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!

A Minnesota Startup Returns from Silicon Valley, Wiser and Richer

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Well, let’s say nicely funded, anyway — a fully subscribed seed round that fulfills their near-term capital needs. I wanted to write a post to report the latest update on this amazing Minnesota tech startup: Kidblog. You’ve seen me write about these guys before:  earlier this summer … and almost a year ago when I posted an update from the EduTech Minnesota conference, when the company hit a million users. We also had one of the Kidblog cofounders as our guest on the podcast about that same time: Minnov8 Gang 97: R U Kidding about Kidblog? 

The company launched a new website and identity in August. But here’s the biggest update of all: it just reported its user count has shot past 1.8 million!  Kidblog is a safe blogging platform designed for K-12 teachers, students, and schools — and it stands head-and-shoulders above other solutions out there.  It’s an amazing “Grown in Minnesota” story that is a testament to the  Internet innovation that happens here in our state!

I’ve known the cofounders, Matt Hardy (left, with admirer) and Dan Flies, for at least three years, and have been closely monitoring their progress. So, I’m especially excited about the success they’re achieving. They’ve now received validation from some very savvy investors, not to speak of even more from their market: the teachers who have loved them for a long time, and continue to support the product with gushing testimonials and positive reviews.

The $400K seed round Kidblog opened in the spring was completed in June, with California investors Scott Banister, 500 Startups, and Maneesh Arora participating, joined by Minnesota angels Peter Schleider (RKB Capital) and Scott Burns (founder of GovDelivery).

Matt and Dan, who met as college buddies at U of M-Morris, have worked really hard to build something great. Kidblog began as a passion for them, and very much continues to be. It’s only within the past year that they didn’t have to maintain days jobs, too! Matt was a primary school teacher in Eden Prairie for many years, and Dan has worked in IT, most recently at Lawson Software.

Here’s how they describe their creation: “Kidblog is built by teachers, for teachers, so students can get the most out of the writing process. Our mission is to empower teachers to embrace the benefits of the coming digital revolution in education. As students become creators – not just consumers – of information, we recognize the crucial role of teachers as discussion moderators and content curators in the classroom. With Kidblog, teachers monitor and control all activity within their classroom blogging community.”

See the video interview below for more on their summer in the Valley. The duo participated in a large edutech event in San Diego in late June, where Matt said “they received a lot of love” from educators, and were the envy of other edutech startups that exhibited. The two wrote about that experience in this blog post.

During their last month in Mountain View, on August 20, Kidblog released a massive update to its platform. “We’ve listened to our users and made the world’s best student-publishing platform even better with a plethora of new features for teachers and students,” they declared on this blog post: 14 New Kidblog Features You’re Guaranteed to Love.

Stay in touch with Kidblog at its company blog here. Get more great updates at their Facebook page (including posts about their summer in CA).  And follow the company on Twitter @KidblogDotOrg.

Here’s the eight-minute interview I recorded before we had lunch on Wednesday:

I asked a few followup questions of Matt. Here’s that exchange:

Graeme: What’s your stance now on Minnesota vs. California as far as a base of operations?

Matt Hardy: We deliberated carefully about these two locales. Silicon Valley is the heart of the startup universe and access to capital is unparalleled. Minneapolis has its own burgeoning startup culture, and there is developer talent here equal to the Bay Area. Cost of operations in Minnesota will be significantly lower. We can fly to San Francisco four times a month with the cash we save by not paying rent there.

Graeme: Did any existing or potential investors in California tell you they thought you should, or would eventually have to, relocate to the Bay Area?

Matt Hardy: None of our current investors has given us an ultimatum. It was suggested that it will be harder to raise funds with a pre-revenue, consumer web, growth model outside of Silicon Valley. We agree, but we also know that savvy investors can identify great companies anywhere.  Dave McClure of 500 Startups has indicated that some VCs in the Valley can miss opportunities by limiting investments to their own backyard. (Here’s a great recent post Dave wrote that touched on that point — it’s long, but filled with insights for startup founders and investors.) 

Graeme: What was the attitude of your 500 Startups peers to this question, assuming the vast majority of them are based in the Bay Area?

