredder” shrinks, shreds, secures and converts data into a random format. It then encrypts each shred using NIST certified encryption and randomly distributes the encrypted shreds across any multi-location storage a customer chooses (multiple clouds, hybrid locations or local storage destinations). Secured2’s simple solution: imagine a thief gets into your business and opens your safe. What they will find with Secured2 is shredded information. Your data is safe. Period. Secured2 continues to redefine the data security landscape and is in the process of rolling out several new products based on our core methodologies of data conversion, data shredding, randomized delivery of shreds into diverse storage and instant data restoration after multi-factor authentication. With over 17 patents Secured2 will continue driving innovation for its customers that require 100% security of their most critical and important data assets.

The State — or Lack of a State — of Marketing Analytics

September 13, 2015 By Graeme Thickins

Image ©VentureBeat

(Note: this post first appeared on Graeme Thickins On Tech.)

How does one assess the landscape for an exploding technology category like marketing analytics? There’s so much confusion and hype around the topic. You’ve heard it all — too much data, we’re drowning in it, woe is us. And, along with that, too many vendors trying to sell us the latest cure. First we were shocked to hear the number of vendors was 1000, now we’re told it’s 2000! The argument that all these vendors create too many data silos is now a refrain we’re hearing more often. Hard to argue with that.

With such high numbers of players comes confusion, and complexity.

But it begs the question: how in the world do you unify all your marketing data to understand it and gain a competitive edge for your organization? Will a platform or single vendor solution emerge? Some of the big players like Oracle, Adobe, and Salesforce are certainly trying, opting in a big way for buy vs. build. (These three have led a frenzy of acquisitions in the marketing technology space.)

Yet significant roadblocks still exist to widespread adoption of marketing analytics in business today — and for companies to extract real value from it. The lack of data science skills we’ve all heard about by now till we’re blue in the face — it’s the “sexiest job title in the country,” blah blah blah. Big shortages, universities scrambling to launch graduate programs, etc, etc. But should this technology really require a PhD in every marketing department and agency in the land? That simply doesn’t compute! Why can’t there be more solutions, more tools, that marketers and general business folks — regular Joes and Janes — can use? Why does it all have to be so complex?

Well, I’m confident more answers will be forthcoming, or at least some enlightenment along the way. It’s still the early innings in this game. An attempt to dissect the landscape was recently undertaken by VentureBeat Insights. It’s a lengthy report, months in the making, which they were kind enough to let me get a look at. It’s entitled “The State of Marketing Analytics: Insights in the Age of the Customer.” Here’s a link to the summary. It provides a good overview of vendors and tools available today across all areas of marketing analytics use cases.

Pity the CMO

The report begins: “There’s more data available than ever, and that’s exactly why it’s so challenging to truly make sense of marketing data. While cloud-based data platforms have accelerated the availability and access of marketing data, it hasn’t made the marketer’s job any easier. It’s just the opposite. ‘Mo’ data, mo’ problems.’”

The VentureBeat report author goes on: “CMOs are more challenged than ever. If they’re going to spend more, they need to deliver more. The latest Duke CMO Survey clearly shows that marketing organizations feel more pressure than ever to prove their value. In fact, 65% of respondents report that pressure from their board or CEO is increasing. At the same time, 65 percent say they lack the ability to really measure marketing impact accurately. That means a huge opportunity is buried in the data, waiting to be uncovered.”

An opportunity, and also a warning: “Budgets are shifting to the CMO to take advantage of this opportunity — but those who can’t manage the data will simply be taken advantage of”… and that would be by the technology vendors. So, fair warning: they’re always happy to sell you another point solution to add to the pile you may already have. But, cruelly, that can just add to the the complexity — which is the problem.

Just Give Me the Data That Matters

Two of the insights from the VentureBeat report that I found interesting:

1) Today, there’s a “general lack of ability to prove which data matters” — which it attributes to a skills gap. And that lack of ability can be at least partially ascribed to a lack of “self serve” tools — those that are “marketer ready.” I take that to mean tools that a non-technical marketing person can use. Or at least that a data scientist, whom you must train in marketing, could easily use. (But first you must recruit and hire that person in an extremely competitive talent marketplace. More on that later.)

2) Measuring marketing ROI is not getting easier, as you might think. It’s actually getting more complex and challenging. Why? Because “the answers to these performance metrics are buried in marketing data from dozens, if not hundreds of data sources. And the first step is understanding what those data sources are all about.”

