Riverfront/Mill District : Innovation + Job News

ChangeX, the Dublin-based, technology-driven social enterprise startup, has yet to celebrate its second birthday, but it’s already looking to conquer its first overseas market: Minnesota. To mark its international launch, ChangeX held a (local) star-studded launch gala September 12 at the Pillsbury A-Mill Artist Lofts in St. Anthony Main. The event showcased remarks from CEO Paul O’Hara, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, Ramsey County Commissioner Toni Carter, and Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield (ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s was also on hand).
 
ChangeX is a standardized platform, or more accurately a collection of local communities, operating on the same digital architecture that puts proven social enterprise concepts in front of local stakeholders, who can choose to adopt or not adopt them at their discretion. Think of it as a bottom-up approach to philanthropy and community building — or, less charitably, Craigslist for social entrepreneurs. O’Hara wants to put 100 social change concepts to work in Minnesota within a year — an ambitious, “but hopefully possible,” goal.
 
“It’s crazy to think that barely a year ago, we were just getting started, and now we’re getting ready to launch in another country,” O’Hara said before introducing 10 potential change concepts. Among them: Men’s Sheds, an established international organization dedicated to improving social connections and quality of life for isolated men around the world; Welcoming America, an American charity built to bridge gaps in understanding between immigrants and the communities they seek to join; and Coder Dojo, an Irish initiative that makes programming languages fun and accessible for children of all ages.
 
According to O’Hara, the company’s engagement rates grew by an average of 120 percent per month over the past year, albeit from a very small baseline. That kind of growth is almost unheard of, even in the tech world.
 
Still, the company’s experienced leadership, all too cognizant of the complexities of international business, remained reticent to move beyond its country of origin too soon. It took a decisive show of support by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Ben & Jerry’s charitable arm, plus a serendipitous encounter with the person who’d become their local leader—Jen Aspengren, a seasoned nonprofit leader most recently with Ashoka United States—to change the calculus.
 
“We chose Minnesota for a combination of reasons,” said O’Hara, including “a vibrant civic society, a thriving nonprofit sector and a variety of social issues” that the ChangeX team felt its platform could tackle. The linchpin, he added, was Aspengren, who has a big task ahead of her. She’ll play a key role in what O’Hara calls ChangeX’s “humble” goal: improving the lives of 1 billion people over the next 10 years. “Improving” is defined pretty broadly here, but even so, O’Hara readily admits he “has no idea how we’re going to do it.”
 
Nevertheless, local leaders are happy to have a new social enterprise kid on the block. “So many folks out there are creating these nuggets [of ideas] that can change the world,” said Mayor Coleman, adding that “the more dysfunctional our federal and state governments get,” the harder it is to achieve real change through traditional top-down processes.
 
Fittingly, ChangeX’s Minnesota experiment will sink or swim on the strength of the state’s greatest asset: its people. “This whole thing is pointless without you all,” said O’Hara, gesturing to the gathered crowd. “So please share your ideas, join other initiatives and spread the word about ChangeX.”
 
 
 

Even if you’ve never been to the Big Apple, you’ve probably heard of Humans of New York — the wildly successful, ongoing photo essay that’s touched more than 20 countries and earned millions of social shares.
 
New York City has more than eight million inhabitants from all over the world, but it’s not the only place with a multitude of human-scale stories worth sharing. MSP has its very own analog: Humans of Minneapolis, Minneapolis-based photographer Stephanie Glaros’ often poignant look at the joys, sorrows and oddities of life in the urban North.
 
Glaros started Humans of Minneapolis as an occasional tumblr blog — a useful vehicle for her ample interactive talents. She’s since added a Facebook page and Instagram feed to bring her subjects to a wider audience. Last month, the Minneapolis Parks Foundation announced that Glaros would conduct a “summer-long portrait series profiling visitors to Minneapolis neighborhood parks,” showcased in Humans of Minneapolis’ digital ecosystem and the Park Foundation’s own social properties.
 
