Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Interview of startup QONQR (MN Cup Runner-Up, High Tech Division)

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QONQR started as the winner of the first Twin Cities Startup Weekend in September 2010, a competition in which teams have 48 hours to build a prototype and pitch their business. Since then, QONQR has been accepted into the Demo Track of MidVenturesLAUNCH in Chicago and was a finalist in the Entertainment Category of the 2011 SXSW Accelerator, competing against Hall of Fame Game Designer, Lord British!

QONQR is the first in a line of geosocial games from the Minnesota-based company of the same name. The six QONQR team-members have been working together for years. In addition to being friends, and passionate gamers, they are experienced designers, deelopers, and entrepreneurs.

I interview Justin Peck and Andy Pickett from QONQR, the Minnesota Cup competition High Tech Division Runner-Up, at the final awards event on September 8th:

Predicting Human Behavior through Games

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Every week, people from around the world spend more than 3 billion hours playing video games. Professor Jaideep Srivastava of the University of Minnesota and Professor Dmitri Williams at the University of Southern California find this number too large to ignore. Their software company Ninja Metrics relies on social analytics to make sense of human behavioral data from these games.

Their startup coincides with a rising trend in game play and specifically an explosion in online games. Further, promotional forces like Dr. Jane McGonigal, an influential author and occasionally controversial visionary from U.C. Berkley believes that games can solve real-world problems through increasing the amount of time spent playing games to 21 billion hours per week by 2020. There is little doubt that gaming will continue to be an extremely important global activity.

The introduction of platforms like the Nintendo Wii, the Apple iPad, and the Sifteo Cubes has opened up a variety of new options for games. The social-gaming company Zynga has been steadily building innovative games delivered over social networking platforms like Facebook. The MIT Technology Review reported last week that Zynga is planning to produce a drastically more complex, strategic, and socially interactive gave than ever before. In a TechCrunch article last year, it was estimated that half of all Facebook users play games and that 40% of the time spent on Facebook is devoted to social games like those developed by Zynga. Clearly, there is an extensive amount of activity and data being generated through these evolving social interactions in massively multiplayer online games (MMO). …  [Read More…]

More Fuel for NGIN

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TST Media, the creators of the NGIN software platform has scored a round of financing led by El Dorado Ventures. When the ink dried on the agreement last week TST had secured $3.5 million to “grow existing business partnerships, drive software innovations and expand their talent base.”

TST Media CEO and co-founder, Justin Kaufenberg noted the fundraising as “transformational”. He notes that “To a degree, prior growth has been consciously checked in favor of reinvesting in our technology core…that patience and focus has set the stage for us to efficiently deploy these proceeds and exponentially enhance a proven platform and business strategy” In plain speak…TST has got plenty of fuel to power growth to the next level.

That point is further driven home as Kaufenberg commented on El Dorado Ventures. “As a venture partner, El Dorado brings an impressive track record of successfully aiding and nurturing the rapid growth of innovative technology companies.” With TST boasting 100% growth over the past three years and some 200 clients in 50 states and six different countries, Jeff Hinck of El Dorado was happy to note, “In TST Media, we found a company with a best-in-class technology platform. Unlike other players in the space, their NGIN platform has been architected for extendibility and growth.”

Also providing fuel for the local job market, TST Media will be adding more than 20 new positions this year including Software Engineers, UI/UX Designers, Development Operations, Project Managers, Technical Support and Sales.

Local start-up growth, more jobs, a growing platform. Light this candle!

Discovering High-Quality Produce through Actionable Analytics

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The startup Produce Ratings recently released their new beta website at ProduceRatings.com, which allows consumers to find and rate produce in their local communities. This Minnesota-based firm has been flying under the radar while their concepts emerge into a product that provides real utility.

While they are in a prelaunch phase, they do have the fledglings of a product. Founder Colin Tuggle was kind enough to give me the backdrop on his firm and where they are headed. He explained that “ProduceRatings is an online community that helps users find and rate produce in their local communities.”