Sounds like a ton of work, huh? It is.

More on that last point, this from a post called “Marketing technology is eating the customer journey”):

“Today’s marketers own more customer data and touchpoints than ever before, and more than any other department. New digital channels and devices — including search, social media, and mobile — have empowered consumers and complicated the customer journey. On each of these, consumers create unprecedented amounts of data about themselves and their interests. And as a result, both the process and technology of modern marketing have expanded as a result of these changes in consumer behavior… Today, digital offers new channels for engagement and accurate measurements to learn from. What’s more, as marketing’s reach has grown, the traditional roles of sales and support have diminished because consumers increasingly inform and support themselves.”

And more — this from “Building a marketing tech stack that drives retention,” a post by martech vendor Sailthru:

“With more than 2,000 companies across the marketing technology landscape, it’s daunting to figure out exactly which products and services you really need… Unlike more mature technology sectors, marketing tech does not yet have a consistent, established ‘stack’ of components.”

The importance of measuring marketing performance in today’s enterprise is further emphasized by a finding in the VentureBeat “State of Marketing Analytics” report:

“Despite marketer confidence in their ability to use the data effectively being relatively low, marketers across all levels, including CMOs, view marketing analytics as being extremely important to the financial success of the firm, not just the marketing organization.”

There’s a lot riding on the shoulders of the CMO. And marketing performance or ROI — the by-product of marketing analytics technology — is a huge part of that weight.

In its survey, VentureBeat asked the marketing execs it surveyed (sample size: 1000+) what were their use cases for marketing analytics. Here are the top five:

Customer acquisition
Customer retention
Ad/campaign effectiveness
Customer lifetime value
Customer behavior/audience insights

Duke Isn’t Only Good at Basketball

Another key source for understanding the field of marketing technology today, as mentioned earlier, is the Duke CMO Survey. This semiannual survey surfaces trends in the budgets and priorities of chief marketing officers at top U.S. firms. The February 2015 study was conducted across a sample of 2,630 marketing execs. Here are two key questions they asked those execs about marketing analytics; there are some surprising answers to the second one:

1) What are the areas in which you are using marketing analytics to drive decision-making?

Customer acquisition 37.8%
Customer retention 30.2%
Social media 27.4%
Product line/assortment optimization 26.4%
Branding 26.0%
Pricing strategy 23.3%
Promotion strategy 21.9%
Marketing mix 19.8%
Multichannel marketing 14.6%

2) What factors prevent your company from using more marketing analytics?

Marketing analytics does not offer sufficient insight 21.9%
Marketing analytics does not arrive when needed 19.8%
Marketing analytics is overly complex 19.4%
Marketing analytics are not highly relevant to our decisions 19.1%

Those negative answers should certainly be a wake-up call for the industry.

Two key bright spots in the Duke report (especially for vendors), courtesy of the TrackMaven blog:

1) Marketing budgets are expected to rebound to the highest point in more than three years. Top marketing execs have lofty budgetary expectations. Over the next 12 months, CMOs expect marketing budgets to increase by 8.7%, the highest forecasted increase since August 2011.

2) CMOs expect their spending on marketing analytics to nearly double. Over the next three years, CMOs expect their spending on marketing analytics — defined by the Duke survey as “the creation and use of quantitative data about customer behavior” — to increase by 83%, up from a 6.4% share of the overall marketing budget to 11.7%.

So there are some positives. But another big downer from the Duke CMO survey:

“Only 40% of CMOs report the ability to prove the impact of short-term marketing spend on their business, and even fewer (34%) can qualitatively prove that impact in the long term.”

The obvious conclusion, again: there is much work ahead.

Wait, What, There’s a Skills Gap? (Duh)

VentureBeat’s “State of Marketing Analytics” report says marketing organizations need to “cultivate hard data science skills to stay ahead of the curve.” It notes that Gartner predicted 4.4 million data science jobs will be available by this end of this year, but only one-third of them will be filled.

Here’s another view on the topic of the skills shortage (from “Marketers are about to make new friends — or not — with data scientists”):

“Data scientists will soon take a lot of jobs away from marketers. The reasons are simple:

1) There’s already more data produced and mined every day than anyone can make sense of. Business gets this and is moving to incorporate data analytics into every facet of the organization.

