Next MinneDemo to be held November 12th at 7pm and will be held at: Intermedia Arts, 2822 Lyndale Ave South in Minneapolis. (via MNInteractive).
Damn the Airfare: Pokeware Takes Global Approach
At one of last years MinneDemo events I had the chance to see Founder and CEO, Maryse Thomas present Pokeware, a system for integrating “hot spots” in video that allows users to pause and “poke” around the screen. According to the company line, Pokeware is a unique online company that integrates video content and contextual advertising. See a car in the video, click on it, and you’ll instantly find out what it is. See a dress you like, click it and find out where you can buy it and for how much. It was one of the more compelling presentations of the evening and piqued the interest of many. I had a chance to speak with Maryse following her presentation last year, and at that time Pokeware had already launched a beta test with the National Basketball Association. I was anxious to catch up with her and see how Pokeware has progressed since.
Ms. Thomas, a hardcore road warrior and globetrotter, was not the easiest to person to catch up with for an interview. Though Pokeware is based in Edina, we traded emails and phone calls between here and London, a cab in New York and somewhere in LA. Why the constant travel? According to Thomas, all for relationship building.“We found that there were many who were interested in building a similar type of system and felt that we would be better off securing strong, long term relationships with content providers and partners.” says Thomas. The intention was to hold off on showcasing the technology.
To help them do it, Thomas dropped this: “The biggest news is that Tommy Mottola is joining our team,” not hiding her enthusiasm.
If you are not aware of him, Tommy Mottola‘s resume includes a solid and successful career in the music industry. Outside of that community, many will recognize him from the likes of Entertainment Tonight, as head of Sony Music Entertainment, and more glamorously as the former husband of Mariah Carey. Thomas noted that Tommy is “very excited about the prospects of Pokeware” and will focus on helping her shore up those all important relationships.
Who are some of those relationships she’s cultivating? To name a few: the TV, publishing, book, home icon, Martha Stewart; Channel 4 in London (and the reason for her trip to the UK), the firm known best for the Big Brother reality series and Outside Line who will be selling Pokeware in the UK. In addition, Pokeware recently signed an exclusive agreement with the German company St. Elmo’s as a partner in Europe.
uTead: Social Network for College Admissions
Today’s high school students are the always-on, always-connected, digital generation and have no time for inefficient or paper-based communications, or especially ones that don’t leverage their peers who are involved in the same things they happen to be.
uTead, a name derived from universal Tool for education advancement, is an online service that facilitates the college admissions process and is a social network specifically for prospective students, enables them to connect with university representatives, high school counselors, and their peers, while also providing completely new ways for colleges and universities to interact with today’s tech-savvy generation.
I talked with co-founder Erik Eliason today, about how the Minnesota Cup Student Entrepreneur award winning uTead was started, what led them to create it, and where they’re headed now that it has launched in beta (as of yesterday, Sept. 2nd)…. [Read More…]
Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 3
Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Garrick Van Buren, Phil Wilson
After vacations and business travel this summer, we carve out time on a Saturday morning for another Minnov8 Gang podcast with Episode 3.
In it we talk about several Minnesota startups and companies (including our own, with some admittedly self-serving comments!):
– PartnerUp Being Acquired by Deluxe Check
– Former HighJump CTO, Steve Kickert’s new company Riverock and his first product launch OnePlace
– Watching for new companies in stealth mode like BeWiki
– DoApp, Cullect, ComicTwit, Localtone Radio
– Social Media Breakfast, Twin Cities group
– Julio Ojeda-Zapata of the Pioneer Press (personal blog; TwinCities.com) is writing a book being released shortly, “twitter means business: how microblogging can help or hurt your business” (book jacket here)
– Minnesota Ultra-High_Speed Broadband Task Force (Minnov8 posts about this initiative here and here).
Thanks for listening!
The Podcast
Podcast: Download (Duration: 58:23 — 34.0MB)
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Minnesota Keeps Feeding the iPhone Habit
DoApp has had a busy week. Their MyLite and MyTo-Do applications are currently available and moving up the rankings via the iPhone Apps Store and Magic 8 Ball and Whoopee Cushion are waiting in the wings. Current stats include MyLite ranking #8 overall on Top Free Apps, and #1 in Top Free Apps in the Utilities category along with MyTo-Dos showing at #81 overall on Top Free Apps, and #8 in Top Free Apps in the same category
Launched as PagePow, DoApp was founded in 2007 by former early Google employee Joe Sriver. The company positions itself as “a new kind of internet applications company.” They aspire to the rather lofty sounding mission of enabling “a glorious new world of distributed content and commerce.” Okay, so flashing lights and whoopee cushions don’t exactly sound “glorious”. However, in our interview Sriver assures me that there is more afoot at DoApp than finding your keys in the dark, telling the future, or goofing on your friends. The current applications for the iPhone are about establishing the firm and “gaining experience in the process.”
