Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

W3i Having a Merry Christmas After Launching Recharge Studios and ‘Dolphin Play’ Game

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W3i, one of the most successful Internet startups ever in the state of Minnesota, has launched Recharge Studios, which is both a mobile app launch fund for game developers and an app publishing business — and also the first product of that unit, a social game for the the Apple iOS platform called “Dolphin Play.” The announcement was recently covered by several sites, including Inside Social Games, 148Apps, and Pocket Gamer. (More below on what it all means for Minnesota developers, in the words of W3i’s Rob Weber.)

The St. Cloud, MN-based W3i, founded in the late 1990s by the three Weber brothers — Ryan, Rob, and Aaron (the latter has since left to launch another startup) — now has some 70 employees, boasts 33 consecutive quarters of profitability, and is on an annual revenue run-rate in excess of $30 million. CEO Andy Johnson added big-company experience when he joined the company a few years ago, having run the Internet business of Fingerhut, before that company was acquired in 1999 for $1.7 billion by Federated Department Stores. W3i’s business is all about helping app developers increase their user base — read: get more downloads. Until recently, that primarily meant Windows desktop apps (more than 400 million app installs to date). But, in the summer of 2010, W3i made a significant entry into the mobile app distribution business (iOS initially, natch) with the launch of its Apperang business.  (Minnov8 coverage here.)

In parallel with kicking off Recharge Studios, W3i announced that Dolphin Play, its first mobile social game, is now available in the App Store.  It’s based on “the Internet’s most downloaded screensaver, Living 3D Dolphins.” The company said it launched its all-new, free-to-play simulation game to be “just in time for the holidays.” (And I gotta say, I’m loving Santa in scuba gear today!) The company knows what it’s talking about when it comes to screensavers, because its original name was Freeze.com, which is still a thriving site it runs where consumers can get free screensavers and other downloads for Windows machines. In its latest announcement, W3i said the Living 3D Dolphins screensaver “provides a visually stunning backdrop for Recharge Studios’ debut game.” …  [Read More…]

Minnov8 Gang 101 – Is Tech a Bubble?

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We discuss a range of topics but the “Gang Mentality” segment covers what some are viewing as a “tech bubble” that is bound to burst. Listen and see if you agree or disagree.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Graeme Thickins (Phil Wilson is off this week)
Music: Nony Zero & their song “Surfin’ the Blast Wave” via the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 45:35 — 26.5MB)

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Discussed during the show:

 Links about “the bubble”:

 

Bloomington Firm Expects to Add 300 High-Tech Jobs

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Twin Cities Business (TCB) magazine reported today that Polar Semiconductor Inc. (PSI) is planning to build a new facility, adding to its existing 200,000-square-foot facility in Bloomington, just East of the Mall of America on Old Shakopee Road.  It cited documents recently filed with the City of Bloomington’s planning division.  But the biggest news is it the firm expects the expansion will add 300 jobs eventually when the facility is completed.

Bet you didn’t know that we had a big-time semiconductor fab practically in the shadow of MOA, did you now? And it’s been there for more than 25 years, actually, under previous ownership. (More on that below.)

The current 200,000-square-foot facility at 2800 East Old Shakopee Road includes 62,000 square feet of cleanroom space. where the company performs semiconductor wafer fabrication.  Chips cut from these wafers are used in a variety of electronic devices.

TCB reported that company officials are not yet disclosing information about the expansion. Quoting from the story: “Sources close to the deal said the initial phase of construction will likely result in the addition of about 80 new employees, and when completed, ‘the addition will have generated need for about 300 additional employees’.”  No target date was stated for the expected completion of the new facility.

A report by the City of Bloomington’s planning and economic development division, said TCB, indicates the company hopes to expand on its existing property by adding 98,000 square feet. The building would occupy space north of the existing facility. (Shown above in an aerial photo.)