2) Virtually every marketing technology of note (and there are many) is either a data analytics solution or a solution almost wholly reliant on reams of data.

3) Marketers simply don’t have the required skills to leverage these techs, or the underlying data. Unfortunately, that seems to be true at every level of the marketing organization.

Net-net, the ecosystem is changing, and the winds do not favor marketers with no data science game.”

The writer cites three types of firms in which he believes traditional marketers will soon be displaced by a new breed of data scientists cum marketers: enterprises, agencies, and marketing technology vendors. Yep, that pretty much covers it all!

The implication isn’t that overall marketing employment will not be increasing (though it might) — but that its makeup will be reapportioned. Marketing will become more about science than art. (Not news to those of us marketers who’ve been following this shift for a while.) Lesson: sharpen up those analytics skills.

But all this talk about the need for more advanced-degree data geeks would be lessened if vendors could just develop tools that non-techies can use. It’s hard to argue that, in the software technology world, those that can make the complex simple always seem to win.

One category of marketing analytics software where this is already being seen was called out in the VentureBeat report: “Self-service analytics with a big focus on data visualization (like Tableau) has found its way into marketing organizations at many levels.” Other vendors are surely noticing that one (very successful) company is proving the point.

What’s a Marketer To Do, Now?

With all this change going on in marketing, and science gaining on art in job descriptions and resumes everywhere, you can’t sit still. But there is no simple, universal action plan. The VentureBeat reports says it well: “Marketing analytics is as complex as it is unique to the individual performing it. There is no one way of prioritizing the right kinds of metrics, for the right channels, for the right products, with the right people, under the right organizational model.” Here’s a summary of their recommendations:

Develop a completely custom digital marketing analytics roadmap that incorporates establishing a well-defined strategy for your analytics organization firmly aligned to business outcomes.
Then, establish your technology requirements.
Next, define all the messy organizational requirements for your analytics strategy.

And they rightfully end with this point: “Your metrics and KPIs will be completely unique to you, but consult with experienced marketing analytics agencies in your industry. They’ll help you figure out which metrics to track.“

Land of 10,000 Data Pros (well, almost)

It goes without saying that one big thing you need to do is keep learning. Soak in as much as you can. In that vein, I must mention an upcoming conference here in what myself and my data colleagues also like to call “The State” of analytics — Minnesota! (I’m co-organizing it with Lizzy Wilkins, a marketing-focused data scientist.)

It’s the 2nd Marketing Analytics conference from MinneAnalytics, so “MAMA2” for short, and it’s scheduled for January 22, 2016 in Minneapolis. It will be educational in nature, and we expect more than 600 attendees. MinneAnalytics is the largest local/regional organization in the country for data professionals, with more than 5600 members from the region (and growing), from startups to our many Fortune 500s, across a wide range of industries. It hosts free, sponsor-supported conferences. More details on MAMA2 will be forthcoming on the MinneAnalytics web site. (You may also follow the Twitter feed.)

One thing I can say about the conference: it will be keynoted by the leading voice in the country today on the topic of marketing technology. We have spots for up to 20 other experts to give presentations on a variety of marketing analytics technologies and case histories. Those speakers (and sponsors) are now converging. It’s sure to be an enlightening event.

A Story About Genomics & ‘Precision Medicine’

September 3, 2015 By Steve Borsch

What if you could get a free eBook* that would help you understand a lot more about a field that has already made a big impact on the human race, and is one that is accelerating toward a revolution in precision medicine? A woman uniquely suited to telling this story has already created the eBook prototype and needs your help in getting it to the point of launching.

You’ve heard about DNA, right? How about the term “genomics”? Of course you have since you’re living in 2015 and watch CSI, Sherlock and other shows where they use this field to catch murderers, rapists and those who shed their cells at crime scenes. It’s likely you’ve also read about almost-weekly major breakthroughs in medicine—especially those enabling precision medicine which target treatments at an individual’s unique genetic makeup—but probably thought like I have, “Sounds cool but I kinda, sorta don’t really get the whole genomics thing.”

If you help this woman get the story out, you will be able to “get it” with genomics in an entertaining way (plus I’m going to connect with an education technology leader in my local school district since it will be perfect for school kids).

An artist I’ve known for 25 years, Lynn Fellman, has done amazing work for the last decade on interpreting DNA in to various forms of media, including interactive multimedia back in the 1990s to print, textiles and more today.

