Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation
Educelerate Twin Cities will sponsor a bootcamp on Oct. 14 (6–8 pm) in collaboration with Startup Education to help edtech entrepreneurs learn about proven business models in education, immediately apply your knowledge in a hands-on workshop using the Business Model Canvas and get feedback that will help you with your own startup. Matt Hardy, co-founder of Kidblog, will be their guest speaker. Rajiv Tandon and Terera Marchek will be facilitators.
Details are here on their meetup page.
In January of 2009 I wrote a Minnov8 post called, “Why Executives Don’t “Get” Social Media” and it hit a nerve: The post ended up with tens of thousands of pageviews. Looks like not much has changed, especially when it comes to CEOs.
More than 4.5 years after that post was written, I received an email today from a woman in PR for CEO.com. Turns out they’ve just released their annual Social CEO Report and found only a marginal increase in social use among Fortune 500 executives since last year. An astounding 68 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs have no social presence at all — not even on Twitter or Facebook. In this day and age, this calls into question their true commitment to their brand.
Their PR woman had this to say about the author, Marc Fischman, and this report: Social media expert, Marc Fischman has a platform that can analyze CEO activity on Facebook and Twitter – down to the impact of a single tweet or post – and the chatter it creates. Armed with this data, he has a unique understanding of which leaders are really advocates for their brands. He understands some of the reasons bosses don’t tweet, but says they are missing out on a tremendous opportunity to extend their brand’s influence with key audiences who want to know what they, as leaders are thinking.
The 2014 Social CEO ReportThe teaser page here will enable you to get a sense of what the report offers before you hand over your name, email, company, and other data to snag it:
Are CEOs Finally Going Social?
It’s that time of year again. We searched for the social profiles of every single CEO on the FORTUNE 500® list on five popular social networks to determine which CEOs are lighting up social media – and which CEOs are still in the dark. Here’s a peek at what we found:
There is a lot of very good information in this free report and you should download and read it. That said, Fischman concludes with two slides which, in my view, the data presented doesn’t seem to support his “educated guesses“:
My take? That the trend in CEO-level social media engagement and use is increasing but Fischman needs to talk to as many CEOs as he can to find out why more of them don’t leverage social media. Or, if Weber Shandwick’s study included deeper CEO-level insights, he should include that data so we can gain those insights ourselves.
Most of my client CEOs are adamant that they just don’t see their personal social-media-payoff-for-time-investment. This goes beyond a monetary return on investment (ROI) for company management and use of social media.
I’ll simply reiterate my “bottom line” opinion,stated in my last paragraph in my 2009 post, about why most executives still don’t use social media:
One senior sales & marketing leader from a large local company I talked with recently — who has an atypical awareness of the social media technology space but admits he could care less about building relationships, community or honing his people skills — said it best when I asked why he didn’t invest time using Twitter sending out tweets, blogging or otherwise creating a presence in the social media space. “Because I’m getting sh*t done and I can’t invest my attention or energy there.”
You are invited to join Minnesota Cup, and other key organizations, at TreeHouse Health on September 16, 4:30-7:30 pm, for refreshments and a practical discussion on fundraising and intellectual property considerations.
Hear from knowledgeable local experts: professionals from AVL Growth Partners, a firm that delivers financial expertise to early-stage firms, and Christensen Fonder, a leading Minneapolis-based intellectual property law firm.
This free event is open to all in the Twin Cities startup community. Lots of time for valuable networking — and come with your questions!
A grain buyer looking over samples on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange trading floor
in September, 1939. The same general area today at CoCoMSP’s coworking space.
There is no question that CoCoMSP has succeeded in delivering on the promise of co-working facilities. Their spaces are in unique and compelling structures, they have learned how to give what a discerning group of people desire in just such a setting, and have also become smart about, and blazed their own trails, when it comes to best practices in coworking.
CoCo-Cofounders: (l-r): Don Ball; Kyle Coolbroth; Jeff Heegaard and Roger Heegaard (not pictured)
If you’ve not yet been to the CoCo space in the former Minneapolis Grain Exchange building in downtown Minneapolis, the transformation of the former trading floor is just a delight to behold and you owe it to yourself to visit soon.
We thought you’d be interested in some photos that we recently discovered. We were alerted to them by Kim Garretson, who posted about a Yale University search offering called Photogrammar. This web-based search site makes it very easy to find photos within the 170,000 of them that the Library of Congress archives.
Garretson had linked to these 401 photos categorized as “Minneapolis” and “Minnesota”. enjoyed digging through photos like these from Minneapolis. That batch of photos included the ones you see below, taken in 1939, of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange in action. Enjoy!
