Emerging MN Companies

Minnesota Startup Community: The Time Has Come For Less Talk and More Walk

January 22, 2010 By Paul DeBettignies

“I wonder what the conversations will be like a year from now.” This is a paraphrase of a statement Doug Pollei made at the recent MinneBar hosted by Best Buy, which he said to me at the end of a startup session led by Luke Francl.

I heard some folks say how they look forward to a year from now to look back and see what has been accomplished within our startup community. I did not take the comment that way.

Most days and in most ways I am an optimist — my glass is half full and usually running over. Want proof? I have been attending Gopher football games for 28 years. (Or, hmm…maybe that makes me something other than an optimist?)

During this particular session at MinneBar there were many thoughts on what could be done to support, make better, and grow our startup community.

I hate to be one the one to rain on the parade, but almost all of those things were suggested in May of 2008 at the last MinneBar, and very few if any have been acted upon, nor have any noticeable results been achieved.

Hence the title of this post: we need to stop talking and start walking.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: We welcome guest blogger Paul DeBettignies for this post. Please tweet your questions to @Minnov8 now so we can answer them on our Minnov8 Gang podcast tomorrow, on which Paul will be our guest. Please add the hashtag #MNwalkthetalk.)… [Read More…]

Minnov8 Gang 63: A Conversation on Cloud Computing

January 17, 2010 By Steve Borsch

Talk about cloud computing is on the lips of people from startups to enterprise to the government, and Minnesota has a world-class thought leader right here in our midst. The Minnov8 Gang chatted with George Reese about his perspectives, books, upcoming events, and what he thinks about software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and how API’s fit in to this whole shebang.

Hosts: This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music by Midnight Music Quartet and the tune is, “Sweet Lorraine”.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:00:22 — 34.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

About George Reese (@GeorgeReese): George Reese is the founder of two Minneapolis-based companies, enStratus Networks LLC (maker of high-end cloud infrastructure management tools) and Valtira LLC (maker of the Valtira Online Marketing Platform). Over the past 15 years, George has authored a number of technology books, including MySQL Pocket Reference, Database Programming with JDBC and Java, Java Database Best Practices, and Cloud Application Architectures.

Throughout the Internet era, George has spent his career building enterprise tools for developers and delivering solutions to the marketing domain. He was an influential force in the evolution of online gaming through the creation of a number of Open Source MUD libraries and he created the first JDBC driver in 1996—the Open Source mSQL-JDBC. Most recently, George has been involved in the development of systems to support the deployment of transactional web applications in the cloud.

George holds a BA in Philosophy from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Illinois. He currently lives in Minnesota with his wife Monique and his daughters Kyra and Lindsey.

Discussed during the show notes:

CloudCamp Minneapolis 2 on Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at Microsoft office in Bloomington, MN.
Visi’s Reliacloud
Jumpbox
Dasein Cloud and OCCI
Apple data center in North Carolina
ProgrammableWeb
Apps.gov
Alvenda.

Soltrite: HD Videoconferencing

November 30, 2009 By Tim Elliott

Whether you call it video teleconference, video telepresence, webcamming, or just video chat – Soltrite does it. Soltrite is a Minneapolis based startup company founded by Scott Colesworthy, a Minnesota native and man of many hats with a track record of wins in the communication systems integration space. His first company, SPC Communications, originated in the 90’s and focused on voicemail. From there the company branched out into call center technologies under the name Soltris. At the peak in 2000 there were 42 employees and $7 million in annual sales before ultimately, both companies were sold to Avtex in 2003 for an undisclosed amount. Avtex, in turn, was acquired by the Pohlad Family of Companies in 2008 where it remains to this day within their IT portfolio (Marquette Technology Group).

After the sale of SPC/Soltris, Scott took a startup hiatus but his entrepreneurial spirit remained restless and decided to get back into the game, starting where any seasoned entrepreneur would: research. After hunting down the best identifiable opportunity with respect to his domain expertise, interest, and background, he found Vidyo – a small New Jersey based co with a patented video conferencing solution (that just so happens to power Google chat). He narrowed in on the specs and did his diligence, noting “Vidyo fits to a ‘T’ the principals Clayton Christenson lays out in his classic book titled “The Innovators Dilemma“”. In August 2009 he inked a license agreement with Vidyo to repackage the technology and deliver it to the mass market under the trade name Soltrite.

