Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

SmartThings Closes $3M Seed Round

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SmartThings, the Minnesota startup focused on the “internet of things” with its smart hub and connected devices, has announced they have closed a $3M seed round.

One of the key aspects of SmartThings’ value proposition is their API and developer-centric positioning. So far they have more than 1,000 developers who have signed up to participate in making connected devices to work within the SmartThings ecosystem.

They also scored this great post on TechCrunch, visibility that only helps.

Wow…congratulations you guys and your hard work is paying off! Check out their press release below:

An Open Physical Graph

SmartThings Announces $3M Seed Round and Developer/Maker Contest to Drive an Open ‘Internet of Things’

At SmartThings, we believe the next and perhaps most life-altering evolution of the Internet will be the creation of the physical graph; the digitization, connectivity and programmability of the physical world around us. Whether you call this the Internet of Things, sensor networks or home and life automation, the implications for how we live, work, and have fun are profound. At our core, we also believe that for the ecosystem to be healthy, it must be open. An open physical graph is the only way to bridge the innovation, inventions and brilliance of the many device manufacturers, hardware makers, developers, and everyday people who are working to change our lives today and in the future.

SmartThings sits at the center of this open ecosystem. We provide a platform that enables developers and makers to build smart and connected devices, an interactive and mobile user experience for consumers to manage and install apps into their physical world to make it behave more intelligently, and unique combinations of SmartThings and SmartApps packaged to solve real world problems, out of the box, with no professional installation required.

We appreciate the immense support we’ve received to date in making that open vision a reality. Our Kickstarter backers embraced this vision and made us the second largest technology project of all time, and the largest Internet of Things project by more than 2x when we closed. This momentum continued across the globe with SmartThings winning the Spark of Genius award at the 2012 Dublin Web Summit against a field of over 4,000 original startup competitors from 36 countries.

Today we’re announcing 2 significant events in our continued success and progress in bringing the open physical graph to the world.

The SmartThings vision is a big one. But it’s clear the world is ready. The entire Le Web conference in Paris this week is based around the Internet of Things, and new projects aiming to connect our physical world are emerging almost daily. It will take a significant ecosystem and the participation of many of these innovators to realize the full potential of the physical graph.

Fortunately, some of the best and most dynamic investors and entrepreneurs out there believe in our vision as well. Today we’re announcing the successful close of a $3 million funding round lead by First Round Capital and including SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, CrunchFund, Max Levchin, Yuri Milner’s Start Fund, David Tisch, A-Grade Investments, Chris Dixon, Vivi Nevo, Alexis Ohanian, Loic Le Meur, Martin Varsavsky, Kal Vepuri, Ryan Sarver, Jared Hecht, Steve Martocci, Emil Michael, Aaron Levie, Zorik Gordon, and Nathan Hanks.

This is the perfect group to both help us in our direct growth and to make investments in the ecosystem of developers and makers who will create a breathtaking array of connected devices, intelligent and learning applications, and breakthrough innovations.

With this funding, and in direct support of the open ecosystem vision, today we’re also announcing the first SmartThings Developer and Maker Competition. Based on community feedback and more than 1,000 developers and makers that have signed up on the SmartThings platform, we’ll be choosing 5 key themes representing the most exciting areas of innovation on the physical graph. In each theme, we’ll be awarding a winner for the best software developer / SmartApp, and the best hardware/device maker. In April 2013, we’ll announce the overall winner.

The judging panel for this contest includes First Round Capital, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, Matt Williams, EIR at Andreesen Horowitz, Loic Le Meur, David Tisch, and Alex Hawkinson, CEO of SmartThings.

Winners will receive cash ($100,000 overall including $25,000 each for the top app and top new connected Thing), investor exposure, media coverage, manufacturing and design consulting and be featured across the SmartThings customer base and ecosystem. You can learn more about and sign up for the competition at build.smartthings.com.

We expect this to be the first of many competitions driving an explosive growth in innovation on the open physical graph. Thank you so much for your continued support. Together we will create an open physical graph and a smarter world!