She doesn’t toot her own horn enough (which I’m trying to get her to do more of) but she’s been on NPR Science Friday multiple times (and Ira Flatow is a huge, and supportive, fan); a Fulbright scholar within evolutionary genomic research at Ben-Gurion University; and has worked with genomic scientists at Baylor in Texas and at the University of Minnesota.

During a personal healthcare experience she became very frustrated at the lack of DNA knowledge out there and knew she was uniquely suited to do something about it…so she is.

In a few short months she’s built a prototype and just began this crowdfunding campaign to complete her illustrated, interactive eBook. It’s premise is a character looking for precision medicine for herself and for everyone. It is designed for a general audience and its focus is as a guide to understanding our genome.

She asked me for my opinion on her initial beta version of the eBook and I was so surprised and delighted that I encouraged her to move ahead and immediately. When she did I offered to help get the word out and that is why I’m writing this post.

Check it out and please support her so this eBook can get out in to the world. When you go to her crowdfunding page, scroll down and see the incredible gifts you can receive for the various funding levels.

Here is Lynn’s crowdfunding page for the eBook

Learn more about Lynn, her work, & Fellman Studio

*In order to fully deliver on the interactivity, she’s creating it in Apple’s iBook Author (which is the best possible way to deliver interactive eBooks, by the way) and the eBook will be available for free to anyone with a Macintosh computer, iPad, or iPhone.

TrackIf, Led By Doug Berg, Raises $5M Series A

August 18, 2015 By Graeme Thickins

Three-time Minnesota entrepreneur Doug Berg announced today that his latest startup, TrackIf, has raised a $5 million Series A financing round, co-led by Origin Ventures and Grotech Ventures. Existing investor Chicago Ventures also participated.

TrackIf has developed a technology that allows transactional sites and mobile apps to add white-labeled product tracking, which captures future purchase intent and converts it into revenue using personalized email alerts. The company says several of the largest online retailers in the world already rely on TrackIf to maximize revenue per customer. The company is headquartered in Minneapolis, MN with key executives in both San Francisco and New York.

Origin Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm founded in 1999. It is based in Chicago and composed entirely of former operators and engineers. The firm invests in emerging software, marketplace, and content companies capable of exponential growth. Previous investments include Grubhub (NYSE:GRUB), DialogTech, Ahalogy, and Windsor Circle. CrunchBase says it has made 32 investments in 20 companies, and is currently investing out of its third fund. Its exits include one IPO and one acquisition.

Grotech Ventures is a early investor in high-potential technology companies. Founded in 1984, it’s headquartered in Vienna, VA. It seeks innovative, early-stage investments across the IT landscape and continues to invest and add value throughout the life cycle of each portfolio company. The firm has a strong combination of financial backing, industry relationships, and deep domain and operational expertise to accelerate growth. With more than $1.3 billion in committed capital, Grotech supports early-stage companies through investments starting at $500,000. CrunchBase reports it has made 77 investments in 54 companies, and its exits include one IPO and nine acquisitions.

The news release follows:

TrackIf Raises $5 Million To Fuel Its Growing Customer Centric Marketing & E-Commerce Solutions

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – TrackIf, a leader in online tracking and intelligent alerting for future purchase intent, today announced it has raised a $5 million Series A financing round, co-led by Origin Ventures and Grotech Ventures. Existing investor Chicago Ventures also participated.

TrackIf is an embeddable technology in leading e-commerce sites and mobile apps that, for the first time, gives shoppers options when they cannot or will not buy on their first visit to a site. With TrackIf’s white label technology, e-commerce companies can capture future consumer purchase intent and convert it into newfound revenue by sending personalized email alerts on changes such as price drops, new items and items coming back in stock.

TrackIf’s initial retail customers have seen tremendous results, with some capturing as much as $1 million in future purchase intent per day from their online visitors. TrackIf has sent over 65 million personalized emails to date, with nearly 50x better open rates and 20x greater conversion rates– results rarely seen with even the best retargeting campaigns.

TrackIf’s customers include several of the top 25 Internet retailers (including the largest home improvement retailer), Neiman Marcus (Last Call), Build.com, Cost Plus World Market, Joie, and many others.

