Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

Minnov8 Gang 194 – All Our Startups Are Above Average

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A surprising number of hot stories this week for a December and the Gang covers it and more.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: The One by The Woodshedders brought to us by the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 49:13 — 28.7MB)

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Discussed during the show…

Upcoming Events…

Minnov8 Gang 193 – We Come Bearing Gifts

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There are so many tech gifts for this holiday season it is hard to figure out what is hot and what’s not. On our Holiday Gadget Buyer’s Guide Extravaganza the Gang recaps our top picks and we’re joined by Julio Ojeda-Zapata whose great list of Minnesota (and non-Minnesota) gift ideas is comprehensive and worth a look.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Natural Man by Lil Ed & the Blues Imperials brought to us by the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:10:10 — 41.3MB)

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Discussed during the show…

Upcoming Events…

Minnov8 Gang 191 – Flip That Toast!

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The local Minnesota startup community continues to grow as have technology players who started up a long time ago. One of those growing, players, an organization that has reinvented itself and accelerated in to the mobile space by helping developers monetize their apps and even vaulting themselves in to the thick of things with their own social FlipToast app, is St. Cloud-based W3i. Though putting “evangelist” in his Senior Vice President list of duties isn’t official, co-founder Rob Weber is certainly that and a lot more and we were delighted to have him on the podcast this week.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Traveling Blues by Bo Lozoff brought to us by the podsafe Music Alley.
Image: “Toaster image” used for composite is courtesy PixelPlacebo under a Creative Commons license.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:06:20 — 38.7MB)

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This week’s stories…

Upcoming Events…

 

Minnov8 Gang 190 – INCOMING!!

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The Gang, minus Graeme this week, talks about a range of topics including the QFOLabs Toy-helicopter startup has the tech, needs the lift (Minnov8 profile by Graeme here) and how Borsch would like it if it had munitions on board (especially lasers!).

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off this week).
Music: Without You by Black Lab brought to us by the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:02:22 — 36.5MB)

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This week’s stories…

Upcoming Events…

 

Minnov8 Gang 118 – The Cloud gets Sainthood

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Watching the tech headlines each week continually points to an accelerating trend: the ‘cloud’ is delivering an ever-increasing set of applications and services. Add to that an explosion in mobile devices and a continuing growth in mobile wireless (and Wifi) bandwidth, and you have a perfect storm of technologies and enablers driving innovation.

This week we talk with Rob Weber, VP and co-founder of the St. Cloud-based W3i. Rob spearheaded the setup of Minnesota’s premiere tech showcase event, Minnedemo, which will be held in St. Cloud on Tuesday, April 12th. He details the startups who will show their value propositions and it’s looking to be a very, very strong lineup!

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: W.C. Clark is the artist & the song is “Cold Blooded Lover” via the podsafe Music Alley.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 39:22 — 23.0MB)

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Discussed during the show:

  • Minnedemo presenters:
    • Field Nation – Cloud for IT Support Professionals (Mynul Kahn)
    • Locate My Deal – iPhone app which helps you find and share the best deal near you! (Joseph Rueter)
    • FeedLogic – On-farm feed system technology (Drew Ryder)
    • Logix Learning – Computer programming science, technology, engineering math (STEM) curriculum for high schools (Carter Tatge)
    • SocialSamba – Social networking for scripted characters (Matt Shilts)
    • Fliptoast – Satisfy your social cravings by bringing Facebook to your desktop! (Shivani Khanna)
    • JamParty – Don’t just play, make your own music on PC and console (Chad Koehler)
    • LiveEdit – Content management system (Eric Brown)
    • People Driven Performance – Software as a Service enterprise communication platform that engages employees and accelerates strategy execution (Denny Dotson and Lou Dickmeyer)
    • riteTIME – Capture labor data for payroll and job costing in a single system (Bruce Hagberg)
  • Amazon Cloud Drive

Upcoming Events:

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…]

W3i Lights Up the ‘Net with Its Latest App News

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Okay, so there’s this company named Apple that I hear makes phones.  And people tell me there’s been, uh, a bit of news lately about some new phone of theirs?  Well, that media firestorm didn’t stop Minnesota’s W3i LLC from deciding to jump in with some news of its own, which is actually related to the exploding ecosystem around Apple mobile devices.  That would be apps.