Tuggle went on about the origins of ProduceRatings, “It started out in the summer of 2010 as a conversation between brother-in- laws over a few pieces of Minnesota peak season sweet corn. Both wanted to figure out when and where to get peak season corn without having to try every stand in the Twin Cities. A few beers later, ProduceRatings.com was born. Our sites ratings differ from others in that our ratings are time-sensitive. We have a rolling window for ‘what’s good now’ versus other sites that aggregate years of ratings in their current rating. We also differ in that we rate products, not sellers/locations. What we want to answer is ‘Where can I get the best sweet corn right now?’ Of course, you can substitute sweet corn for your favorite produce in that sentence.”
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Welcome a New Author: Kurt Roots

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Kurt Roots

Help me in welcoming a new Minnov8 author: Kurt Roots.

Kurt started his first company, which was devoted to web analytics, in high school at the age of sixteen. He went on to college and then graduate school where he did research in machine learning and data mining along with completing an MBA. After spending five years at Oracle, he landed at Quantum Retail in Minneapolis, a firm devoted to predictive retail optimization solutions.

He has a penchant for writing code, blogs, and research papers. You can also find him in the trenches at customer sites, understanding what they really want.

Kurt will be covering both startups and entrepreneurs in Minnesota and also organizations innovating in web and internet technologies. Welcome on board Kurt!

At the Crossroads Neandertals Hooked Up With Us

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Neandertal man image created from a discovered skull

If you’ve paid any attention to the acceleration in human and animal genomics research, the revelations and scientific discoveries are amazing. As someone who has had his DNA analyzed at 23andMe (whose co-founder Anne Wojcicki is married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin), I can tell you first-hand about the absolutely delightful discoveries I’ve made about my own DNA, its implications, how I’m connected geographically to other humans, and that it’s unlikely I’ll ever run a 4 minute mile (that last one is just my conjecture!).

Lynn Fellman

The most recent profound discovery was the identification of Neandertal DNA in modern humans! From reading the articles which have come out this month, it appears that modern humans heading out of Africa “co-mingled” with Neandertals in Eurasia and now humans with “1-4%” Neandertal DNA have been identified.

Fortunately we have an independent artist bridging science and the humanities through art and narrative right here in our midst in Minneapolis, Lynn Fellman, who does a beautiful job communicating what has taken place and its implications.

Give it a view and then head on over to her website. Sometimes the science of DNA can get pretty esoteric and boring. Having someone like Lynn—a woman who is steeped in the science but can see and interpret the beauty within it—deliver some of THE most beautiful interpretations of any science-related discipline I’ve ever been interested in is incredibly pleasing and useful. What I didn’t realize, until I saw this video, is how effectively (and beautifully with her own visuals) she can communicate an incredibly complex topic.

(As an aside, NPR’s Science Friday host, Ira Flatow, is a big fan of Lynn’s work and she’s been on the show. You can check one out in her “Stories/Podcasts” section of her website here).

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) commissioned Lynn to develop this presentation for their AAAS Member Central web site:

StarTribune Debuts iPad App

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In this morning’s dead-trees edition of the StarTribune, a full page ad appeared announcing the availability of the StarTribune iPad app. Downloading and launching it presents you with a clean, easy to use interface, optimized for a tablet-sized device.

Offering a complimentary subscription until October 16th, the StarTribune iPad app joins many daily newspapers who are hoping that tablet access will shift people away from newsprint versions and bring in non-newspapers readers (i.e., the under-35 crowd). Ironically the current StarTribune website offers a great experience already on an iPad, so it will remain to be seen if people will choose a native iPad app over the website itself.

The app loads quickly, stories load fast, and there is little of the latency one expects with ad serving, a typical problem on many newspaper websites where page loads stall while ads are fetched from an ad server elsewhere. With its minimalistic and clean look, it’s a pleasure to read.

One startling and glaring omission is the lack of social sharing, especially if the StarTribune truly cares to go after those non-newspaper readers mentioned above. While most smartphone and tablet news apps enable the reader to send an article via email or to Twitter, Facebook and other social platforms, StarTribune has only enabled email. This makes the app significantly less useful for anyone using social media technologies.

The other aspect of using the app that was troublesome was how obvious it now is that the StarTribune — like most daily newspapers around the country — reprint articles from major dailies like the New York Times, Washington Post, LATimes and also from the major newswires like the Associated Press and Reuters. Unfortunately for the StarTribune, there are so many apps with which we can access these same stories, that it makes StarTribune reprinted ones far too obvious and redundant. (For more on this problem and others in the newspaper business, see my personal blog post, “How to Save Newspapers (But do we even care?)“).