He goes on to say, “The iPhone applications are just one aspect of DoApp, making up part of a growing portfolio of work.” More serious applications in the commerce, utility (including MyTo-dos), and entertainment 
segments are planned.” We have a staff of eight and we are working furiously to keep pace with the ideas we are generating.” Those ideas include mobile and web based applications. In fact PagePow was originally launched as a widget builder. There is still a presence in that market with plenty of interest, much of it on an international level, but “the attention around iPhone applications has really replaced the buzz on widgets.” according to Sriver. Clearly, though it may be hard to believe, not everyone has an iPhone and there are still plenty of opportunities to supply applications for other platforms. This reality does not appear to be lost on DoApp.
As for iPhone applications, “Nobody really knows the criteria by which Apple decides which applications to release to the App Store, so we can’t really provide a timeline for what’s next there.” says Sriver. As the company expands beyond its current staff it will be less reliant on Apple because it will be delivering applications for other platforms. For now though, being ranked #1 in a category on the hottest application distributor site is not a bad way to bring recognition to a growing firm. Perhaps its own Magic 8 Ball app would say that it “appears likely” that this Minneapolis based firm will parlay that attention into serious application success.
(In the interest of full disclosure it should be norted that Minnov8 contributor Graeme Thickins is also the DoApp Marketing VP.)
TinyURL: Making long URL’s short
Did you know that a tiny service used 1.5 billion times per month was created in Minnesota? TinyURL is a service I’ve used often (especially when using Twitter) and this creation by Blaine, MN developer, Kevin Gilbertson, is quite popular.
I was first alerted that this was a Minnesota creation by St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter Julio Ojeda-Zapata (column, blog) when he put out a ‘tweet’ on Twitter about the service’s Minnesota connection. Of course, I poked around to find out more and was just delighted on what I discovered.
Then sitting down to breakfast this morning with the StarTribune, I saw this article entitled, “TinyURL developer basking in website’s success” which covers the man behind TinyURL and a bit about the service. The article lays out how Gilbertson could make ~$1 million per month but chooses not to have annoying popup ads (thank you Kevin!). He makes enough per month that he apparently doesn’t need to work outside of making TinyURL better and is able to focus on his passion for unicycling (peek at the Strib article for more).
Julio’s writing, the Strib’s coverage and ours is fantastic for a new and successful Minnesota startup, but not everyone agrees that services like TinyURL are ones we should rely upon…. [Read More…]
Thirty Semifinalists Named in ‘Minnesota Cup’ Business Plan Competition
I attended and Twittered a bit at a reception Wednesday evening, June 25, at the grand, old James J. Hill Library in downtown St. Paul. (You remember old J.J., don’t you, the Bill Gates of his era?) It was an event to honor the startups who made it to the next round of the Minnesota Cup, an annual, statewide competition that seeks out aspiring entrepreneurs and their breakthrough ideas. The 30 lucky semifinalists were selected from a record of 840 entries in this fourth and largest year of the competition, and will vie for prizes that include $50,000 in cash for the first-place winner. An interesting tidbit I picked up at the reception: about 10% of the 840 entrants were Web 2.0 related.
Scott Litman, cofounder of the event, told me the competition this year was the toughest ever, and that many plans that might have made the cut in previous years didn’t. He also told me that, unfortunately, many entrants may have had great business concepts, but they were not understandable — the submissions were either poorly written, or riddled with so many acronyms and buzzwords that the judges flat-out did not know what the heck the submitter was talking about. (So, take heart, rejectees. You may be great at selling your ideas verbally — now work on the written word.)
Here’s how the Minnesota Cup site states its mission: “We’re looking for the next great entrepreneurial success story in our state. This competition is for all entrepreneurs, whether your breakthrough idea is high tech or no tech, whether you are just putting your ideas into a business plan or if you’ve been out building your venture.” Well, I wonder if it’s possible that any who entered, and especially the chosen semifinalists, could really be “no tech” in this day and age? That would be hard to imagine. And, in looking over the list, there’s nary a one that would seem not to rely on technology in their businesses. (Although some without a website certainly have the aura of no-tech at this point, perhaps awaiting prize money to build? And what’s with all the student semifinalists being listed with no websites?) As for the lack of a requirement that the business be new, i.e., that older startups can also apply, I know at least two on the list are four to five years old and still chasing $50k. Ah, hope springs eternal. Here’s the full list:… [Read More…]
Kwingo Launches Mobile Language Apps
What do you do when you’re a successful, female, mid-career IT and operations executive with several big-name companies, and you decide to try something different? Why, you launch a mobile web apps company, that’s what!