St. Cloud-based W3i is in the app distribution business — in a big, profitable way (33 successive quarters thereof).  But till now that business has been all about desktop apps, and Windows only. Well, mark down yesterday as the day they entered the world of mobile, with this bombshell: W3i Launches New Incented Mobile App Distribution Service for iOS App Developers.  A separate version of the release, for consumers, gets more to the benefit: Consumers Can Now Earn Rewards for Installing Apps.  Those rewards, my friends, would be cash — for consumers who register at a W3i site called Apperang.com.

Naturally, app fanboys and girls everywhere loved the news — after reading about it on some of the sites they frequent the most.  TechCrunch (MobileCrunch) ran this story: Apperang Pays You Cash to Download iPhone Apps… Ka-Ching! And VentureBeat (MobileBeat) ran concurrently — amazing how that happens — with their take: Get paid to install apps with W3i Mobile Solutions and Apperang.  Numerous other sites and blogs picked up on it immediately, and Twitter was going crazy on it (just search on hashtags #apperang and #w3i).  [Oh, sure, there was a story in the StarTrib last week, too, but that didn’t light up much of anything… <rimshot>]

I asked the CEO of a local app development company for his reaction to this W3i news, from a business perspective:  “The model and integration W3i has developed for desktop distribution has been a huge success in the past, so I wouldn’t bet against them on making their mobile version a success,” said Wade Beavers, CEO of DoApp Inc. “For developers wanting to get a core base of users fast, it makes sense to use this service. The key will be how long those users keep your app, because that’s where the return on investment is.”

I also asked one of Minnesota’s most experienced iPhone app developers for his reaction: “Will app publishers readily jump to use this type of service? Small developers, maybe,” said Bill Heyman of CodeMorphic. “But small developers may not have budget to support this type of promotion… Will it be enough to hit the tipping point for more organic sales because of a higher App Store ranking? Well, ultimately, it would depend on how much a company wants to spend to buy a ranking.”

But, actually, W3i signed on some pretty successful big developers for its private beta before the announcement yesterday (the service is now in public beta).  That list of launch advertisers — just those that let W3i use their names for PR purposes — includes these firms, with the name of their app in parentheses: Big Stack Studios (Sigma), Inert Soap (FingerZilla), Booyah (MyTown), Gist (Gist), Thinking Ape (Kingdoms at War), Flixster (Movies), Slacker Inc (Slacker Radio), xCube Labs (My Health Records – Health n Family), and infinidycorp (Zombies vs. Aliens).

I’m sure we’ll be hearing about a lot more, as W3i tells me they are crazy-busy now following up with other app companies who are inquiring.

(Disclosure: the author has had a consulting relationship with W3i for providing PR services.)

Minnov8 Gang 66: Flat Is The New Up?

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Is it true that “Flat Is The New Up?” Not if you’re a company just outside St. Cloud, Sartell-based w3i, which is consistently proving that “Up Is The New Up” every quarter through quite impressive and sustained growth. Our guest on this week’s podcast, co-founder Rob Weber (@robertjweber), tells us how they got started and what they’re up to now.

W3i was marketing apps when apps weren’t even cool and their founding is a great story. In 2000, the three Weber brothers (Ryan, Aaron and Rob) discovered the power of free and launched Freeze.com. Along with their team, they developed applications to satisfy users’ pent up demand for free content while pioneering new revenue models to spread the development and marketing costs across millions of installations — over 250 million to date.

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson (and thanks to Phil for tossing out the meme “flat is the new up” on the podcast!)
Music by Josh Woodward and the tune is “Stickybee”. From the podsafe music network Music Alley.

Discussed during the show notes:

 

Podcast: Download (Duration: 53:08 — 30.8MB)

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Getting to Know W3i

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w3i_logoAs usual, the schmoozing at Minnedemo yielded a pleasant surprise. My discovery of a Minnesota company that is known better beyond it’s borders than within them and the CEO of said company. The CEO; Andy Johnson. The company; St. Cloud based W3i.

Many in the Minnesota interactive “space” (I love using that term. It’s so Gene Roddenberry) know Andy from his days at Fingerhut. He was instrumental in moving them into the e-commerce world where he grew their business to some $300 million* before Fingerhut sold in 1999, allowing him  to take some time to recharge and be with family. He eventually joined CMS Direct where he was lured away by three brothers–Rob, Ryan, and Aaron Weber (the W3 of W3i. Yep the “i” is for interactive.)

What does W3i do? According to Johnson, whether you are a small developer with a great Windows based application or part of a monster company like Yahoo!, W3i can get your product on computers, build traffic, and make you money. How?…  [Read More…]