Emerging MN Companies

Workface Lands $900k in Venture Capital

July 26, 2011 By Steve Borsch

We were delighted to see that friend of Minnov8, Lief Larson and crew, have landed $900k to accelerate their vision of delivering a platform to maximize sales force and customer service engagement for organizations.

The Gang has used Workface’ profiles since the beginning and have watched this startup closely as they’ve continued to execute on their vision.

From their press release:

More than 75,000 professionals and over 2,500 different companies are now using Workface technology to enable their sales and customer service staffs to engage with prospects and customers online and in real time.

“Our ‘profile’ technology helps companies shorten sales cycles, connect with prospects at the moment of interest, and increase the level of engagement and intimacy with customers,” said Lief Larson, Workface founder and CEO. “This new round of capital will help us grow revenue from existing customers, add new customers and focus on several key platform enhancements.”

Congrats Lief and crew! See the full press release below…

… [Read More…]

Minnesota Cup Honors ‘High Quality’ Crop of Semifinalists

June 22, 2011 By Graeme Thickins

I stopped into a reception held last evening at the U of M’s Carlson School for this year’s group of semifinalists in the annual Minnesota Cup. It’s the seventh year of this business plan competition, which has gained broad support from our business community. I had a chance to interview cofounder Scott Litman, who talked about this year’s applicants and the process the semifinalists would now be going through as the competition continues.

After an opening reception in the atrium, a series of speakers and presentations followed in an adjoining auditorium. The main focus of these talks was to inform and instruct the 47 semifinalist teams (across six categories, called “divisions”) about how they can best prepare for the ongoing judging. That includes the opportunity for each these startups to work with their choice of “Mentors” chosen by the Minnesota Cup and the Carlson School (a major sponsor). A list of 47 such mentors, with their bios, was handed out, and John Stavig of the Carlson School is coordinating the choice of mentors by the semifinalists. Most all the mentors are graduates of the U of M, the majority with degrees from the Carlson School, and they represent a wealth of business-building experience.

What’s next for the Minnesota Cup semifinalists? Here’s what we learned last evening about the upcoming schedule:

• Each semifinalist submits a 20-page business plan by midnight July 22nd.

• The division finalists are announced on August 19th

• The division finalists present and winners are selected on Augusts 30th

• The division winners present to the Grand Prize Review Board the afternoon of September 8th

• The Minnesota Cup awards event is held the evening of September 8th at the U’s McNamara Alumni Center

Congratulations and good luck to all the semifinalists! And thanks to the many sponsors and partners of the Minnesota Cup, as well as to Scott and his cofounder, Dan Mallin, for helping another great crop of our state’s startups go through their excellent program. I really believe all the entrants (1000+ this year) are winners, because they get an opportunity to learn so much from the process. Go, Minnesota startups!

George Reese on “The Cloud’s Shining Moment,” Four Days Later

April 25, 2011 By Graeme Thickins

(Note: This post first appeared earlier today on the writer’s personal blog, Tech~Surf~Blog.)

The major Amazon Web Services outage that began this past Thursday morning was unlike anything before it. Countless AWS customers, big and small, went down, many for days. Surprisingly, other biggies like Netflix, SmugMug, and Twilio had little or no disruption. One hungers to know why…

Over the weekend, George Reese, a cloud expert and author (and CTO of cloud-management tools company enStratus), wrote a fascinating post on O’Reilly about what some would call a cloud disaster — entitling it, ironically enough, “The Cloud’s Shining Moment.” George has a unique perspective on the cloud, and a large following. His post got huge play, and that continues — so I decided to message him on Twitter and set up a coffee so I could interview him Monday morning. I was anxious for him to elaborate on his post and share more of his thoughts, now that the outage is (mostly) behind us.