TCB said the planning division voted unanimously in favor of the expansion, and the City Council will vote Monday to make the final decision. “I have no reason to believe they won’t approve, but of course, can’t know for certain,” a representative of the planning division told TCB.  She said PSI plans to begin construction in early 2011, and once the “shell” of the addition is complete, it will likely finish the interior through additional construction phases….  [Read More…]

CRAM™ to Deliver TV, Movies & Music in *Actual* HD

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It’s not often one meets an entrepreneur who embodies all the elements for a successful venture: a great idea backed up by patents; surrounded himself with a team who will ensure that the idea gets executed; persuaded key players who understand and have contacts and a strategic view of the industries (and how to align incentives within it) to join his board of directors; and exquisite timing by entering at the moment the TV, movies and music businesses are in such huge flux that no one can predict who will win the hearts and minds of the consumer.

Daren Klum

CRAM™ Worldwide is the company and Daren Klum that entrepreneur. To say that this is one of the most exciting and potentially biggest innovations to come out of Minnesota in a long time (or maybe ever) is an understatement. The more I’ve thought about the space, experienced the alternatives and felt incredible disappointment at the lack of quality in internet-only HD video & audio delivery (e.g., Boxee, XBMC, PlexApp, Kyte, AppleTV, Comcast OnDemand, et al), the stronger my level of enthusiasm has become for what CRAM promises to deliver. That, coupled with my belief that Klum will pull this off and overcome the formidable challenges ahead, means that a Minnesota company will be at the forefront of the TV revolution.

Even though we barely scratch the surface of the features, functionality, possible revenue streams and all the goodness that comprises the CRAM value proposition, I interview Daren to talk about his background, how he got the idea for CRAM, what drove him to enter this space, and why he thinks CRAM will be successful.

Discussed during the interview:

+ Hardcore Computer
+ HDCP has been cracked which places all, true HD content (e.g., movies on BluRay) at risk
+ Full Disk Encryption (FDE)

Podcast (m8-audio): Download (Duration: 25:39 — 14.9MB)

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In Its 24th Year, Venture Conference Asks If Minnesota Has ‘Lost It’

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We’ll find out Thursday, because I’ll be there to live-blog it all: the proceedings of the annual Minnesota Venture & Finance Conference at the Minneapolis Convention Center, co-hosted as always by the Minnesota Venture Capital Association and The Collaborative. The blue-suit crowd will turn out once more to hash over where, oh, where is venture investing going in our state, and whether Minnesota is holding its own or falling behind in relation to other states.

This is great sport, people!  We can’t beat Wisconsin in college football for seven years straight, but, oh yeah, we got those cheeseheads when it comes to the game of innovation!  Or do we?  (And, Gopher fans, I won’t even bring up South Dakota.  Shees.)

“Innovation?  Jobs?  Has Minnesota lost it?  Not for one day in October we haven’t,” says The Collaborative in one of its promos.  “2010 marks our second full year of the worldwide recessionary malaise.  Our state’s economy is also not what anyone is calling ‘robust’.  Our unemployment rate is higher than it’s been in decades.  On the plus side, we’re still one of the brightest economies in the nation,” the pitch goes on to say.

“The positive gap between our jobless rate as compared to the nation is at its highest in 30 years… Yet we also hear many reports of our state losing its way in innovation.”

Can you sense the drama, people?  I’m nervously doing finger and hand exercises right now, in great anticipation of the nuances I may be able to capture on my Macbook or iPad (decisions, decisions) as I contemplate the live-blogging nirvana that awaits me Thursday.  It has me breathing heavy.

“Last year, in the throes of the recession, 54 companies gave presentations, 400+ investors and entrepreneurs came, shared, and discussed growth in tough times,” said Dan Carr, CEO of The Collaborative, in his announcement of this year’s event.  “It actually felt optimistic! These companies also go on to create jobs.  Lots of them.  Minnesota is 8th in the nation in venture backed employment: 365,000 jobs.”  (No word on how many of those people may have been laid off in recent times because those ventures couldn’t raise enough money.)

Carr continues:  “This year’s ‘homecoming’ promises another day-long celebration of ‘doing’ more than ‘hand wringing’.  It’s true that some of our greatest companies rise from difficult times.  Our annual conference has a knack for bringing together Minnesota’s best ‘Up & Comers’.”