Soltrite delivers high quality multi party video conferencing over the ubiquitous public internet and provided the hardware device already has a webcam installed, there is no additional equipment to buy although a quality USB headset is recommended. Videoconferencing has been around since the invention of the television via two-way closed circuit, spanned into radio frequency with the help of NASA, struggled through early stage telephony experiments, and matured in the 90’s manifesting itself into mainstream apps like Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Skype, et.al.. … [Read More…]

DoApp Making Big Strides with ‘Mobile Local News’ App

October 16, 2009 By Graeme Thickins

DoApp-MobileLocal If you’re a TV news station, newspaper, or online news site, you probably should get to know Minnesota startup DoApp Inc. For those of you in our local tech community who already know of this firm (it launched early in 2008), you may find this fact amazing: on a search for “DoApp” in the Apple® iTunes® App Store, you’ll see the company now has — count ’em — no less than 84 apps published, available for download. Now, you may have known DoApp only for utility and game apps, with which it had early success soon after the App Store launched in mid-2008. The firm ended 2008 with well over 3 million downloads of those apps — 11 of them are now in the store (and most have been updated multiple times). But what are those other 70-some apps (and counting)?

Well, throughout 2009, DoApp has been busy on another front: its “Mobile Local News” app, which is an ad-supported iPhone app it co-developed with partner Inergize Digital Media of Minneapolis. The latter is also helping DoApp market the app, primarily signing up TV stations initially, which brand the app for their own use in their local market. And each of those branded versions of the app is distributed via the App Store to consumers, who download them for free. DoApp also has the app available for the Android mobile platform, with Blackberry and Palm Pre versions coming soon. (By the way, DoApp’s first customer for the iPhone mobile news app was our own WCCO-TV, Channel 4.)

Now, however, I learned from the DoApp folks at the recent MIMA Summit (where they did a demo), that they and their partner Inergize are spreading their wings even further — now offering to build and publish branded versions for newspapers and other publications, as well as online news sites.

DoApp is now touting its Mobile Local News as making citizen journalism easy. It says 50% of internet users will be generating content by 2010, and that 100 million Americans now get their news from a mobile device.

In a newsletter it just distributed, DoApp says this: “Now it’s easy for readers (and writers) to create user-generated content with Mobile Local News. With our app, you can connect with a television station or newspaper and be part of the news-making process. No press credentials required! DoApp’s Mobile Local News is the first and only local news platform to provide user-generated content. You can easily upload video, photos, and text from your mobile device. Report the news as it’s happening!”

As you might expect, DoApp is touting its Mobile Local News as a tool for “citizen journalism.” Get this: it says 50% of internet users will be generating content by 2010, and that 100 million Americans now get their news from a mobile device. They don’t cite a source for those numbers, but they square with what I’m hearing elsewhere.

In a newsletter DoApp just distributed, it says this:

“Now it’s easy for readers (and writers) to create user-generated content with Mobile Local News. With our app, you can connect with a television station or newspaper and be part of the news-making process. No press credentials required! DoApp’s Mobile Local News is the first and only local news platform to provide user-generated content. You can easily upload video, photos, and text from your mobile device. Report the news as it’s happening!”

To get more perspective on these recent developments, I asked DoApp founder (and early Google employee) Joe Sriver if he’d answer some questions, and he was kind enough to agree. Here is that email interview: … [Read More…]

‘RAIN Makers’ Event to Attract Angel Investors from Far and Wide

September 14, 2009 By Graeme Thickins

Members of the largest multi-state network of angel investor groups in the country will gather in Minneapolis for the 6th Annual RAIN Makers Conference (http://www.rainsourcecapital.com/rainmaker/conferenceinfo.cfm) on September 23-24 at the new Hilton in Bloomington. Sponsored by St. Paul-based Rain Source Capital (http://www.rainsourcecapital.com/), this event has been held in other cities throughout the Upper Midwest in previous years. In addition to members of the RAIN funds network of angels, this is the first year that members of the Angel Capital Association (http://www.angelcapitalassociation.org/) are also being invited. RAIN Source Capital is partnering with the ACA, which is dubbing the event a regional meeting for their organization, to encourage networking and sharing of best practices in investing and syndication.

RAIN Source Capital anticipates more than 100 angel investors representing its 23 funds across eight states will be in attendance, along with investors of other angel investment organizations. The company told me they expect a larger representation from the Twin Cities this year, of course, since the event is being held here. Any active or would-be angels (accredited investors) are welcome to register for the event, and RAIN said entrepreneurs may also register, although they will not be allowed to attend the second-day (Thursday) morning sessions.