According to the Parks Foundation, Glaros will profile 15 park visitors in all. The portrait series aims to draw attention to Minneapolis’ 160-plus parks, which (per the Parks Foundation) attracted more than six million visitors last year. Shortly after the portrait series’ announcement, the Trust for Public Land announced that Minneapolis had once again earned the top spot in its closely watched urban U.S. park system rankings, continuing a dominant run that dates back to the early 2010s.
 
“Stephanie’s series will help us begin to tell the stories of the people who use our parks every day and show the multitude of ways people use and love our Minneapolis parks,” the Parks Foundation said in a release.
 
Some of the stories Glaros captures on the Humans of Minneapolis blog are challenging, to put it mildly. Interviews conducted immediately following Prince’s death were heartbreaking. More recently, she spoke with a young man whose ex-girlfriend’s brother had died violently the previous week; in the interview, he talked openly about his own mortality and agonized about carrying a firearm for protection.
 
It’s not yet clear whether Glaros’ park stories will hew toward the weighty, or whether they’ll focus on the lighter side of summer in MSP. No matter what the next few months bring, Glaros is excited to explore her beloved, snow-less home city and forge new connections with her fellow Minneapolitans.
 
“People are reserved here and they don’t want attention, so it can be a bit of a challenge to draw people out,” she told the Star Tribune in April. “I look at that as a challenge to get real and get outside of our shells and make a connection…[t]here’s something magical about connecting with a complete stranger.”
 
 

Humdinger and Sons, a young ad agency in Minneapolis’ Mill District, may have found the formula for startup success in a competitive industry dominated by entrenched behemoths: seek out, and partner with, other ambitious startups.
 
With a full-time staff of six and a trusted supporting cast of freelance scriptwriters, developers and designers, Humdinger has built and scaled a business around memorable, well-produced promotional videos.
 
Thanks to a rapidly rising profile and impressive client retention rate, Humdinger is growing faster than at any point in its two-year history. At least two new hires, including for business development, are imminent.
 
“We’re taking the expertise we’ve developed over the years in the ad business and reinventing a business model that really hasn’t changed in 40 years,” says Nicolas Will, who co-founded the company along with fellow Minneapolis native Andrew Berg. “Our clients are immensely receptive — we haven’t lost a single one since we’ve been in business.”
 
Will and Berg tie Humdinger’s retention figures to the company’s unique niche and approach. Unlike traditional agencies, which typically compete for high-profile clients like Target and Wells Fargo, Humdinger seeks out ambitious but often cash-strapped startups — in MSP, coastal innovation centers and even international markets — that simultaneously need funding and exposure. In many cases, Humdinger clients can’t even afford an in-house marketing employee.
 
“For a lot of our clients, we’re basically operating as an external marketing department,” says Berg. “Once they see what we can do [after the first project], they totally trust us to handle their promotional needs.”
 
Humdinger’s startup culture appeals to entrepreneurs and innovators, too. Startup owners are used to devising and implementing solutions quickly, without filtering decisions through multiple layers of red tape or aligning directives with corporate protocols. For people used to results, says Will, working with a traditional agency can be a frustrating experience. With Humdinger, there are few if any barriers between agency and client.
 
And for Will, Berg and the rest of the Humdinger team, working with smaller firms ensures that creative work doesn’t get diluted or shelved by an in-house marketing department or hands-on C-suite employees, as sometimes happens with larger corporate clients.
 
There’s an additional benefit to Humdinger’s niche: a relative lack of competition. Will and Berg struggle to identify their closest competitors, largely because established agencies — even small ones — tend to pass on unproven startups that may still be scrounging for funding.
 
While Will estimates that 80 percent of Humdinger’s business is paid upfront, the company will often exchange its services for a percentage of a client’s Kickstarter funding, or even (though less frequently) for an equity stake. Some of Humdinger’s most promising clients” have accepted Humdinger’s services in exchange for equity or a “Kickstarter kickback.”
 