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Stealth Startup Inveni Launches Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in SF, and midVenturesLaunch in Chicago

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Today, Minnetonka-based Inveni LLC is telling the world its newly launched discovery engine “will drive social recommendations in the Web’s next wave.”  The company’s free consumer service will also enable better targeted advertising.  The Inveni discovery engine, says the firm, will change how consumers both make and receive recommendations on the Web. As of today, the service is publicly available, after more than a year in development and several months of private beta testing.  The company is making its debut at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in San Francisco, and also demonstrating its technology later today at the midVenturesLAUNCH startup conference in Chicago.

“The next wave of the Web will be about personalization. We’re focusing on using personalization to meaningfully improve discovery and decision making,” said Aaron Weber, CEO and cofounder. “The Inveni discovery engine leaps ahead of other online recommendation services.  What we’ve developed is unlike anything previously available.  Inveni consolidates ratings you put anywhere online – Netflix, IMDB, and more – provides tools to make and receive recommendations wherever you are, and helps you make better, more informed buying decisions.” The service has received positive feedback from users during the private beta over the past several months, said Weber.

Inveni provides its highly personalized product recommendations based on a consumer’s universal taste profile.  To create a personalized taste profile, Inveni empowers users to aggregate product and service ratings they’ve made across the Internet to quickly build deep, rich profiles of their tastes.  Beginning with the media categories of movies and TV, users can share their taste profile information with friends and other services online.  Inveni also facilitates product recommendations between friends (word of mouth), based on their tastes.

“We use this taste profile data, along with our unique crowd-refined recommendation engine, to provide highly targeted advertising, while simultaneously providing consumers with a compelling personalized service for discovery and sharing,” said Robert Bodor, CTO and cofounder, “We aim to become the premier provider of highly targeted consumer data for advertising online. We do that by turning the current consumer data model upside down, putting the user in control of their information.  We are entirely opt-in, and are raising the bar on consumer privacy protection.”

The company produced a fun, two-minute video to describe its value proposition to consumers, which you can view here. …  [Read More…]

Making Rain in Bloomington

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Today was the first day of the Rainmaker’s Conference, the 7th Annual event that brings together RAIN Fund members (an angel investment fund), entrepreneurs, investors and sponsors. The intent is networking, education, and exposure to RAIN fund entrepreneurs as well as numerous other startups in order to expose their companies to this key group of people.

Ironic that it was raining like mad all day? Yep. My key takeaway? There is A LOT of very interesting and exciting investment and entrepreneurial activity going on in Minnesota! There were well over 200 people in attendance, substantially more than last year and a great turnout.

Opened by Steve Mercil, CEO of RAIN Source® Capital (the largest network of Angel Investment Funds in US), and keynoted by Richard Sudek, an angel investor, former entrepreneur and academic, there was ample opportunity to connect with local and regional startups at tabletops in the lobby. I happened to run in to Lief Larson of Workface (who was showing BusinessCard2 with some new and interesting value added capabilities); Aaron Weber (co-founder of W3i) and his to-be-launched startup Inveni on Tuesday out at Techcrunch Disrupt (and it is HOT so go watch the video); Lisa Foote with MixMobi who has garnered key investments already for their mobile platform; and Jerry Grabowski of Redliner (see Minnov8’s story here) among others.

Two panels rounded out the day: one on Angel Investing in 2010 & Beyond and the second Funding Universe’s Crowd Pitch…a company showcase where six startups pitch their business plans followed by screening sessions and voting on whether they’re worthy of investment. Crowdsourcing at its best (the winner won’t be announced for another hour or so).

Graeme Thickins pulled aside Pete Birkeland, CFO at RAIN Source Capital to chat about the event. Pete is part of a team that manages 23 funds in 6 six states with $40 million under management and is a guy who has worked in this area for 10 years on both the entrepreneurial and investor side.

Podcast (m8-audio): Download (Duration: 3:47 — 4.4MB)

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EarthClean Takes the MN Cup!