Click on the link below to hear the whole chat. What follows here are some snippets from that 30-minute conversation (it was recorded in a busy coffee shop, so there’s background noise, but you can hear us fine):

• Thursday at 3:00 am: “We knew something significant was going down.”
• What happened, who was affected, and why.
• What about SLAs? “They’re not an insurance policy, they’re a refund policy… SLAs are a joke.”
• The “Design for Failure” approach vs. traditional application architecture gives you “control over your own destiny.”
• Why the AWS outage was a shining moment: it’s about learning what you can do in the face of an event like this. “So many survived.”
• The “cloud haters” came out after the O’Reilly post. Flame wars erupted in the comments. George pre-empted what they thought was, ahem, their shining moment!
• In large corporations, the “Department of No” is the real problem.
• George guarantees that CIOs who say their companies are not in the cloud actually are, and just don’t know it. Many others realize the cloud “genie is out of the bottle,” and are now coming to his firm, to be their window into what’s really going on in the cloud.
• George’s company now makes it possible to do “cross-cloud” backup and disaster recovery. Not only can customers do automated DR, but automated DR testing, too.
• He says his company is at “the most important point” in its life and the evolution of the cloud. In the last six months, “enterprise has gotten it.” He noted that he’s never spoken to so many Fortune 100 companies as he has in the past week.

• Download or listen to my interview of George Reese, CTO of enStratus … (MP3)

Two other excellent blog posts we touched on that came out over the weekend:
• “How SmugMug survived the Amazonpocalypse,” by Don MacAskill, Cofounder & Chief Geek
• “Seven lessons to learn from Amazon’s outage,” by Phil Wainewright, ZDnet

(Here’s more about my interview subject: George Reese has been delivering software as a service since 2003 when he founded Valtira, a suite of web-based marketing tools. Prior to Valtira, George held a variety of technology leadership roles with J. Walter Thompson, Carlson Marketing Group, and startups Ancept and Imaginet. George is the author of several O’Reilly books on Internet and enterprise technologies, including Java Database Best Practices and Managing and Using MySQL and the recently released Cloud Application Architectures. He has an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a B.A. in Philosophy from Bates College in Lewiston, ME. Follow him on Twitter @georgereese.)

Full Disclosure: As mentioned during the recorded interview, the writer had a consulting relationship with enStratus in 2009.

Minnesota ‘Brand Storyteller’ Changes Name to Brandpoint

March 14, 2011 By Graeme Thickins

Hopkins-based ARAcontent, which has been a leader in content-based marketing solutions for more than 15 years, announced today it has changed its name to Brandpoint, underscoring the organization’s evolution from a provider of traditional PR brand storytelling into a comprehensive, content-based digital marketing platform.

Brandpoint offers three core product channels, each enhanced by accurate, real-time reporting of results:

• Media creation and distribution: Consumer-focused feature articles help clients tell their brand stories, and provide high-quality content to a network of online publishers. Brandpoint guarantees clients online placement of their articles through its powerful, cost-effective media creation and distribution service.

• Search engine optimization (SEO): Brandpoint provides full SEO consulting services that range from website audits to keyword analysis. Placement of quality content on trusted media websites is an effective way for brands to increase their SEO relevancy.

• Social media: Brandpoint supports clients’ social media strategies with outreach tools and writing services that help brands maintain and grow their social media presence.

“Changing our name to Brandpoint reflects how our business has evolved from a heritage of print article distribution into a comprehensive content-based digital marketing platform,” said David Olson, SVP and general manager of Brandpoint, in the company’s news announcemnet. “As the online marketing landscape becomes more dynamic, consumers are connecting with each other and the companies they patronize in new and exciting ways. By following consumer trends and continually integrating new services such as social media and SEO, Brandpoint is nicely positioned to serve as our clients’ strategic partner today and in the future.”

The parent company of Brandpoint, and another product called Adfusion, is ARAnet. It is an article-based digital media company that educates consumers, builds brands, and drives sales through product offerings that focus on digital advertising, SEO, and public relations, and leverage content and technology to achieve clients’ specific campaign goals. The company began life 15 years ago as Article Resource Association, providing copyright-free content to print media across the country. As the digital marketing world evolved, the company maintained its front-runner position by developing new content-based marketing tools and utilizing emerging technologies for a broad portfolio of public relations industry, corporate, and interactive agency clients.