Minnov8 is a media partner for the RAIN Makers Conference. Steve Borsch and myself will each be attending portions of the event, and we’ll have a table where we plan to do some audio and video interviews during breaks. (I’m returning from DEMOfall in San Diego late the night of the 23rd, and will attend RAIN Makers the morning of the 24th.)

The first day of the event, actually just the afternoon, will feature sessions devoted to trends in angel investing, due diligence tools and techniques, corporate governance/board service, valuation and deal terms, and patent landscaping, followed by a reception. One the second day, there will be a session in the morning devoted to four companies making presentations, chosen from among RAIN Source’s portfolio companies. The presenting firms have received an investment from at least one RAIN fund (angel network), but are now being syndicated to the rest of the fund network for additional financing. Those companies are:

• Inovus Solar http://www.inovussolar.com (Boise, ID) — This company has pioneered the next generation of outdoor street and area lighting that reduces dependence on the grid, power bills, maintenance bills, and CO2 pollutants. Its SmartPole™ and Visia™ LED retrofit product lines come from the minds of people who helped build companies like Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft. and CH2M Hill.

• Ntractive http://www.ntractive.com (Grand Forks, ND) — Ntractive launched the latest release of its product, Elements CRM 2.0, on July 21st, 2009. The release of Elements CRM 2.0 has garnered significant attention and recognition from Apple and the Mac market, including the honor of being named an Apple “Staff Pick.” Elements CRM is a Customer Relationship Management solution built on a new “hybrid” platform, which is part desktop and part cloud. Elements CRM is currently available on the Mac and iPhone.

• Pranah Storage Technologies http://www.pranah.com (Stillwater and Mendota Heights, MN) — Pranah designs and manufactures scale-out unified storage systems for the SMB market, in the under $50K market segment, the fastest growing part of the data storage industry. Its hardware and software systems are purpose-built for data storage, designed and built domestically, delivering simple, scalable, and flexible network storage. The efficient design behind the Pranah product makes it the most complete network storage system available in a 1U footprint.

• Recon Robotics http://www.reconrobotics.com (Edina, MN) — The company launched the Recon Scout® throwable reconnaissance robot in the local, county, and state police/SWAT market. Building on that successful start, it continues to design, develop, manufacture, distribute, and support miniature robotic systems. The company’s robots are specifically designed to provide real-time information in hazardous or restricted space areas, for military, police, and commercial markets worldwide. It has now sold more than 500 of its Recon Scout family of robots, has recently won a large military order, and has distributors in 28 countries.

After these companies present, in what’s being called a “Syndication Showcase,” attendees will divide into four breakout groups to discuss due diligence and investment recommendations relating to each of those firms. The afternoon of day two will feature panels focusing on the topic of exits, including M&A, the current market, and analysis of some of the RAIN Funds network syndicated investments and their exit potential.

Cosponsors for this year’s RAIN Makers Conference include the Blandin Foundation, Cimarron Capital Partners, Development Capital Networks, MN Deptartment of Employment & Economic Development, Oak Ridge Financial, Deloitte, Sage Group, ESD Group, Quazar Capital, Ethicon/J&J, Gray Plant Mooty, Granite Equity, Sofia Angel Fund, and South Metro Investors.

More About RAIN Source Capital

RAIN Source is a multi-state network of investment funds that are made up of angel investors who are interested in supporting growing companies. The company helps bring together like-minded angel investors to form individual RAIN funds, and then provides these funds with a process for due diligence, legal templates, management support, access to deal flow, and other resources.

RAIN funds share expertise, deals, and experience between and among RAIN Source Capital’s multi-state network to support growing companies throughout the area.

RAIN Source Capital works with angel investors in Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and other areas, where it expects to form additional RAIN funds in the next year. There are currently 23 RAIN funds located in:

• Minnesota – based in Alexandria, Grand Rapids, Worthington, Willmar, Montevideo, St. Cloud, Mankato, Northfield and Minneapolis.

• Iowa – based in Cedar Falls, Mason City, and Rock Rapids.

• North Dakota – based in Grand Forks, Fargo, and Bismark.

• South Dakota – based in Sioux Falls, Brookings, and Sisseton.

• Idaho – based in Boise.

• Montana – based in Kalispell.