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Last night, EarthClean, a Minneapolis-based start-up that makes an environmentally friendly fire retardant, was named “Minnesota’s Top Breakthrough Business Idea” and honored for its innovative business concept. Area business leaders and investors selected EarthClean as the 6th Annual Minnesota Cup winner, awarding it $20,000 as Clean Tech & Renewable Energy Division winner and an additional $20,000 as grand prize recipient.

Founded in March 2009, EarthClean develops innovative, game-changing technologies and high performing products that are safe for plants, animals, fish and people. The start-up’s first product, TetraKO®, is a biodegradable and non-toxic water additive that helps firefighters knock down and suppress fires far more effectively than currently available suppressants. The product is pumped through standard fire equipment and adheres to any surface, in any attitude, of its targeted structure. Exposed to heat, TetraKO immediately attacks the fire tetrahedron (the chemical chain reaction of fuel, oxygen and heat) resulting in a dense, white steam that is cooler than the fire itself, thus further suffocating the blaze. The result is exceedingly fast and thorough extinguishment with far less fire destruction and water damage, and reduced risk for fire fighter professionals.

Congratulations to the EarthClean team! If you have a moment, check out this video on the fire retardant at WCCO.com and head on over to the MN Cup website and view the press release which is here.

Robert Stephens Talks About New Role as CTO of Best Buy

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Earlier this week, I sat down for coffee with Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad, to chat about a number of things, and we decided to do an impromptu audio interview.  I realized later it was almost three years to the day when I’d first met Robert, at an event where he was honored as Entrepreneur of the Year at the 2007 Minnesota Cup reception at the University of Minnesota — and I blogged about that, quoting from his great talk. I’d also heard him speak before at other local events, where he’s always a favorite. I have much admiration for the man, not just because he’s the spiritual leader of 25,000 geeks and has a real passion for technology, but because he’s a marketing genius.What’s more, he’s really funny and entertaining. I also find it fascinating that he began college as an art student, then switched to computer science (coming to the U of M for that, from his native Chicago). I’ve since seen Robert at many of our local tech “barcamp” events, MInneBar and MinneDemo, for which he and his employer of the last eight years, Best Buy, have provided much support. Hats off to them for that. (As Robert likes to tell it, “Geek Squad acquired Best Buy in 2002.”)

But, this day, I thought it would be a great opportunity to let Robert tell us about the new role I knew he’d recently been promoted to — that of Chief Technology Officer, reporting the CEO of Best Buy.  I knew something was coming, because he hinted so in a meeting with me and my colleague Steve Borsch during the summer.  There was no Best Buy press release announcing his appointment, which I guess is common for them, but I actually confirmed it a few weeks ago when I hit Robert’s LinkedIn page. (He told me he didn’t want any hoopla around being named to his new role, that he’ll be happy to get recognition when he has some results to talk about.)

We recorded a 21-minute interview, where Robert touched on an array of topics.  He talked about technology trends, and how his job is translating those into actionable intelligence for Best Buy.  He spoke about his developing relationships and partnerships with companies like Google and Facebook, and how he really finds Best Buy a dynamic place to work, giving him a “palette, and a canvas.” He also tells the inside story about how was first asked to be CTO, involving a trip to New York with CEO Brian Dunn on the company jet to meet with Eric Schmidt of Google. Robert also talks about what motivates him, how he thinks more like a startup guy, but has the unique advantage of such big resources at Best Buy — and the abilily to open doors anywhere. “I have the best job,” he says. “I get to travel the world and visit all these companies.” He said over the next five to ten years, “we’ll be exploiting the four screens.” In that regard, he talks in particular about how one of those, TV, is coming into an new exciting phase. “I like sitting on the main chess board,” he said.