Today, Brandpoint is recognized as a pioneer in content-based digital marketing and real-time reporting of measurable, effective results. For more information, call (866) 287-9168 or visit the company’s web site at www.brandpoint.com, where you can also click on an online demo.

Bloomington Firm Expects to Add 300 High-Tech Jobs

November 11, 2010 By Graeme Thickins

Twin Cities Business (TCB) magazine reported today that Polar Semiconductor Inc. (PSI) is planning to build a new facility, adding to its existing 200,000-square-foot facility in Bloomington, just East of the Mall of America on Old Shakopee Road. It cited documents recently filed with the City of Bloomington’s planning division. But the biggest news is it the firm expects the expansion will add 300 jobs eventually when the facility is completed.

Bet you didn’t know that we had a big-time semiconductor fab practically in the shadow of MOA, did you now? And it’s been there for more than 25 years, actually, under previous ownership. (More on that below.)

The current 200,000-square-foot facility at 2800 East Old Shakopee Road includes 62,000 square feet of cleanroom space. where the company performs semiconductor wafer fabrication. Chips cut from these wafers are used in a variety of electronic devices.

TCB reported that company officials are not yet disclosing information about the expansion. Quoting from the story: “Sources close to the deal said the initial phase of construction will likely result in the addition of about 80 new employees, and when completed, ‘the addition will have generated need for about 300 additional employees’.” No target date was stated for the expected completion of the new facility.

A report by the City of Bloomington’s planning and economic development division, said TCB, indicates the company hopes to expand on its existing property by adding 98,000 square feet. The building would occupy space north of the existing facility. (Shown above in an aerial photo.)

TCB said the planning division voted unanimously in favor of the expansion, and the City Council will vote Monday to make the final decision. “I have no reason to believe they won’t approve, but of course, can’t know for certain,” a representative of the planning division told TCB. She said PSI plans to begin construction in early 2011, and once the “shell” of the addition is complete, it will likely finish the interior through additional construction phases…. [Read More…]

In Its 24th Year, Venture Conference Asks If Minnesota Has ‘Lost It’

October 10, 2010 By Graeme Thickins

We’ll find out Thursday, because I’ll be there to live-blog it all: the proceedings of the annual Minnesota Venture & Finance Conference at the Minneapolis Convention Center, co-hosted as always by the Minnesota Venture Capital Association and The Collaborative. The blue-suit crowd will turn out once more to hash over where, oh, where is venture investing going in our state, and whether Minnesota is holding its own or falling behind in relation to other states.

This is great sport, people! We can’t beat Wisconsin in college football for seven years straight, but, oh yeah, we got those cheeseheads when it comes to the game of innovation! Or do we? (And, Gopher fans, I won’t even bring up South Dakota. Shees.)

“Innovation? Jobs? Has Minnesota lost it? Not for one day in October we haven’t,” says The Collaborative in one of its promos. “2010 marks our second full year of the worldwide recessionary malaise. Our state’s economy is also not what anyone is calling ‘robust’. Our unemployment rate is higher than it’s been in decades. On the plus side, we’re still one of the brightest economies in the nation,” the pitch goes on to say.

“The positive gap between our jobless rate as compared to the nation is at its highest in 30 years… Yet we also hear many reports of our state losing its way in innovation.”

Can you sense the drama, people? I’m nervously doing finger and hand exercises right now, in great anticipation of the nuances I may be able to capture on my Macbook or iPad (decisions, decisions) as I contemplate the live-blogging nirvana that awaits me Thursday. It has me breathing heavy.

“Last year, in the throes of the recession, 54 companies gave presentations, 400+ investors and entrepreneurs came, shared, and discussed growth in tough times,” said Dan Carr, CEO of The Collaborative, in his announcement of this year’s event. “It actually felt optimistic! These companies also go on to create jobs. Lots of them. Minnesota is 8th in the nation in venture backed employment: 365,000 jobs.” (No word on how many of those people may have been laid off in recent times because those ventures couldn’t raise enough money.)