Matt Hardy: Many founders in the Bay Area are gravitating toward San Francisco specifically. As Google and Facebook absorb talent at the southern end of the Peninsula, the hot place to be is the city. The sheer density of startups and investors creates a climate that drives everyone to build products better, bigger, faster. You definitely feel pushed to keep up with other teams doing awesome things. On the other hand, you can also get so caught up in the “cool kid” scene, attending trendy events and worshiping certain entrepreneurial icons, that you forget to put your head down and build something great that people want. We’ve spent the last three months in Mountain View working 16-hour days to build just that — the world’s best student-publishing platform, beloved by teachers around the world.

Best of luck to Matt and Dan as they grow their business! This is a company I have no doubt will continue to make Minnesota proud.

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…]

Project Skyway Accelerator Graduates Four

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Justin Kaufenberg, CEO of TST Media

Minnesota tech accelerator Project Skyway held its “Demo Day” on Wednesday May 30 at the New Century Theater in downtown Minneapolis. It was the culmination of its 2012 spring program. After opening remarks by Project Skyway officials, Justin Kaufenberg, CEO of TST Media, took the stage to tell his company’s story (photo). It is one of the state’s most successful Internet startups, now with close to 100 employees.

Founders of the four startups that participated in the program then took the stage to explain their businesses and their progress to date.

HypeSpark offers consumers exclusive deals for the links they’re already sharing. The founder was introduced by the general manager of Toby Keith’s nightclub and restaurant in West End, a business that’s using its service.
YumZing is a service to let you share your food experiences with friends, family, and the world. It’s launching soon.
Political Harmony was described by its founder as “Match.com for politicians.” It’s aimed at college students to help them find political candidates most compatible with their views.
The final startup of the class to present, QuadROI, is an information service for utilities that “transforms compliance documentation into industry intelligence.” It aggregates data on clean energy resource investments to create a single, searchable repository and enable data discovery and visualization.

Minnesota: A Great Place to Be for SaaS Companies

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I had the pleasure of attending a workshop event held this past Saturday at the awesome CoCo coworking space at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. It was called SaaSCamp 2012. Note the year is part of that title, because it fully intends to be a recurring event. If you’re part of an early-stage software-as-a-service business, or planning one, and you missed this workshop — well, you missed a great one, and I would make sure you get to the next one when it happens!

The event was conceived and conducted completely by Lief Larson, CEO and founder of Workface Inc., with assistance from a couple of his team members. Workface is a growing startup in Minneapolis that itself developed a SaaS offering it now markets widely, which it calls a “customer engagement platform.” I was extremely impressed with the breadth and depth of the content Lief pulled together for this event. It included a extensive look at market data for SaaS in the U.S. and globally, monetization strategies and practices, selling to the enterprise, negotiating contracts, increasing adoption and retention of your app, marketing your app, creating a channel to sell your app, financing and funding a SaaS business, training your SaaS customer, and ongoing monitoring of your SaaS business. On top of all this, Lief related some really excellent stories throughout the workshop about his journey in funding and building Workface.

I had a chance to follow up with Lief afterwards to get some further perspective on the story behind SaaSCamp… 

Q: Lief, why did you decide to do the event? 

Lief:  I’ve had a great group of mentors who have helped me during my entrepreneurial journey and I try to pay it forward by helping other young businesses and entrepreneurs to find success.  A few of my “mentees” are building applications that are software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings and asked that I consider putting on an event.  That’s why I created SaaSCamp 2012 — to bring together like-minded people working on SaaS.  I think the event is already bigger than me, and I’m hoping the community will take it and run with it. …  [Read More…]

The War for Talent: Are Minnesota Tech Companies and Startups Ready?

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Question: What do Google, Facebook, Groupon and Amazon have in common?

Answer: All have formally or through their employees been recruiting in Minnesota in the past year. There are at least another half dozen well funded Silicon Valley startups doing the same.

(hold on… I am waiting for that to sink in for a moment)

With IT unemployment less than 2%, companies of all sizes from the Fortune 500 to the smallest of startups are recognizing that recruiting in Minnesota has been challenging.

For some the challenge has been a nuisance but not an impossible task.

For others… not having appropriate staff levels is costing business.

To set the stage a little bit, it is important to know that for many in IT, the “Great Recession” was a non-event. …  [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.