But let’s get to it…

Podcast (m8-audio): Download (Duration: 22:30 — 20.6MB)

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MN Company Lets You Run Windows Apps on a Mac – the Easy Way

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They say the best blogging is about story-telling. So, let me tell you one of mine — how I came to write this post. First, some background: I run a Windows-free environment, and have for a long time. I put in my time with “Windoz” many years ago, and quickly left it behind. I can’t even remember what version of the Mac OS I was using when that happened, but it was several iterations ago, and I upgraded through all those OS upgrades, loving the enhancements every step of the way.  There are many reasons I became an Apple fanboy, and have happily stayed that way — but the biggest of them all was simply ease of use, across the whole Mac experience, and the much lower hassle factor all around. I value my time. I don’t want to be a computer geek. I just want to get stuff done. Mac fits the bill.

Today, thanks to the amazing advances of the Apple OS over the years and other Apple software offerings, I don’t have a single need to run a Windows app on my Mac. However, I realize many people do — they have a work reason, perhaps, to run Outlook, one of the Windows versions of Microsoft Office, or Internet Explorer, or other apps that just don’t (for some crazy reason) yet have a Mac version. I’ve been running the same Mac version of MS Office now for more than a decade; it works fine. (So, I can’t say I run a completely Microsoft-free environment; just a Windows-free one.) I also realize there’s another big universe of Mac users out there who want to run Windows on their machines: gamers. We’re not talking a work reason here (I don’t think!), but this is a big market. There are many more games available for the Windows platform than for Mac — though that is changing somewhat, since so many game apps are continually being introduced for the Mac iOS — that is, for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. (And the new “GameCenter” in Mac iOS 4.1, due next week, moves Apple even further into the games market.)

But why I am writing about running Windows on a Mac when I don’t have a need myself, and I’m certainly not a gamer? Well, before I tell you about “CrossOver Mac,” here’s why: I had a personal experience recently helping my daughter.  She’s also a longtime Mac user, but she needed to run a single Windows app for her business, which was required by a government agency she had to deal with. So, I told her, sure, I’d help her figure out how she could do that. I of course knew about two programs designed to do that, called “Parallels” and “VMware Fusion,” either of which we could buy (for about $80, I think).  And I told her I could help her get one of those installed on her Macbook. But we really didn’t like the idea of spending even that much money to run one little Windows app, maybe once a month — plus a friend, Steve Borsch, told me Windows doesn’t really run all that snappy with those programs, anyway.

But I was starting to think about buying one of those programs when another local friend, Gary Doan, said, “Wait, what about Boot Camp? That won’t cost you anything.” Apple started bundling that program with OS 10.5 and now 10.6, and you just need the original install disk to fire that up. Yes, plus a bonafide version of Windows, with an install disk — and we would have had to buy that. Cheapest I could find: an OEM version of 32-bit Windows 7 for $110 at our local Micro Center (closest thing we have to Fry’s here in MN). You can’t even buy Windows XP anymore, I learned, so that was not a cheaper option. That, combined with an onerous 14-page manual that Apple said you must print out and have by your side as you go through the detailed Boot Camp installation and configuration process, was making me start to think, screw this. Then I learned my daughter’s Macbook only has a half a gig of RAM, and would need at least 1G to run OS 10.6, which I wanted to upgrade her to, and preferably 2G. That would have cost me at least another $60, even if I installed the memory myself, which I really didn’t want to do. I thought, wait a minute, we’re getting close to $200 here — for something we really don’t want to do! Plus untold hours of my time screwing around to get it running.

Long story short: I found a brand-new HP Mini netbook on sale for $269 at OfficeMax (thanks to a friend’s tip), and I had a $30 off coupon! I told her I’d gladly pay for half of that. I figured I was coming out way ahead, considering I wouldn’t have to invest any time at all if we went with this option.  Plus, she wanted a second computer anyway, just for email and web use on another floor of her house, and the HP Mini came with built-in wifi capability, so it was a pretty cheap option for that. Now, we’re both happy.

Which brings me to the subject of my post: there’s a much simpler way to run Windows on an Intel Mac — and it might just work for you.  I wish I’d have known about it a week or two earlier, and I could have saved even more time (and money).  It’s a product called CrossOver Mac, from the playfully named CodeWeavers, based in St. Paul, MN.

…  [Read More…]