Trackif integrates easily into e-commerce sites by installing a simple script which gives shoppers the ability to opt-in to get alerts on specific products, categories, or areas of any site. This means even the largest sites can deploy this capability quickly with very little integration and provide Pinterest-like capabilities that are branded to any site.

Among the tracking and alerting capabilities that TrackIf retail customers have deployed are:

Price Drops (on customer-specified products)
Product Availability (in/out of stock + limited quantities)
New Products Added (by category, brand, size, color, other)
New Reviews Added
Gift Registry Tracking (wedding, baby, graduate)
Favorite Products (Pinterest-like wish list with alerting)
Wish List Alerting (On existing wish lists within any site)

“We’re in a Pinterest economy now, where consumers want to pick and choose the products they want, from the sites they want, at the prices they want. Shopping sites that embed this type of experience into their sites will not only delight their customers, but can multiply their results,” said Doug Berg, CEO and Founder of TrackIf.

When successfully deployed, the TrackIf solution enhances retailers’ CRM systems, which traditionally are limited to only tracking what consumers have purchased in the past. TrackIf adds the capability to compile and act on data that signals what large groups of shoppers are going to buy in the future. Many TrackIf customers have altered their fulfillment and reordering processes as a result of the new demand intelligence they get from TrackIf’s products.

“TrackIf has impressive growth in this new category of customer-centric marketing. Many of the world’s most respected online retailers are getting instant results with measurable ROI,” said Jason Heltzer, Partner at Origin Ventures. “We believe this new category of marketing will be a must-have capability for any transactional site or mobile app that wants to personalize the consumer experience and maximize revenue-per-customer.”

As a part of the financing, Jason Heltzer from Origin Ventures and Lawson DeVries from Grotech Ventures will join the Board of Directors at TrackIf.

About Trackif

TrackIf is the leader in online tracking and intelligent alerting. Its technology empowers transactional sites and mobile apps to add white-labeled product tracking that captures future purchase intent and converts it into revenue using personalized email alerts. Several of the largest online retailers in the world rely on TrackIf to maximize revenue per customer. To date, TrackIf has sent over 65 million personalized emails, with nearly 50x better open rates and 20x greater conversion rates– results rarely seen with even the best retargeting campaigns. TrackIf is headquartered in Minneapolis, MN with key executives in both San Francisco, CA, and New York, NY.

About Origin Ventures

Origin Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm founded in 1999, based in Chicago and composed entirely of former operators and engineers. The firm invests in emerging software, marketplace, and content companies capable of exponential growth. Previous investments include Grubhub (NYSE:GRUB), DialogTech, Ahalogy, and Windsor Circle.

About Grotech Ventures

Founded in 1984, Grotech Ventures is a leading early investor in high-potential technology companies. Grotech seeks innovative, early-stage investments across the IT landscape and continues to invest and add value throughout the life cycle of each portfolio company. The firm has a strong combination of financial backing, industry relationships, and deep domain and operational expertise to accelerate growth. With more than $1.3 billion in committed capital, Grotech supports early-stage companies through investments starting at $500,000.

… [Read More…]

TechnovationMN Makes Furst Class Appearance at World Competition

June 26, 2015 By Phil Wilson

We’ve kept close track of how the the Minnesota teams from TechnovationMN have fared as they progressed through the global Technovation Challenge competition. We’re happy to say that team Furst Class Techies walked away with the Audience Choice Award and an Honorable Mention in the Middle School Division at the World Pitch Technovation competition in San Francisco.

Andrea Richard, Rylee Melius, and Lydia Mindermann’s app, Mayo FreeTime, was developed to help patients at Mayo Clinic find things to do between appointments, helping them and their families reduce stress, anxiety, boredom, sadness, or loneliness. The team was guided by Coach Sharie Furst, Kasson-Mantorville Middle School STEM teacher and Mentor Kris Kendall, Software Engineer at IBM Rochester.

Team members commented, “Winning the Audience Choice Award was empowering, energizing, and we were really proud. The whole World Pitch experience was awesome!”

This competition brings finalists together from the Global Technovation Challenge, a technology entrepreneurship competition for girls. World Pitch recognized 10 finalist teams from India, Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, and the United States.

Additionally, Jean Weiss, Executive Board Member of Technovation[MN] was also recognized by Technovation for her outstanding dedication and leadership as a Technovation Regional Ambassador. (As a board member of TechnovationMN I can say, without hesitation, there is no one more deserving than Jean to be recognized in this way).