StarTribune’s new iPad app is an acceptable first effort, but getting in to the game so late we expected more from this hometown paper. The good news is that they will be able to take feedback and iterate the app so new features will (hopefully) be added over time. We’d like to see more social features added, a larger emphasis on local vs. national news (especially “above the fold” on the first page after launch), video and audio (e.g., podcasts), ongoing reference material that would be “evergreen” and always available (e.g., directories, restaurant reviews, visitor information, guides) and other content that would make using this app (and paying for a subscription come October) a much richer, and more local, experience.

Opening Night at the Minneapolis Grain Idea Exchange

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The floor of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange was open for business Saturday night as Project Skyway and CoCo hosted an open house for the new co-working space. What was once a space bustling with grain traders has been transformed into four distinct spaces including drop-in working, campsite (small company) working, meeting rooms and event space.  While it remains to be seen if the cavernous area will yield to areas of more intimate collaboration CoCo founders Don Ball and Kyle Coolbroth have designed a very exciting space that they hope will mirror their success at their St. Paul location.

They appear to be well on their way as tech incubator Project Skyway and many small start-ups and individual have already set up shop in the shadow of the  “big board”. Project Skyway’s, Cem Erdem noted that their first class of companies will begin working in the space starting today.

See more from Cem as well as Don and Kyle in the short video below.

Congratulations to all on the launch of another resource to further innovation at all levels. We’re looking forward to the day when the hackers figure out how to turn the big board into a ginat tweet wall. Well…maybe.

Workface Lands $900k in Venture Capital

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We were delighted to see that friend of Minnov8, Lief Larson and crew, have landed $900k to accelerate their vision of delivering a platform to maximize sales force and customer service engagement for organizations.

The Gang has used Workface’ profiles since the beginning and have watched this startup closely as they’ve continued to execute on their vision.

From their press release:

More than 75,000 professionals and over 2,500 different companies are now using Workface technology to enable their sales and customer service staffs to engage with prospects and customers online and in real time.

“Our ‘profile’ technology helps companies shorten sales cycles, connect with prospects at the moment of interest, and increase the level of engagement and intimacy with customers,” said Lief Larson, Workface founder and CEO. “This new round of capital will help us grow revenue from existing customers, add new customers and focus on several key platform enhancements.”

Congrats Lief and crew! See the full press release below…

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T-Mobile Shows It’s Serious About Minnesota, “Not Slowing Down”

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Everyone loves a challenger, and T-Mobile sure seems to be enjoying that role, as much here in Minnesota as anywhere. Yesterday, Steve Borsch and I had the opportunity to sit down with Tim Adams, the carrier’s new VP/GM for Minnesota and Wisconsin (see June 2 news), and have a wide-ranging chat with about T-Mobile’s plans and their latest 4G offerings. Tim has impressive executive experience in tech and retail, and was virtually bubbling with excitement about new T-Mobile’s initiatives in Minnesota and new offerings from the company to keep up, or ahead, of the big guys.

You might think the most important thing happening in T-Mobile’s world would be AT&T’s impending (but not yet approved) deal to acquire the company, and that was of course the first question we brought up with Adams.  Naturally, he could provide no more information than what’s been publicly announced. But he had much more to talk about. “We’re not slowing down. We’re not waiting for the acquisition,” he said. “Minnesota is a very important market for us, and we continue investing heavily and adding staff here.”  Across the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, T-Mobile has invested more than $43 million in continuous network upgrades since the start of 2010, according to Adams, and now has more than 350 cell sites operating 4G service in the Twin Cities area.

Which brings me to the most exciting news that T-Mobile was announcing yesterday:  T-Mobile’s Faster 4G Network Now Available in the Twin Cities — America’s Largest 4G Network is now twice as fast in Minneapolis/St. Paul.  Its super-fast “HSPA+42” (as in Mbps) network is now available “in the majority of the Minneapolis/St. Paul area,” the company’s release said, and customers will experience “speeds twice as fast as T-Mobile’s current 4G network on compatible devices.”  Before you start hyper-ventilating, it also states this:  the recently introduced Rocket® 3.0 laptop stick, its first HSPA+ 42-capable device, offers “average download speeds on our HSPA+ 42 network approaching 10Mbps, with peak speeds of 27 Mbps.”  Okay, it”s not 42 — but, trust me, I’ll take it!  …  [Read More…]