Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

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…]

Andy Morgan Leaving Internet Broadcasting to Join Godengo as CTO

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A longtime local technology infrastructure guru and head of development at one of Minnesota’s largest Internet firms has joined an emerging Bay Area startup — but will continue to live in the Twin Cities. Godengo Inc. today announced that Andy Morgan is joining the firm as Chief Technology Officer (PR Newswire).  Andy has been with St. Paul-based Internet Broadcasting (IB) for the past five years, most recently as Vice President of Platform Technologies, where he was responsible for delivering 500 million page views and 70 million on-demand and live video streams per month, to 15 million monthly unique visitors.  He also led a development group at IB that has numbered more than 40.  You also may remember Andy as the key tech guy who managed two Olympics sites for IB client NBC.

Morgan joins a former colleague at Emeryville, CA-based Godengo: Peter Stilson, CEO.  Stilson served for several years as COO and Chief Revenue Officer at Internet Broadcasting during it strongest period of growth.  He moved from the Twin Cities to the Bay Area in September 2008 to take the reins at Godengo. Andy tells me he starts his new position July 16.

Godengo provides print and web publishers a strong online presence and networked advertising inventory, enabling them to more effectively compete online.  Godengo’s Rivista™ content management system (CMS) is designed from the ground up for multiplying traffic volume, enhancing search engine optimization, and increasing profits at magazine publisher’s web sites. The Godengo™ Online Ad Network harnesses an affluent, upscale consumer audience that reads the premier city & regional and lifestyle publications, providing advertisers national reach with deep expertise in local markets. One of Godengo’s investors also has a Minnesota connection. Chairman George Lawson was VP of Corporate Development for Dayton Hudson Corporation earlier in his career, and also held senior operating and corporate positions with Levi Strauss & Co. and General Mills.

Upcoming Book on Hottest I.T. Trend: ‘Cloud Computing’

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Whether you’re in the computer business or not, chances are you’re hearing a ton about “computing in the cloud.” It’s widely being hailed as the top information technology (I.T.) buzzword of the year, thanks to applications many of us use every day — no matter what business we’re in — such as Google Mail or other online applications we simply access through a browser. Other examples would be customer relationship management software from Salesforce.com, or freely accessible word-processing software from Google, Zoho, and others. But there are many more types of these applications, and cloud computing can actually refer to both the software and the underlying infrastructure.

George Reese, a local software developer and tech company founder, knows a lot about the topic — so much so that he was recently commissioned to write a book on cloud computing by O’Reilly Media, based in Northern California, one of the most prominent names in computer publishing.  Reese is the founder of two Minneapolis-based companies: a new one called enStratus Networks LLC, a maker of high-end cloud infrastructure management tools, and an established business called Valtira LLC, the maker of an online “marketing platform” of the same name. Over the past 15 years, George has authored several technology books — with such names as MySQL Pocket Reference, Database Programming with JDBC and Java, and Java Database Best Practices. But his upcoming title, Web Architecture and Programming in the Cloud: Transactional Systems for EC2 and Beyond, may become his most popular yet.

…  [Read More…]

Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 4

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Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Phil Wilson

These shows, usually between 45-60 minutes in length, seem to just fly by without being able to get too in depth with any given topic. As such, we hope you find the show notes handy as you explore on your own.

Mentioned in this weeks show are:

+ Lawson’s Harry Debes: SaaS Industry Will Collapse in Two Years

+ Ellison: No Money In SaaS – Google Is The Risk

+ Go2Web20.net: a site directory for viewing Web 2.0 offerings

+ Mostly Trivial with Johnee Bee (and our recent post)

+ Next Minnedemo being planned…stay tuned

+ Next Twin Cities Social Media Breakfast about to be announced

+ What do YOU want to see Minnov8 turn in to as a community site better able to serve your needs? Let us know by sending us a note here.

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The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 46:40 — 26.9MB)

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