– The SmartThings Team

Another Cool Minnesota Kickstarter Project: 3D Multi-Player Aerial Gaming @QFOlabs

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Maybe you caught the talk by the Kickstarter cofounder at the Walker Art Center the other night?  If so, perhaps you ran into one of the team members of Minneapolis-based startup QFO Labs  — the latest Minnesota product gurus to launch an ambitious project on Kickstarter.  The trio seeks to raise $230,000 on the site by November 13. And it’s off to a great start, with backers including Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of WIRED, and the very successful Kickstarter projects Pebble (which has now raised $10.2M) and SmartThings (our coverage here), along with WIRED’s Geek Dad, who published an awesome post about QFO Labs recently.

What’s it all about? QFO Labs describes its project as “real-life aerial gaming with a flick of the wrist.” The product combines a single-handed controller that makes a palm-sized quadcopter mimic your movements. But this is no ordinary copter. I had the opportunity to meet one of the team members, COO Jim Fairman, and learned this group has been developing and perfecting its remote control quadcopters for more than five years.

From left: John Condon, CTO; Brad Pedersen, CEO; Jim Fairman, COO.

From left: John Condon, CTO; Brad Pedersen, CEO; Jim Fairman, COO.

The three-member team has skills that include electrical engineering, software development, estimation and control systems, material science, product management, and intellectual property management. The three first met through a new product development course at the University of Minnesota in 2007. “We have a broad range of experience in areas such as unmanned aircraft systems, manufacturing process improvement, medical device design, and even running a science museum,” said Fairman.

The controller, called “Mimix,” was designed to provide an intuitive experience. And what it also means is no more two-handed flying! As it is tilted forward, back, left, or right, the “NanoQ” copter responds “just like you think it should, so you feel engaged and in control,” says the Kickstarter page. QFO Labs says the ergonomic design of the Mimix controller is based on U.S. Air Force Human Factors data for aircraft controls. “By using the latest sensors, radios, and processors, Mimix puts you in command with precise, crisp control … so simple that flying becomes second nature.”  The other cool description QFO uses is this: “Now you can fly by feeling instead of thinking.”

QFO says its product will enable real-life, multi-player aerial games – indoors or out.  Think multi-team dogfighting. You select your team through the Mimix controller, and the LEDs then display your team colors on both the NanoQ and the Mimix. With a pull of the trigger, you unleash a photon burst at your opponent. If you hit their sensor pod, you score.

Here’s the video the team posted on Kickstarter:

Follow QFO Labs on Twitter here, and Like them on Facebook here.

QFO Labs says this first product is just the beginning. Ship date is projected to be March 2013. The company plans to introduce a series of products for real-life 3D gaming, and wants suggestions from its Kickstarter backers on what they’d like to see for future games. Beyond gaming, “our team has many more ideas about what to do with the technology behind the Mimix and NanoQ,” it says.

Hackers Take Note!
The NanoQ uses an open communications protocol. You can connect your computer to the Mimix through the USB port or optional USB RF dongle and communicate wirelessly with the NanoQ to:
• Tweak the control parameters
• Update the NanoQ firmware
• Send control commands directly from a laptop
• Send customized signals out of the IR transmitter
• Receive craft telemetry such as attitude, control commands, and even raw sensor data

You can even connect your own electronics payload, like an Arduino, camera, or home-brewed project to the auxiliary serial (UART + power) port on the NanoQ.  And QFO promises a Developers Forum on its web site where everyone can share in their achievements.

How to Back the QFO Labs Project
Just go to the Kickstarter page here and select your Reward Level.  I did — I’m a backer!  And I encourage the Minnesota tech community to do the same…

Help support more awesome Minnesota tech innovation — help the QFO Labs team reach their goal on Kickstarter. Their deadline of November 13 is only 16 days away!

SmartThings Debuts on Kickstarter!

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“By 2015, more people will access the Internet from mobile devices than from conventional PCs. A year later, in 2016, 19 billion devices and gizmos will be connected to the mobile Internet — not just your smartphone and tablet, but your washing machine, cars and clothes will be connected too,” writes David Goldman at the start of his June article for CNN Money.  While this is an article about Cisco wrestling with the explosion of mobile devices, and soon billions of new devices connected to the internet, only hints at the groundswell of research, investment, startups and established companies staking their claim in this new, emerging category.

What is that category? The Internet of Things or “IoT”.