Carr continues: “This year’s ‘homecoming’ promises another day-long celebration of ‘doing’ more than ‘hand wringing’. It’s true that some of our greatest companies rise from difficult times. Our annual conference has a knack for bringing together Minnesota’s best ‘Up & Comers’.”

… [Read More…]

Stealth Startup Inveni Launches Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in SF, and midVenturesLaunch in Chicago

September 28, 2010 By Graeme Thickins

Today, Minnetonka-based Inveni LLC is telling the world its newly launched discovery engine “will drive social recommendations in the Web’s next wave.” The company’s free consumer service will also enable better targeted advertising. The Inveni discovery engine, says the firm, will change how consumers both make and receive recommendations on the Web. As of today, the service is publicly available, after more than a year in development and several months of private beta testing. The company is making its debut at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in San Francisco, and also demonstrating its technology later today at the midVenturesLAUNCH startup conference in Chicago.

“The next wave of the Web will be about personalization. We’re focusing on using personalization to meaningfully improve discovery and decision making,” said Aaron Weber, CEO and cofounder. “The Inveni discovery engine leaps ahead of other online recommendation services. What we’ve developed is unlike anything previously available. Inveni consolidates ratings you put anywhere online – Netflix, IMDB, and more – provides tools to make and receive recommendations wherever you are, and helps you make better, more informed buying decisions.” The service has received positive feedback from users during the private beta over the past several months, said Weber.

Inveni provides its highly personalized product recommendations based on a consumer’s universal taste profile. To create a personalized taste profile, Inveni empowers users to aggregate product and service ratings they’ve made across the Internet to quickly build deep, rich profiles of their tastes. Beginning with the media categories of movies and TV, users can share their taste profile information with friends and other services online. Inveni also facilitates product recommendations between friends (word of mouth), based on their tastes.

“We use this taste profile data, along with our unique crowd-refined recommendation engine, to provide highly targeted advertising, while simultaneously providing consumers with a compelling personalized service for discovery and sharing,” said Robert Bodor, CTO and cofounder, “We aim to become the premier provider of highly targeted consumer data for advertising online. We do that by turning the current consumer data model upside down, putting the user in control of their information. We are entirely opt-in, and are raising the bar on consumer privacy protection.”

The company produced a fun, two-minute video to describe its value proposition to consumers, which you can view here. … [Read More…]

EarthClean Takes the MN Cup!

September 15, 2010 By Steve Borsch

Last night, EarthClean, a Minneapolis-based start-up that makes an environmentally friendly fire retardant, was named “Minnesota’s Top Breakthrough Business Idea” and honored for its innovative business concept. Area business leaders and investors selected EarthClean as the 6th Annual Minnesota Cup winner, awarding it $20,000 as Clean Tech & Renewable Energy Division winner and an additional $20,000 as grand prize recipient.

Founded in March 2009, EarthClean develops innovative, game-changing technologies and high performing products that are safe for plants, animals, fish and people. The start-up’s first product, TetraKO®, is a biodegradable and non-toxic water additive that helps firefighters knock down and suppress fires far more effectively than currently available suppressants. The product is pumped through standard fire equipment and adheres to any surface, in any attitude, of its targeted structure. Exposed to heat, TetraKO immediately attacks the fire tetrahedron (the chemical chain reaction of fuel, oxygen and heat) resulting in a dense, white steam that is cooler than the fire itself, thus further suffocating the blaze. The result is exceedingly fast and thorough extinguishment with far less fire destruction and water damage, and reduced risk for fire fighter professionals.

Congratulations to the EarthClean team! If you have a moment, check out this video on the fire retardant at WCCO.com and head on over to the MN Cup website and view the press release which is here.