RAIN funds range in size from seven to 61 members, who have pooled anywhere from $500,000 to $2 million for each fund. Each RAIN fund determines what industry(ies) it will focus on, and the type and level of financing to provide, based on the interests and expertise of its members. Each group or fund uses the proven RAIN fund model, with support from RAIN Source Capital’s headquarters staff, for identifying potential deals, performing due diligence, making investment decisions, and monitoring those investments. The RAIN fund network currently has more than $33 million invested in 55 companies.

For more information about the RAIN Makers Conference, please call Dawn Lundquist at RAIN Source Capital at 651-632-2140, or email her at dlundquist (at) rainsourcecapital (dot) com (dlundquist@rainsourcecapital.com).

Members of the largest multi-state network of angel investor groups in the country will gather in Minneapolis for the 6th Annual RAIN Makers Conference on September 23-24 at the new Hilton in Bloomington. Sponsored by St. Paul-based Rain Source Capital, this event has been held in other cities throughout the Upper Midwest in previous years. In addition to members of the RAIN funds network of angels, this is the first year that members of the Angel Capital Association are also being invited. RAIN Source Capital is partnering with the ACA, which is dubbing the event a regional meeting for their organization, to encourage networking and sharing of best practices in investing and syndication.

RAIN Source Capital anticipates more than 100 angel investors representing its 23 funds across six states will be in attendance, along with investors of other angel investment organizations. The company told me they expect a larger representation from the Twin Cities this year, of course, since the event is being held here. Any active or would-be angels (accredited investors) are welcome to register for the event, and RAIN said entrepreneurs may also register, although they will not be allowed to attend the second-day (Thursday) morning sessions.

The first day of the event will feature sessions devoted to trends in angel investing, due diligence tools and techniques, corporate governance/board service, valuation and deal terms, and patent landscaping, followed by a reception. One the second day, there will be a session in the morning devoted to four companies making presentations, chosen from among RAIN Source’s portfolio companies. The presenting firms have each received an investment from at least one RAIN fund (angel network), but are now being syndicated to the rest of the fund network for additional financing. Those companies are: … [Read More…]

Pranah: Data Storage for SMB Wins Sprout Award

August 20, 2009 By Steve Borsch

pranah Chances are that the computer you’re reading this post on contains a minimum of a 160GB hard drive. Like mine, it might be connected to a multi-TB backup device which, in turn, is connected to the cloud for online backup. Add to that all of the other computers and servers in our office and you can see that even a small firm like ours finds our needs for digital data storage is constantly outpacing whatever size drives or backup scheme we put in place for our network storage.

Pranah Storage Technologies, a company based in suburban Saint Paul, designs and manufactures data storage systems that “…bring simplicity and high efficiency to data-intensive environments in small to midsized businesses (SMBs)” and is a local company that should be on your radar.

Computer Reseller News (CRN), a trade rag I used to read faithfully when I was dealing with the reseller channel, has an offering called the “Everything Channel,” a sort of one-stop-shop online for I.T. value added resellers, system integrators and computer consulting groups. Because their readers look to them as seekers of the new and thought leaders when it comes to what they need strategically for their businesses and clients, the Everything Channel folks are always on the hunt for innovative and disruptive technologies.

Enter the Sprout Awards, a competition enabling them to discover all startups that fit within the innovative and disruptive category. … [Read More…]

FanChatter Goes to the Valley, Tapped by ‘American Idol’ for Startups: Y Combinator

August 6, 2009 By Graeme Thickins

Here’s a story many in Minnesota have been waiting to hear — including several of you out there in the local developer and ad communities who knew something was up. FanChatter-clients Yes, our friends at Minneapolis startup FanChatter have finally gone public with what they’ve been doing for the past four months. FanChatter is a site that “helps sports franchises and other businesses create a more profitable level of fan involvement through real-time content sharing.” (More on the company’s About page.) In April, it was chosen as one of the lucky few to be accepted into the summer program of Y Combinator (YC). Though the actual numbers aren’t announced, I’ve heard only 30 startups were chosen out of almost 1000 that applied. YC is an organization founded in 2005 that does seed funding for startups. Here’s how it explains what that means:

“Seed funding is the earliest stage of venture funding. It pays your expenses while you’re getting started. Some companies may need no more than seed funding. Others will go through several rounds. There is no right answer; how much funding you need depends on the kind of company you start. At Y Combinator, our goal is to get you through the first phase. This usually means: get you to the point where you’ve built something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale. Then we introduce you to later stage investors or occasionally even acquirers.” (More on Y Combinator’s About page.)