Ben Edwards

Though there are many definitions of IoT in this new space of smart sensors, hub devices and software to control and analyze their output, rather than try to look at the entire universe of possibilities, instead think of IoT as internet-connected physical and virtual ‘things’ which have identities, physical attributes, and virtual personalities which use intelligent interfaces for we dumber, slower humans to set them up and make do our bidding. Fortunately we have this other ‘thing’ called the internet connecting them all and, with most of us enjoying broadband connections and Wifi in our homes, the timing is perfect for a smart, strong consumer play to hit the market.

What is that smart play? SmartThings. While their Kickstarter page hints at the devices they’ll ship this year, the developer kits for creation of hardware and software (little apps that will ‘plug in’ to SmartThings itself) demonstrates that their vision for SmartThings is MUCH MORE than simply a set of devices and a single app. The big hairy goal is to deliver a platform for SmartThings, one which other entrepreneurs, established companies and ‘makers’ will use when they create sensors, control devices and who-knows-what-else to leverage the SmartThings’ hub once it is in a home.

I was fortunate to interview one of the founders of SmartThings, Ben Edwards, about their Kickstarter project LAST WEEK (yes, it took many extra days for Kickstarter to approve the project and launch it) and, since the project went live this morning, I thought I’d publish this post written last weekend.

You will like their vision and their plans. It’s a big idea, thought through deeply, and I think you’ll be surprised with what you hear. (SB Note: Previous audio issue has been fixed). Also, become a fan of their Facebook page here, over 7,000 ‘likes’ as of this writing!

Listen to the Interview with Ben Edwards

Podcast (m8-audio): Download (Duration: 26:20 — 21.8MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Download or listen link

Marissa Mayer’s Minnesota Connections

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Unless you were totally off the grid in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area for the past few days, you surely know by now that Yahoo! has named former Google exec Marissa Mayer as its new CEO.

But what you may not know is that two of our fellow MInnesota techies have ties to her, going back years — they’re both friends of mine, and both have been startup clients of my consulting business.

One is Lief Larson (right), founder of Workface Inc., a venture-backed firm doing cool things to humanize business on the web.  The other is Joe Sriver, who in 2008 founded the highly successful mobile app development firm DoApp Inc. (where, in addition to serving as an advisor, I was interim VP of marketing for a time).

Lief went all through school with Marissa in Wausau, Wisconsin, where both of them showed an early interest in programming. He gave me this reaction to the news:

“Yahoo! is ripe for reinvention, and I think Marissa is just the woman for the job. The one piece of news that came as a bit of a surprise is that she’s pregnant and will be taking maternity leave in October, just three months after taking the helm.  I look forward to seeing what the next several months will hold for Yahoo!”

Joe’s connection to Marissa came later — he was hired by her in 2001 as Google employee #198. (She was Google employee #20, its first female engineer.)  Joe was Google’s first UI designer and worked for Marissa for some years, directly involved in such early products as AdSense and AdWords.  Here’s what Joe had to say when I asked for his reaction to Marissa’s new role:

“I was surprised by the announcement, as it sounds many others were. A pleasant surprise, that is. I feel she’s the best person in the Valley to bring Yahoo back — the best pick Yahoo could make. She has a great technical background, superb at driving products, and has a great marketing sense. She’s not an outsider, she knows the space well…exactly what Yahoo needs at the top. She will create a buzz around Yahoo. The analysts will be watching her moves closely, but she’s prepared.”

Of course, the tech community is almost universally supportive of this decision by the Yahoo! board — why wouldn’t they like the choice of a technology exec to lead the turnaround? Anything but an exec from the screwed-up media industry, huh?

I’m with Lief and Joe — I think Marissa is bound to bring some mojo back to $YHOO!  What do you think?

(This post originally appeared today on Tech~Surf~Blog.)

Datuit Connects Consumers to Healthcare Providers

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Last November our colleague, Kurt Roots, wrote this post about Datuit entitled, Big Healthcare Data. In it he discussed how the company is “…an innovative software company that is developing a new platform for creating, storing, and managing healthcare data. The firm is taking advantage of federal regulations to drive demand for this technology which will allow patients, clinicians, and even patients to securely integrate and analyze healthcare information.”

While that post was quite comprehensive, in journalistic terms it “buried the lead” to the story. What’s the headline? Datuit Connects Consumers to Healthcare Providers. What’s the story/value proposition? To give we consumers access to our data when we want it, on the device we happen to be using at the moment, all while ensuring we are empowered to make smart, informed decisions about our own healthcare.