MN Company Lets You Run Windows Apps on a Mac – the Easy Way

September 7, 2010 By Graeme Thickins

They say the best blogging is about story-telling. So, let me tell you one of mine — how I came to write this post. First, some background: I run a Windows-free environment, and have for a long time. I put in my time with “Windoz” many years ago, and quickly left it behind. I can’t even remember what version of the Mac OS I was using when that happened, but it was several iterations ago, and I upgraded through all those OS upgrades, loving the enhancements every step of the way. There are many reasons I became an Apple fanboy, and have happily stayed that way — but the biggest of them all was simply ease of use, across the whole Mac experience, and the much lower hassle factor all around. I value my time. I don’t want to be a computer geek. I just want to get stuff done. Mac fits the bill.

Today, thanks to the amazing advances of the Apple OS over the years and other Apple software offerings, I don’t have a single need to run a Windows app on my Mac. However, I realize many people do — they have a work reason, perhaps, to run Outlook, one of the Windows versions of Microsoft Office, or Internet Explorer, or other apps that just don’t (for some crazy reason) yet have a Mac version. I’ve been running the same Mac version of MS Office now for more than a decade; it works fine. (So, I can’t say I run a completely Microsoft-free environment; just a Windows-free one.) I also realize there’s another big universe of Mac users out there who want to run Windows on their machines: gamers. We’re not talking a work reason here (I don’t think!), but this is a big market. There are many more games available for the Windows platform than for Mac — though that is changing somewhat, since so many game apps are continually being introduced for the Mac iOS — that is, for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. (And the new “GameCenter” in Mac iOS 4.1, due next week, moves Apple even further into the games market.)

But why I am writing about running Windows on a Mac when I don’t have a need myself, and I’m certainly not a gamer? Well, before I tell you about “CrossOver Mac,” here’s why: I had a personal experience recently helping my daughter. She’s also a longtime Mac user, but she needed to run a single Windows app for her business, which was required by a government agency she had to deal with. So, I told her, sure, I’d help her figure out how she could do that. I of course knew about two programs designed to do that, called “Parallels” and “VMware Fusion,” either of which we could buy (for about $80, I think). And I told her I could help her get one of those installed on her Macbook. But we really didn’t like the idea of spending even that much money to run one little Windows app, maybe once a month — plus a friend, Steve Borsch, told me Windows doesn’t really run all that snappy with those programs, anyway.

But I was starting to think about buying one of those programs when another local friend, Gary Doan, said, “Wait, what about Boot Camp? That won’t cost you anything.” Apple started bundling that program with OS 10.5 and now 10.6, and you just need the original install disk to fire that up. Yes, plus a bonafide version of Windows, with an install disk — and we would have had to buy that. Cheapest I could find: an OEM version of 32-bit Windows 7 for $110 at our local Micro Center (closest thing we have to Fry’s here in MN). You can’t even buy Windows XP anymore, I learned, so that was not a cheaper option. That, combined with an onerous 14-page manual that Apple said you must print out and have by your side as you go through the detailed Boot Camp installation and configuration process, was making me start to think, screw this. Then I learned my daughter’s Macbook only has a half a gig of RAM, and would need at least 1G to run OS 10.6, which I wanted to upgrade her to, and preferably 2G. That would have cost me at least another $60, even if I installed the memory myself, which I really didn’t want to do. I thought, wait a minute, we’re getting close to $200 here — for something we really don’t want to do! Plus untold hours of my time screwing around to get it running.

Long story short: I found a brand-new HP Mini netbook on sale for $269 at OfficeMax (thanks to a friend’s tip), and I had a $30 off coupon! I told her I’d gladly pay for half of that. I figured I was coming out way ahead, considering I wouldn’t have to invest any time at all if we went with this option. Plus, she wanted a second computer anyway, just for email and web use on another floor of her house, and the HP Mini came with built-in wifi capability, so it was a pretty cheap option for that. Now, we’re both happy.

Which brings me to the subject of my post: there’s a much simpler way to run Windows on an Intel Mac — and it might just work for you. I wish I’d have known about it a week or two earlier, and I could have saved even more time (and money). It’s a product called CrossOver Mac, from the playfully named CodeWeavers, based in St. Paul, MN.

… [Read More…]

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