Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Bellying Up to the ‘Bar for The Seven Deadlies

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Curt Prins at MinnebarAs part of Minnebar last Saturday I had the pleasure of sitting in on the “7 Deadly Mistakes of Start-up Marketing” presented by Curt Prins, marketing consultant focusing on emerging technology companies. In a full board room at Coffman Union on the U of M Campus, Curt took us through what he considers to the most common mistakes entrepreneurs make as they begin to develop and market their company or products. (I had a chance to Twitter those “mistakes” live but they deserve just a bit more focus.)

Mistake #1 Target Market Greed. A common problem that afflicts most new companies. In the quest to market to the most bodies, they target way beyond their sweet spot. The tighter the niche that you focus on the better results you will get. Curt demonstrated his point with a very simple “pie” chart. Cut out a slice, and then cut it again. Reaching that small piece of the pie will yield tastier results. Not to mention it’s a much better use of your marketing budget.

Mistake #2 Prospect Gluttony. Similar in nature to the above Target Market Greed, the more you wander outside of the group that really needs your product the more disappointing the results.

Mistake #3 Product Pride. It’s your baby! Clearly, it’s the answer to everyone’s needs…or do they even give a #*@? (Curt’s word, or rather, punctuation.) Your product is an extension of you and of course benefits you. Does it benefit your prospects?…  [Read More…]

Minnesota’s Internet Tech Crowd Flexes Its Muscle

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If one had any doubt about the intensity of our state’s information technology and Internet community, one only had to be anywhere inside the U’s Coffman Union on Saturday for the third annual Minnebar “unconference” (part of an international phenomenon called Barcamp). To say the joint was a-jumpin’ simply does not suffice. And numbers alone don’t tell the story (though attendance was an event record at 430). Rather, it was the intensity of energy through the entire day that could only impress one about this somewhat quiet, and definitely underrated, sector of Minnesota’s economy.

I was there for at least 12 hours of the event — yes, it went on that long, and no one was complaining — and I can surely say that even the most skeptical of attendees who sacrificed part of their spring weekend were impressed with what they experienced, and left beaming with an elevated sense of pride in the industry they’re a part of. One needs only to scan the voluminous talk that went on in real-time — thanks to the magic of Twitter, and all archived here — to see that something big was happening in the Gopher state on this rainy fishing-opener Saturday. (In fact, Minnebar was ranked during the day as one of the top-five conversations going on in the entire, global “Twitterverse.”)…  [Read More…]

State of the State: Technology in Minnesota. A Minnebar Panel Discussion

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One of the highlights of Saturday’s Minnebar was a panel discussion entitled, State of the State: Technology in Minnesota. The panelists included: Douglas Olson (Microsoft), Jamie Thinglestad (formerly of Dow Jones), Michael Gorman (Split Rock Partners), Robert Stephens (Geek Squad), Dan Grigsby (Unpossible), Matthew Dornquast (code42).

Ed Kohler at Technology Evangelist has a post with highlights here. You can also listen or download the one hour podcast below.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:00:08 — 74.8MB)

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Loudclick: Build Web Sites Together

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Loudclick\'s Alex HuffLoudclick has created a platform for collaborative web site creation that allows anyone — from newbie to designer — to quickly deliver a great looking web site for sports teams, homeowners associations, small businesses, or any group. I met with Alex Huff at a local Caribou Coffee to learn more about him and hear the Loudclick story.

Loudclick’s core value proposition is a hosted application which enables building these web sites together (i.e., multi-user, multi-admin, and/or multi-author). Inline content editing capability allows an approved user to log in and edit any “element” (block on the page) that they have permission to change. It’s an editing method that’s gaining acceptance in the marketplace and the Loudclick solution delivers in an elegant way.

As many of us know from the emerging acceptance of wiki‘s in business and organizations, inline content editing is powerful but often new or less tech-savvy users struggle with the wiki paradigm and require training. Editing a wiki page changes it from a page laid out nicely to a bunch of text with tags…and many users I’ve dealt with on wiki’s freeze up and think they’re looking at code and just don’t understand what to do next, making the use of wiki’s problematic in casual group situations where easy publishing and communicating is what’s important.

As we talked, I mentioned that, although it’s positioned as a web site/page builder, “this seems like it could be positioned as a wiki with no learning curve“. Alex didn’t disagree, but is clearly focused on their core market: groups of people who want to communicate and connect by building great looking web sites created with minimal muss-n-fuss.

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‘Minnebar’ Becoming Top Event for State’s Internet/Software Developers and Entrepreneurs

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An annual Minnesota event, playfully named Minnebar — which grew out of a grass-roots tech industry initiative called Barcamp — is happening for the third year in a row here in the Twin Cities this coming Saturday, May 10, at the U of M’s Coffman Union.
Minnebar logo By 8:00 am, somewhere between 300 and 400 software developers, startup founders (and hopefuls), web designers, interactive marketers, local media reporters, angels, VCs, and other investors will start converging in one place as they seldom do in any venue in these parts, at any other time throughout the year.