Datuit is developing technology to connect consumers to all of their healthcare providers as well as their friends and family. The technology is built on the SafeIX platform that stores health information in a vendor-agnostic way, allowing apps from many developers to access and contribute to an individual’s health information. They are also developing technology to allow consumers to manage the sharing of their information.

Their pitch?:

SafeIX is patent pending technology that utilizes vendor-agnostic Structured Documents and NoSQL to bring clinicians and patients together.

While I was aware of Datuit from Kurt’s post and had some understanding of the overall “big healthcare data” space, it wasn’t until I attended The Collaborative’s tech.2012 event that this space was validated by none other than UnitedHealth Group, Inc.

At that event Andy Slavitt, Group Executive Vice President of UnitedHealth’s Optum group, described how they were already selectively inviting in developers to access their enormous repository of clinical, prescription and other data, and offering that up to developers. He further indicated that they would be exposing more and more of this data with an API so developers could access it!

I recently spoke at length with the Datuit founders, Gordon and Sandra Raup, to discuss their approach and what they’ve built to date, and why I think their approach is key to killing the “copay culture” that exists with most consumers. …  [Read More…]

Minnebar 2012: Tech Geek-Out!

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Minnesota’s annual barcamp un-conference, aka Minnebar, returned for a seventh consecutive year on Saturday, April 7, and it was a blockbuster! Held again at Best Buy’s corporate headquarters in Richfield, the event attracted some 1300, the most in its history.

It just keeps getting bigger and bigger — and better!  A pre-party the night before was a new, fun twist this year, held at Vic’s, across the river from Downtown Minneapolis.  On Saturday, some 60 breakout sessions provided a wide array of learning and sharing experiences, along with awesome hallway discussions that were in full swing all day long — from 8:00 am all the way through the closing reception well after 6:00 pm.

Kudos to organizers Ben Edwards, Luke Francl, and Adrienne Peirce of Minnestar.org, and their many volunteers who work so hard to make this event successful. And thanks to all the great sponsors: Code42 Software, Fredrikson & Byron, 8th Bridge, W3i, ipHouse, August Ash, Bloom Health, Barcamp Tour, Split Rock Partners, ChowGirls, and Ech03.

It seems I say this every year, but it’s true (I’ve attended the last six annual events in their entirety):  the level of energy and enthusiasm about Minnesota Tech was more than I’ve ever experienced!  You can just sense the growth and excitement in our tech community. And, if you’re like me, you keep meeting so many more new and amazing people — technology and business professionals who are contributing to great new startups here in Minnesota, as well as to the broader technology industry in our state.  It was a pleasure to behold.  I had so many excellent conversations, trust me — there isn’t enough room in this blog post to tell you about them all <haha>.

But I can show you pics I shot Friday night and all day Saturday, which I posted on Instagram. Here’s a selection of those pics that I put into a Minnebar 2012 Flickr set.

Robert Stephens Rocks the #DefragCon Crowd

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The 5th Annual Defrag Conference was held November 8-10. 2011, in Denver, and I was there once again reporting on all the action during this much heralded meeting of the Internet’s big minds.  One of the highlights this time for me was the keynote on the final day by Robert Stephens, CTO of Best Buy and founder of Geek Squad. Robert was a huge hit, as I’d been telling all my Defrag friends for years that he would be. (A selection of the scores of tweets during his talk is shown below — screenshots I grabbed from my Defrag 2011 Live-Blog archive. The hashtag #defragcon was lighting up the web over the three days of the event, and still is with the afterglow. One of my favorite tweets, not shown below, was someone quoting Robert saying, “Everything at Best Buy is an accessory to your mobile phone – including your car.” Hmmm, and maybe even your electric motorcyle, a product category that’s been expected to show up in Best Buy stores, and may finally be coming soon — the first hint: there are actually reviews for one already posted on BestBuy.com — but Robert didn’t touch on this topic.)

In a 10-minute video interview I did with Robert while we were having coffee and rolls before the general session started Thursday morning, we covered a range of topics — including the recent announcement that Best Buy is acquiring managed services provider MindShift for $167 million. I also got a sneak preview of other topics Robert was going to talk about in his opening keynote:

…  [Read More…]

Workface Integrates Real-Time Engagement with Facebook

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Our pals at Workface have rolled out yet another great innovation: their chat platform now boasts an integration with Facebook that ensures that your Facebook Page is connected directly with those in your company you want customers and prospects to have access to in an instant. (disclosure: Workface was a client of my Innov8Press group).