(Photo credit: Teresa Boardman)
(Photo credit: John Vachon)
The Minnesota Cup has advanced 21 teams of Minnesota-based entrepreneurs, innovators, and inventors to the third round of the 2014 competition – the tenth annual. Finalists were chosen from 70 semifinalist teams across seven divisions, in a record year of 1300 total participants.
Energy/Clean-Tech/Water Division:
75F—Deepinder Singh, Blue Earth County
Friction Reduction—Gary Pozarnsky, Hennepin County
Pelican Lake Holdings—Robert Anderson, Grant County
Food/Ag/Beverage:
Locally Laid Egg Company—Jason Amundsen, St. Louis County
Punk Rawk Labs, Inc.—Alissa Barthel, Hennepin County
Trovita Health Science—William Brown, Hennepin County
General:
DocentEDU—Matthew Nupen, Washington County
JenTra Tools—Travis Kelley, Cass County
YOXO—Jeff Freeland Nelson, Ramsey County
High Tech:
Elevate—Joe Stanton, Dakota County
InfiniRAM—Martin Fenner, Washington County
OMG Transit—Matt Decuir, Hennepin County
Life Science/Health IT:
Andas Inc.—Joseph Jensen, Hennepin County
SpineThera—Jeff Missling, Hennepin County
SynapseBLUE—David Sullivan, Hennepin County
Social Entrepreneur:
Begins with a Dreamer—Joy McBrien and Kristi Hemmer, Hennepin County
Twin Cities Mobile Market—Leah Driscoll, Ramsey County
Verde Environmental and Medsaway—Carter Anderson, Dakota County
Student:
Tech Bank, LLC—Austin White-Pentony, Hennepin County
Ilos Videos—Sean Higgins, Crow Wing County
Jonny Pops—Connor Wray, Rice County
(left to right): From Taylor Corporation: Glen Taylor, Chairman, CEO; Debra Taylor; Becky Taylor, spouse
of Glen Taylor; Björn Stansvik, Founder & CEO, MentorMate (photo courtesy MentorMate)
MentorMate, a Minneapolis-based technology consulting and development organization, has just been acquired by Mankato-based Taylor Corporation, a diversified company with 80 subsidiaries covering a wide variety of services.
Mobile strategy, design and technology now core to Taylor’s vast service offerings
MINNEAPOLIS, MN. AUGUST 5, 2014—MentorMate (www.MentorMate.com) announced today that it has been acquired by Mankato, MN-based Taylor Corporation as part of a long-term plan to accelerate Taylor’s mobile technology strategy. As a leading mobile and web strategy, design and delivery organization with offices in five locations in the U.S. and Europe, MentorMate was the logical choice for infusing mobile strategy expertise into Taylor’s portfolio of more than 80 companies and its clients consisting of 275 Fortune 500 companies and thousands of small to medium-sized businesses globally.
“As we evaluated numerous options to create exceptional value for our customers, employees and owners, and to expand nationally and internationally, Taylor emerged as the premier choice for its ability to create tremendous market access and its industry-specific expertise on a global scale.” says Björn Stansvik, CEO of MentorMate.
Taylor Corporation stated, “As an award-winning mobile and web strategy, design and development firm, MentorMate will bring transformational technology to our companies and we are excited about the acquisition. Their proven success in delivering simple, beautiful and meaningful mobile and web solutions to small and large businesses will play a key role in helping our customers communicate their messages while maintaining and enhancing their brand.”
MentorMate’s operations and management will remain in place, and Stansvik will continue to lead the company. The two companies will begin execution on short- and long-term plans to maintain common core values, capture synergies and focus on continuous innovation to catapult growth.
About MentorMate: MentorMate is an international mobile solutions ¬firm with more than 200 employees working in five cities globally. We deliver innovative custom mobile and web software, user experience (UX) design, backend integration, data analytics/BI, and management and consulting services focused on the mobile enterprise. Learn more at www.MentorMate.com.
Speaking at a meeting of the Business Marketing Association (BMA) this morning, Peter Zaballos said the practice of marketing has changed dramatically in the past five years. “It’s completely transformed,” said the VP of Marketing and Products at Minneapolis-based SPS Commerce, which runs a supply chain cloud service for retailers. And a lot of that
transformation has to do with “how businesses buy,” according to Zaballos, citing the advent of the iPad as but one example in recent years. “My largest spend is technology, not media,” he said. “Marketing organizations have had to retool.”
Zaballos joined SPS (NASDAQ: SPSC) just two and half years ago, and the company has seen its revenues double in that time. (For the full year of 2014, the company expects revenue to be in the range of $125.7 to $126.5 million.) What undoubtedly surprised attendees at the meeting was learning that, before Zaballos joined, the company had no marketing department — only a group of top-performing sales people who each kind of did their own thing. But SPS realized it had to formalize the marketing function if it was to achieve the aggressive growth plans its management and board had laid out. Today, the firm continues to expand and add employees, Zaballos said, ”and we’re now the largest cloud service in Minnesota.” It reported recently that its retail sourcing community exceeds one million items and 7,000 retail members.