Accepting equity or a percentage of a crowdfunding round — which isn’t guaranteed to succeed — “is a bit of a risk,” says Berg. But for truly promising startups, it’s an acceptable risk.
 
Will and Berg weren’t always risk-takers. Both cut their chops at big coastal ad agencies with high-profile clients — Will was part of a team that designed LeBron James’ first website, after the NBA superstar signed a massive deal with Nike. But in the early 2010s, Will and Berg returned to their native MSP, ostensibly to settle down. The pair first crossed paths at Olson, where they worked for a few months on the company’s Tivo account.
 
Though Will and Berg enjoyed working at Olson, they soon grew frustrated by the sheer volume of inquiries they and their colleagues received from smaller companies and startups without the six- or seven-figure budgets necessary to support a full-scale campaign with a major agency — the types of companies that would later become Humdinger’s bread and butter. So Will and Berg conceived the “Humdinger model.”
 
Current Humdinger Job Listings in Minneapolis
 

1. Business Development Manager
2. PR Specialist

Minneapolis event-organizing company, GetKnit Events, is changing the way Twin Cities residents experience local businesses and attractions. On September 13, it pulled off its most ambitious and far-reaching experience yet: Rails & Ales, a self-guided tour of the breweries and brewpubs along the Green Line, from Target Field to Union Depot. Hundreds of participants sipped discounted brews, previewed special cask releases and rubbed shoulders with some of the most innovative brewers in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
 
For GetKnit founder Matt Plank, connecting Twin Citians with local business owners—preferably on a permanent basis—is the whole point. He and the company’s “core team” of paid employees, most of whom knew each other socially before GetKnit’s founding, are constantly looking for “ways that we [can pursue] our goal of community engagement while supporting local businesses in and around Minnesota,” says Plank.
 
Tickets for Rails & Ales sold out quickly, but a lucky group of several hundred attendees got their run of three establishments in Minneapolis and five in St. Paul, all within walking distance of the Green Line. (Though pedicabs were out in force to transport customers between stations and breweries, especially at farther-flung spots like Urban Growler and Bang Brewing.) Guests checked in at the Target Field, Stadium Village or Union Depot stations, where GetKnit staffers and volunteers handed out T-shirts, drink tokens (two per person, each good for a free pint) and “event passports” that listed participating breweries, their specials and Rails & Ales social media contests.
 
Other locally owned businesses got in on the act too. The Dubliner Pub, between the popular Raymond Avenue (Urban Growler and Bang) and Fairview Avenue (Burning Brothers) stops, ran all-day drink and food specials. Food trucks like Peeps Hot Box posted up outside participating breweries, tempting customers with daily specials. And even independent vendors, like the woman selling vintage glassware outside Bang, profited from the early-afternoon crush on a beautiful Saturday.
 
Meanwhile, the brewers themselves relished the chance to mingle with enthusiastic craft beer fans. At the Mill District’s Day Block Brewing, for instance, the head brewer handed out free pints to anyone who correctly guessed the varieties of hops laid out on the table before him. Rails & Ales wrapped up at 6 p.m., but brewery owners have to be hoping that the day provided a permanent boost in visibility.
 
GetKnit draws inspiration from other tour companies and event organizers, says Plank, but with a twist. Aside from the focus on locally owned business, which is lacking in some areas of the industry, the company aims for “wildly original” events “that our participants likely couldn’t do anywhere but through GetKnit.” You might be able to spend an entire Saturday riding the Green Line between breweries, in other words, but you probably wouldn’t be able to mingle with head brewers, try specially brewed cask releases or enter social media contests for free events and swag.
 
And unlike more bare-bones tour and event operators, GetKnit organizes well-staffed, all-inclusive events that “allow participants to turn off their brains for a day...and not worry about anything,” says Plank. For Rails & Ales, GetKnit had at least one representative at every participating brewery, in addition to staff at check-in stations. The goal was to facilitate “safe and responsible” enjoyment while showcase the ease of using local transit and “how much is accessible right off of its grid.”
 