Coffman Union They come to talk shop, learn, share tips, listen to presentations on the latest tech developments and tools, share war stories, listen to startup pitches, and (of course) take notes, blog, and Twitter about all the proceedings on the laptops and smart phones they never seem to have far from their sides. …  [Read More…]

An Interview with CotterWeb’s Daren Cotter

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darencotter.jpgAt the age of 15, Daren Cotter was presented with the opportunity to get a birthday present every soon-to-be-a-licensed-driver kid covets: a car. Instead, he asked for what he really wanted, a computer, and so young Cotter began his adventure in computing and software development.

Within a year he started to program, creating educational games and other software to teach himself how to create in bits what was in his head, and ended up submitting it to shareware sites. Over a couple of years he pocketed somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,ooo and realized that putting his value in software was something others would pay for and a light bulb went on.

After graduating high school in 1999, he entered Minnesota State University in Mankato and was suddenly faced with a something he hadn’t expected that was life-changing: a very fast broadband connection (he’d had slow dial-up at home) and ended up investing significant amounts of time online.

Exploring, he came across AllAdvantage and joined, becoming enamored with the advertising space and the concept of receiving some sort of value in exchange for his attention and time surfing the ‘net.

He tore apart their model, their approach, and worked hard at understanding how it was delivered in an attempt to figure out how to improve upon what they’d put together (and this before AllAdvantage’s spectacular flame-out during the dotcom meltdown in the early 2,000’s).

The result of this effort was his own creation, InboxDollars, which Cotter delivered the summer after his freshman year and was the start of his company (CotterWeb, located in Mendota Heights, MN) which grossed over $12M in 2007.
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The Latest on U of M Technology Innovation and Commercialization

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The University of Minnesota is among the top patent producers in the world, ranking #4 on Scientist Magazine’s list of “Patent Powerhouses,” behind only three other major American universities. Yet, quantity of patents hardly paints the entire picture. What about helping to start up companies to commercialize those patents?

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According to the U’s own business development people (see link to Powerpoint presentation at bottom), the 20-year success record of the U’s technology company spinoffs is only half the university average nationally — and less than one-fourth the success record of the nation’s premier schools. What’s more, in one recent year (2004), for example, the U of MN spun off only one company compared to 14 at the University of Michigan and 16 at the University of Illinois. Why I am focusing here on spinoffs? Well, because, according the U’s own business development people, creating university spinoffs is “much more profitable than licensing (revenues)” to the school. …  [Read More…]

Tumblon.com – Parenting Site Focused on Child Development

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Tumblon.com – the new project from Jonathan Dahl of Hopkins-based web application development shop Slantwise Design – quietly opened it’s doors earlier this month. Unlike other parenting-oriented websites or general-purpose weblog engines, Tumblon focuses on child development milestones as the structure for sharing.

…  [Read More…]

Emerging Digerati Showcase at U of MN

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Today was the Emerging Digerati Showcase at the University of Minnesota, Weisman Art Museum. The focus was a College of Liberal Arts, new media festival featuring digital technology, art and research.

It was inspiring to see the innovation and boundary pushing being done in this market and the passion people are bringing to digital technologies.

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  • Starting off was artist Lynn Fellman, who merges art and science with her beautiful DNA inspired digital, vector art. Ms. Fellman has been in the interactive space since the early 1990’s.
  • Minnov8’s own Garrick Van Buren showcased his creation, Cullect, a collaborative feed reader with amazing capabilities
  • Brad Hosack and David Ernst from the Academic & Information Technology, College of Education & Human Development department showed Video ANT, an innovative way of moving video beyond just content delivery through a tool they’ve developed to allow easy annotating of video
  • Justin Grammens and Minnov8’s own Phil Wilson showcased Localtone Radio, an innovative site for local bands to showcase their songs and for music lovers to discover (and vote upon favorite) bands and music. Their buzzphrase? Listen, Share, Learn
  • Terry Schubring demonstrated an internal UofMN engine called “MediaMill”, which facilitates transcoding of video and its display on to any web page

…  [Read More…]

Emerging Digerati Week at the UofMN

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emerging.jpgAll this week, the University of Minnesota Institute for New Media Studies is holding Emerging Digerati Week 2008 with multiple venues showcasing everything from digital vision and display technologies to virtual reality to new media.

Though it would’ve been nice to have time to cover the entire week-long event, Minnov8 will be covering the New Media Showcase on Friday, April 4th from 10am-4pm at the Weisman Art Museum and two of our founders, Garrick Van Buren and Phil Wilson, will be involved in showcasing their own startups at this event.

If you are interested in what’s happening right here in Minnesota when it comes to Internet and Web-centric new media innovation, carve out time from your busy schedule and head on over to the Weisman this Friday.