The topic of today’s meeting of the Minnesota Chapter of the BMA, attended by some 80 members and guests, was “Success Stories: How Marketers Overcome Their Greatest B2B Challenges.” After Zaballos gave his opening talk, he moderated a panel of marketing execs from local firms. (Left to right in the photo below: Zaballos; Audra Wendt, Cargill; Guy Wray, MOCON; Britta Iwen, Ecolab; and Judy German, Cachet Financial Solutions.) He led off the panel with his take on marketing today: “It’s about affecting change, including getting sales to adopt new tools” — citing a challenge all the others on the panel went on to talk about, among other topics.
It was a lively discussion, with panel members openly sharing their experiences navigating the new world of B2B marketing and the challenges they specifically have faced at their respective companies. Some of my takeaways:
• When the panelists were asked what was the one medium each of them relied on the most, invariably “content” was the word that quickly came out of each panelist’s mouth — whether it was about developing it, sharing it, repurposing it, or “leveraging it across all channels.”
• It seems social media is at the top of every B2B marketer’s mind these days, too (much related to the above), and is only becoming more important. At least one panelist mentioned the CEO pushing to do more with it. One reason: compared to older, traditional methods, it’s just much easier today to segment and identify prospects with social media — for example, by advertising on LinkedIn. “I can spend $125 (targeting certain titles or functions) and get 35,000 impressions.”
• The new product management is “growth hacking,” said Zaballos — meaning iterating improvements, and trying new things, or “failing fast.” When the panelists were asked how they encourage that, they all had good answers. At Cargill, it’s recognition — a “Fail Fast Award.” At MOCON, a heavily engineering type environment, it fits the culture to simply call them “experiments.” Ecolab encourages employees to talk about what they learned. At Cachet Financial, the youngest firm in the group, one concludes it’s just sort of built in to the culture, in what is more of a smaller, startup environment. (And, by the way, kudos to BMA for having an early-stage firm on the panel of an organization that’s more populated with large firms, including many of our local Fortune 500 giants. I say mix it up more with startups, and everyone benefits!)
• Asked about the technology they use — what and how much — it was not surprising to hear the word “data” mentioned most. As in analytics.
On that last point, I hope we get to hear more voices from the local BMA chapter speak at the “Marketing Analytics” conference I’m helping to plan this fall, being put on by the MinneAnalytics organization, on whose board I serve. I’m very happy to say that SPS’ Zaballos has agreed to speak about how his firm leverages its considerable customer data to obtain insights previously unavailable — arguably one of the most significant of those transformations happening in the world of marketing today. (Watch for more on that upcoming conference soon on Minnov8.)
>>> Here’s a video interview I did of Peter after the meeting. <<<
And be sure to check out more great events upcoming from the BMA Minnesota Chapter this fall as well. If you have anything at all to do with B2B marketing, you really should follow the organization on Twitter (@BMAMinnesota) and consider becoming a member!
HyperIQ leadership (l-r): Graham Wood; Phil Wilson; Josh Walker
Mobile development continues to expand in Minnesota and a new merger will accelerate that trend.
Hyper IQ, a firm led by Phil Wilson (one of Minnov8’s co-founders and long time contributors) has entered into an agreement to merge with Wood Apps, LLC, a firm run by Josh Walker and Graham Wood. The combined firm will enjoy a larger customer base, broader array of skills, and a deeper knowledge about mobile platforms overall.
Congratuations to this new firm and best of luck to Phil, Josh, Graham and their team.
Minneapolis based mobile firm merges with Wood Apps to more than double size.
Minneapolis, MN – Mobile development firm Hyper IQ has entered into an agreement that results in a merger with Wood Apps, LLC. The joining of the two companies, specializing in Mobile Application and related web design and development, establishes a partnership between Hyper IQ’s Phil Wilson and Josh Walker along with Wood Apps’ Graham Wood. The combining of the two firms more than doubles the size of the staff and it’s payroll. The expanded Hyper IQ and its team will come together in its headquarters at CoCo in the historic Grain Exchange building in Minneapolis.
Hyper IQ President, Phil Wilson, noted, “I’m so excited to be coming together with Graham Wood and his team. We’ve worked together on many projects and it’s such a natural evolution. Josh, Graham and I share a common vision to provide high quality mobile development and customer service.” Wilson goes on to say, “When I consider the level of the talent now under our roof, it’s almost an embarrassment of riches.”