YC’s application process is well explained on their site, a process FanChatter went through earlier this year, before their selection in mid-April. After sitting on this story for some time, waiting for the TechCrunch post to break first (which is the normal way YC companies get announced), what follows is the result of a phone and email interview I did over the past few days with FanChatter founders Marty Wetherall and Luke Francl, who remain in Silicon Valley through August. (The third founder, Norm Orstad, was not available.) … [Read More…]

Minutebids: Get Free Bids on Commercial Property Services

August 6, 2009 By Tim Elliott

Do you own commercial real-estate or manage commercial property? Probably not – but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be paying attention to local Minnesota web startup Minutebids.com and the brains behind it: Jon Coudron, Jeremy Raadt, Jerad Parish, and Seth Heiserman.

Minutebids is a free service for property owners/managers that saves them time by streamlining the process of obtaining multiple bids from reputable local service providers for property maintenance needs. Think lawn-care, snow removal, parking lot maintenance, landscaping, etc.

Of course there already are established players in this space, notably ServiceMagic.com (turn your speakers down) & ServiceLive.com – owned by IAC & Sears holding corp, respectively. Yet Minutebids has some unique competitive advantages that, when added together, make it a compelling alternative:

A focus on commercial property: neither service is clearly targeting commercial property owners/managers.

Pay for performance model vs. pay per lead model: service providers only pay for bona-fide, actionable, and closed leads – contrary to the pricing model of the other two.

Service wizard with Microsoft Virtual Earth integration through the Bing Map API: This allows RFP’s to be uploaded/submitted painlessly and for service providers to bid projects online, in real time, without having to do a site visit/walk through. The competition doesn’t even come close to this feature.

Option to combine multiple properties and service types into one request: This saves the owner/manager time and increases the likely- hood for volume discounts. Again, unique to minutebids.

A short, professional, and effective video tutorial: From a user-experience perspective, this is a brilliant feature that both servicemagic & servicelive lack.

Minutebids has gone from concept, through R&D, to their recent beta launch (mid July) in less than six months and they’ve clearly established themselves as “better than the rest”. Their next step is to work directly with local service providers and property owners/managers to iron out any kinks, listen & lean from said users, and otherwise evolve as they prepare for their nation-wide roll-out campaign.

Time is of the essence as Minutebids must close-in on the incumbents before they discover the Minutebids difference for themselves, and thus potentially implement the very same feature-sets and technologies that minutebids is using to differentiate itself. This is a common challenge faced by any startup that’s not first to market, and in this case, I’d place my bets on the startup side with consideration to drive and agility. Plus: how do you re-engineer your pricing model in the middle of the game if you’re ServiceMagic or ServiceLive? Remember, the primary differentiating factor is the Minutebids pay for performance approach to lead generation–a fundamental difference.

According to co-founder Jon Coudron, the market for commercial RE services is at-least a $40 billion/year industry and he’s not shy about his ambitions:

“We want to dominate this market segment and want to talk if you think you can help us”

It’s the NGIN that will make TST Media go

July 27, 2009 By Steve Borsch

A company started in Eau Claire WI, TSTMedia, has moved to the Twin Cities in order to capitalize upon the talent pool, venture capital and (I assume) the balmy winter weather and to get faster access to Minnov8.

Seriously, this company has a uniquely strong value proposition that has already put them on the map in Eau Claire and in several markets where organizations have adopted TSTMedia’s offerings for mission-critical sports websites.

Founded in 2004, TSTMedia started off as a web development shop but focused their efforts around the sports passions of college buddies and co-founders Justin Kaufenberg (CEO) and Carson Kipfer (COO). Quickly they identified that the sports niche was woefully underserved and filled with group and collaboration needs not being addressed in the marketplace.

They quickly began moving forward with Team Sport Technologies, building out sports-specific web applications. The applications enabled amateur sports organizations to efficiently manage a website with little or no previous technical knowledge. TST Media, under the Team Sport Technologies brand, then released a complete roster of sports specific products for hockey, soccer, basketball, lacrosse, baseball, softball, football, volleyball, swimming and others.

The websites they built and delivered for sports clients included a combination of online tools (online registration, interactive multi-team calendars, highly sophisticated statistic engines, etc.) that made publishing website content, sharing information and communicating with members extremely easy.

In 2009, they combined their Ruby on Rails experience, knowledge of the sports domain, and the engine they’d already created to make it brain-dead-simple for non-technical users to deliver a great team or organization website, and consolidated their various organization products and features into a single platform called NGIN. … [Read More…]

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