Cheers to all involved with TechnovationMN, especially the young women who represent a bright future for technology.

(Programming note-Shawn Stavseth, Executive Director and Co-founder of TechnovationMN will join us for the Minnov8 Gang Podcast available on 7/27/15)

Celebrating The Future Of Women Developers In Minneapolis

May 9, 2015 By Phil Wilson

Photo: Matt Gray for Technovation[MN]

Much has been made of the lack of women working in the technology industry, we talk about it a lot on the podcast, especially when it comes to programmers and developers. Facts and figures abound to support the thesis. Save yourself some reading… walk into any software development shop and it will it you square in the head. Yeah, not a lot of women in front of those screens or in that morning standup.

For whatever reason you want to cite for this lack of X chromosomes (education, environment, etc.), we have a lot of work ahead to get more young women interested in technology as a career…and I’m happy to say we aren’t shying away from the task.

Photo: Matt Gray for Technovation[MN]

Last Sunday I had the great privilege to be on hand for Appapalooza in Minneapolis, the culmination of the regional Technovation Challenge. I am also a board member of TechnovationMN, a group dedicated to inspiring young women to create mobile applications that benefit our community.

The event saw the presentations of 22 middle school and six high school teams. These teams of two to seven girls showcased everything from medical alert apps to networking apps for students studying abroad. They not only coded the apps, they researched the competitive landscape, drafted a business plan and outlined how to bring them to market.

Photo: Matt Gray for Technovation[MN]

I wish you could have felt the energy in the room as these young women presented and watched others present. The room erupted more than once as local women in technology spoke to inspire the audience of teams, mentors, teachers, friends and parents.

The awards ceremony was crazy as four teams including were selected for the next level in the Technovation challenge. It was electric. Check out the list of regional finalists.

Minnesota ‘Mompreneur’ Launches Parent App and Crowdfunding Campaign

April 22, 2015 By Graeme Thickins

Karla Lemmon has done it. She’s left a successful corporate career as a product manager to pursue her dream of becoming a tech entrepreneur and marketing her own app — an app for which she’s convinced there’s a big need.

Little Peanut on the Go is a personal-assistant mobile app for parents to help them stay organized and connected when they or their children are away from home. It lets parents create packing lists and to-do lists, build care schedules to share with caregivers, and connect with their children while they’re away with updates and photos. Little Peanut on the Go just became available this month, first in the Google Play App Store for Android devices. It’s expected to be available very soon in the iOS App Store. (UPDATE: it’s there!)

This month was also Karla’s official start date for taking the reins of her own firm, Karimack Productions LLC, on a fulltime basis — and beginning the process of marketing her new app. She says she’s had several business ideas over the years, “but Little Peanut on the Go is the idea that gave me the passion to actually pursue entrepreneurship.” Read more about Karla’s story in her own words on her blog.

Previously, Karla was employed by Honeywell for a dozen years in a variety of progressively responsible positions. Most recently, she was a program manager, where she managed all aspects of a SaaS communications application, including product design and development, marketing, pricing, usability and quality testing, and deployment. Karla has a mechanical engineering degree and also holds an MBA from the University of Saint Thomas. Read more about her background on her LinkedIn profile.

I first learned about Karla’s new venture last fall when I attended and reported on the 2014 “MobCon” mobile conference in Minneapolis. In my recap of the event, I wrote about how she took first prize in the startup pitch competition — going up against some pretty smart guys! — winning $25,000 in cash and services in the process. As I said at the time, I was pretty blown away with the quality of her pitch and her app.

While Karla was self-funding the development and testing of her app, she realized she’d need to raise some funds to begin the marketing process once the app was available for download. But how? After considering various options, she chose to do a crowdfunding campaign — but not on Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, where it can be hard to get noticed. Rather, Karla decided to use a site designed specifically for women entrepreneurs: Plum Alley. Her campaign to raise just a modest $7500 is underway there, and it’s doing well in the short time it’s been live. Read about Karla’s decision to go with Plum Alley in a recent blog post she wrote.

So, tell your mommy friends — and grandparents, too! Have them download the app. And, let’s see if we can help Karla reach her funding goal. You can support her project right here on Plum Alley. Creative, smart, hard-working Minnesota women entrepreneurs like Karla deserve our support!

Also, be sure to follow Little Peanut On the Go on Twitter, and Like the app here on Facebook.