Wood Apps Founder, Graham Wood said, “We’ve worked along side Hyper IQ on many projects and I’m looking forward to taking advantage of the business sense and operations management skills that Phil Wilson and his team will provide.” He also said, “It’s also exciting to be combining our team with Josh Walker and the Hyper IQ engineers, allowing us to deliver the amazing mobile applications that can only be built by a team of highly talented developers.”
Josh Walker added, “This is a very exciting time, not only because I will assume a partnership position, but also because we’ll be emphasizing Hyper IQ as a great place to work, learn and grow. Phil, Graham and I share so many of the same values and vision. I look forward to continued growth as a company, and as individuals.”
About Hyper IQ
Founded in 2009, the Hyper IQ name was adopted in June 2013. Phil Wilson, the Director of Operations since late 2012, purchased the assets of the company from its owners in May of this year. Hyper IQ, Incorporated boasts a list of clients and collaborations that include BuzzFeed, Best Buy, CaringBridge and other Fortune 500 companies. Hyper IQ concentrates on building mobile and related web applications.
Wood Apps History
Wood Apps was founded in late 2010 by Graham Wood and his wife as a side gig developing iOS apps on nights and weekends while working a day job as a software engineer in the aerospace industry. Less than one year later Graham was able to leave his day job and do iOS consulting full time. By mid 2012 Wood Apps was up to 3 developers, and in 2013 they added a 4th member to the team. In 2014 discussions began internally on how to grow beyond a small family branded business comprised solely of developers to an established company that could take on some large scale projects, and partnership discussions could not have come up at a better time.
Phil Wilson assumes the title of President and Co-Founder, Graham Wood becomes Vice President of Technology and Co-Founder, while Josh Walker is named Vice President of Mobile Technology and Co-Founder. The merger is effective immediately.
CONTACT:
Phil Wilson
612-743-7860
phil@hyper-IQ.com
In a post today in the Wall Street Journal “Speakeasy” blog (which covers media, entertainment, celebrity, and the arts), the latest music video from Weird Al Yankovic — called “Mission Statement” — was featured. It’s hilarious!! Take a look (length is 4:34)… I’ll wait.
What’s cool is that the video has a Minnesota connection. It turns out Yankovic and his longtime coproducer tapped TruScribe to make it — starting some ten months ago. TruScribe is headquartered in Madison WI, but also has an office in downtown St. Paul. (In addition, it 
maintains international operations through many key European partnerships.) Andrew Herkert, who’s VP of sales and a cofounder, heads the St. Paul office and helped launch the company while a student at the University of St. Thomas about five years ago. TruScribe has grown significantly since then.
An excerpt from the WSJ post:
The song, from Yankovic’s new album “Mandatory Fun,” is in the style of Crosby, Stills & Nash… (it) features Yankovic harmonizing with himself on lyrics constructed of corporate jargon, like “operationalize our strategies” and “leverage our core competencies,” while the animated whiteboard video depicts a live-action hand that is drawing illustrations to go with the words.
“I wanted to do a song about all the ridiculous double-speak and meaningless buzzwords that I’ve been hearing in office environments my entire life,” Yankovic says by email. “I just thought it would be ironic to juxtapose that with the song stylings of CSN, whose music pretty much symbolizes the antithesis of corporate America.”
I laughed out loud at one comment on the post (from a guy named David): “Weird Al hits all the right points. Anyone who has written a press release should hang their heads in shame.”
TruScribe is getting a ton of praise today (including from Al himself), as you can see on its Twitter account.
And here’s a great blog post TruScribe published today, Weird Al is making fun of you! And us, too.
TruScribe’s technology is called “Scribology,” and the company has built an impressive client list.
I had the pleasure of meeting cofounder Andrew Herkert at the most recent University of St. Thomas “Fowler Business Concept Challenge” (a student competition), where we were judges on the same team. Here’s what he had to say about the news today:
“Weird Al is a creative powerhouse, with a decades-long influence on pop culture, and that makes it an honor that we were selected as vendor for his whiteboard-animation project. The TruScribe team is optimistic this is just the beginning of a deeper relationship with the media industry. … I have high praise for Jay Levey of Imaginary Productions for catalyzing the vision for this video. Jay is Al’s business partner and manager/agent/fellow visionary — they’ve worked together for many, many years. In fact, Jay discovered Al some 30 years ago.”
TruScribe is another great example of Minnesota creativity and technology innovation! Okay, Wisconsin claims them as well. We hate to admit it — but, yes, occasionally, cheeseheads can be creative, too… 🙂
NOTE: This post first appeared earlier today on my personal blog, GraemeThickinsOnTech.
UPDATE: The deal is done.
Techcrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis (@alexia) reported this one hour ago:
Google has Nest, Apple has HomeKit and Samsung has…SmartThings, we’re hearing. The deal was completed for around $200 million dollars, though it might have been less according to one source.
(Update: The deal is not done yet, says another.)