Actually Lisa Foote first took some time to give back by using her executive skills for a year or so of non-profit charity work (with the United Way of Minnesota), after successful stints at Target, GE Capital, and Prudential. But it wasn’t long when the for-profit drive was back, and soon she was plotting, with husband Brad Roberts, a new business idea for solving language challenges in today’s increasingly global economy. And it just so happened that Web 2.0 technology was going to play a part — because Brad, who has a highly eclectic creative and business background, had become a self-taught Ruby on Rails developer.
The Birth of Kwingo
Foote and Roberts newly discovered life as entrepreneurs soon resulted in the birth of Kwingo.net, a venture they introduced earlier this year. Its mission is to bring simple, useful productivity tools to professionals working in field occupations using web-based mobile devices as a platform for delivery.
With her experience working in large enterprises, Foote knew that labor workforces were continuing to globalize, and that language challenges would just continue to multiply. Kwingo would provide the tools workers in the field needed to communicate with coworkers who speak a different language, helping everyone work more productively and safely…. [Read More…]
CodeMorphic Is One of the First In Line with iPhone Apps
It’s almost the end of the week and, being a site centered on tech and innovation, I believe we have been remiss in not including a picture of a 3G iPhone and a story having something to do with it. Well…when the iPhone AppStore opens in July, Minnesota startup CodeMorphic is all set with native applications for iPhones of all kinds.
Longtime friends Damon Allison and Bill Heyman launched the company in early March, coincidentally around the time as the Apple iPhone SDK release. There is a sense of serendipity about how they landed in the first group of iPhone developers among the two but they believe their focus and quality coding was the key to being noticed and landing at the front of the line. They feel their singular focus on just building native applications for the iPhone, and not moving into other mobile platforms, will prove to be the best business model.
Heyman noted there is tremendous opportunity for application development in the enterprise market. “There will be great growth in developing internal corporate applications.” Areas like work flow, communication are clearly opportunities. Heyman continues “Right now that’s an area dominated by Blackberry so we see more needs for those types of applications for iPhone.” The consumer is the other opportunity. “Consumer focused applications that promote the brand, for example if General Mills were to target a younger consumer, where the iPhone or iPod Touch are really popular, they could develop an application or game that is tailored to them.”… [Read More…]
Enleiten: A Social GTD
If you have any interest in personal or group productivity, it’s likely that you’ve at least become aware of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system. It’s not only taken the corporate world by storm, it’s become the geek method/tool/approach of choice for moving far beyond a simple to-do list. The system has even spawned productivity sites like 43 Folders, an homage to one element of the GTD system, as well as its own blog and news site dedicated to GTD-centric productivity called GTD Times.
Due to the success of Allen’s GTD methodology and the sheer volume of software developers among the ranks of the faithful, tools abound for using the GTD method. From David Allen Co’s own Microsoft Outlook add-in to dozens of offerings for PC’s and Mac’s (as well as other types of tools), most work well but suffer from an increasingly evident fatal flaw: using GTD is a problem if all of your data is sitting on a single computer. More and more of us are on multiple devices and mobile…using a laptop, smartphone, desktop at home and the office (and even casually using computers in coffee shops, airports or at a friend’s house) and need to use GTD but be able to access it anywhere we have an internet connection.
In 2007 Eric Hedberg, an economics major from Carleton College, worked at Secure Computing and Stockwalk.com, the latter in financial sector software, and Hedberg became aware of the direction applications were taking by being delivered “in the cloud” (i.e., as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) hosted and available to anyone with an internet connection) and started looking at ways to implement a SaaS data warehousing/workflow management application for the financial services industry.
After some prototyping and user feedback, he and his college friends who’d joined him (Doreen Hartzell, CEO, and Steve Bentley, in charge of interface design) realized that the best part of what they’d built was the project management piece, which delivered collaborative online workspaces using a GTD model. That revelation spawned the current company focus, Enleiten, which is a collaborative GTD application delivered in the cloud and available for single consumer users, small groups or businesses…. [Read More…]