One of the keys to Facebook engagement with customers is being there for them. Since the social media “community management” discipline is typically focused on watching, listening and waiting for a customer to post, send a tweet or otherwise go out of their way to connect, often prospects and customers don’t take the time to reach out. Since the Workface platform is embedded directly in your Facebook Page and with one click the engagement happens.

Take a look at the press release below and, especially, the companies who have already jumped on this platform to ensure they receive meaningful results from their Facebook efforts. 

 

…  [Read More…]

Minnesota EduTech Startup KidBlog Now Reaching One Million Users

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On Wednesday, I stopped into the EduTech Minnesota conference at the U of M. I wanted to catch up with my friends Matt Hardy and Dan Flies, cofounders of Kidblog.org, and hear about the latest with their startup.

It turns out, of the 10 startups that were selected to present at the event, none even comes close to the level of adoption these guys have achieved to date, which they announced in their presentation at #EduTechMN: 1,000,000 students using the platform, in more than 80,000 classrooms. And all that from a startup that began as just a sideline for Matt to use in his own classroom!

Here’s my interview:

The founders describe their creation this way:  Kidblog is a platform that provides students with an authentic, engaging, and interactive learning experience. It’s designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with his or her own, unique blog. It has simple but powerful tools that allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over their students’ blogs. And a teacher can set up a class with no student email addresses. 

Matt likes to say it’s “built by a teacher, for teachers, so students can get the most out of the blogging process.” He also points out that teachers who’ve tried other blogging platforms (perhaps with limited success), such as Blogger, Edublogs, or WordPress.com, “will notice the Kidblog difference immediately.”

Best of luck to this emerging, homegrown Minnesota edutech company!

[This post first appeared yesterday on Tech~Surf~Blog.]

Tech Cocktail Mixes It Up In Minneapolis

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We were really honored to have Tech Cocktail in town last night hosting its first startup and entrepreneurial mixer in Minnesota. The event was held at CoCo Minneapolis (on the floor of the historic Grain Exchange in downtown Minneapolis).  I’m here to tell you it was a blockbuster success!  More than 200 people were in attendance.

I’ve been *so* wanting these folks to come to our town, and was delighted to represent Minnov8 at the event, along with my colleague Steve Borsch.  Tech Cocktail’s events have the stated purpose of “helping connect, amplify, and showcase the local technology scene” — and it’s now held such events in more than 20 cities, founder Frank Gruber told me.  The local sponsors who made this one happen were W3i and Ovative Group — kudos to them! (And a special shout-out to our friend Kim Garretson.)

It was a really fun evening, with a group of technologists, investors, bloggers, and entrepreneurs as diverse as I’ve seen at a local tech event, mingling and learning about a great group of local startups that were selected by the TechCocktail folks to show their stuff:


Best Attendance – Take attendance, manage event schedules, and update membership rosters online.

BookBottles –  Reserve VIP service at the hottest clubs in the world.

ByME –  A digital community that is powered through user connections and location to provide an easier way to navigate and interact.

Fantools (Four51) –  Connects businesses and customers so businesses can deliver relevant deals to active consumers.

fitparel – Find correct size apparel no matter the brand – just enter a brand that fits you, and they will recommend other brands.

Proliphiq and Shopntella (Echidna Inc.) – Proliphiq delivers credible people, topics, and content to you, while Shopntella lets you shop with the wisdom of crowds.

My Gluten Free Deals –  Deep discounts at gluten free-friendly restaurants and on gluten free products.

ServerCyde – Build web apps for most platforms, in the least amount of time, with only one language and zero server configuration

TelemetryWeb –  Their AgSphere tool helps manufacturers of agriculture technology build solutions that harvest data from the farm.

Toovio Software –  A real-time decision-making solution that is focused on centralized orchestration of each customer marketing interaction across every channel.

Zingstring – An intuitive, web-based interface for non-technical folks (marketers, customer service people, etc) to create pre-programmed conversations that are triggered by keywords in incoming messages, on Twitter, Facebook, SMS, and other messaging platforms.

I shot some pix during the event and posted a Flickr set.  Thanks again to Frank Gruber and his great team at Tech Cocktail!  We’d love to have you folks back soon — how about twice a year?  : – )