GetKnit also designs bespoke events for private groups. Plank cites a recent example in which a group of Latin American businesspeople came to the Twin Cities for meetings and sightseeing. Many had never been to Minnesota, so Plank’s team set about creating the "quintessential Minnesotan experience” that included a horse-drawn carriage tour of St. Anthony Main, a brewery tour and tasting, a hands-on cooking class featuring Jucy Lucy burgers and even private curling lessons.
 
For now, GetKnit organizes events in the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota. But Plank doesn’t rule out the possibility of expanding the model to other regions, possibly with the help of knowledgeable locals. A recent St. Croix Valley winery tour did cross the Wisconsin border, and “we are playing with other events that might do more extensive tours of other areas in our neighbor to the east,” he says.
 

This week the Twin Cities BIKEFUN!'s Pedalopolis extravaganza will take to the streets. Pedalopolis is an annual "crowd-sourced festival of social bike rides" with dozens of user-generated events and themed rides. The celebration kicked off at 5 p.m. yesterday with a parade between Matthews Park and Powderhorn Park, where a potluck lasted into the evening. The parade's centerpiece was the enormous Pedal Bear, a "pedal-powered polar bear" built by the locally based ARTCRANK Collective.

The opening festivities were just the tip of the iceberg. "The Pedalopolis festival is an ever expanding work in progress," writes Nickey Robare, of Twin Cities BIKEFUN! "[We're] creating a space, and the community has stepped in to fill it up." The goal is to create a series of themed rides and gatherings around Minneapolis and St. Paul. BIKEFUN! accepted ideas from members of the public until shortly before the festivities began, with "room for any type of bike ride you can imagine," says Robare. (Awesomeness is encouraged.)

Participants have clearly had fun planning this year's event. Last night, riders could choose from a 15-mile mural tour of Minneapolis or a meditation-themed ride with the DharmaCore Queer Meditation Community. At noon today, the 2DCLOUD Bicycle Distro rounds up riders who'd like to distribute free books at community centers and other locations around the Cities.

This evening, the "It’s Your Birthday Bike Ride" asks riders to pretend it's their birthday and dress accordingly. (No actual birthdays required, according to TC BIKEFUN!'s website.) For a nightcap, St. Anthony Main Theater hosts a screening of "Half The Road: The Passion, Pitfalls, and Power of Women’s Professional Cycling," a film that looks at women's love for the sport and "the pressing issues of inequality that modern-day female athletes face in male dominated sports."  

Tomorrow, history and amenities are on the agenda. A 6:30 p.m. ride hits six "overlooked parks" in St. Paul, a simultaneous jaunt visits various architectural gems in the Seward neighborhood, and a 7 p.m. "Replacements Ride" takes a tour of locales mentioned in the Twin Cities band's songs and ends with a drink at the CC Club, a favorite haunt of theirs.

On Friday, the weekend begins in style with "Tour de Breweries," which includes a stop at Town Hall Brewery and other yet-to-be-named locations. At 11 p.m., the "Secret Society of Midnight Cyclists" meets to pedal to "a location known only to the [tour] leader," according to TC BIKEFUN!'s website.

Pedalopolis's last big event will take place at 9 p.m. on Saturday, at Bedlam Lowertown in St. Paul, with a "short jorts" dance party and a performance from River City Soul. The event, like all Pedalopolis gatherings, is free and open to the public. A "Hangover Ride" and other "day-after" activities will take place on Sunday.

In addition to Pedalopolis, its showcase celebration, BIKEFUN! also administers an online biking forum that connects Twin Cities cyclists with safe, community-themed activities in all seasons. In addition to establishing it as a key mode of transport for Twin Cities residents, the organization aims to make biking fun and accessible for kids and adults of all ages.

Got big plans for April 26? Lu Lippold, the local producer for One Day on Earth’s “One Day in the Twin Cities,” has a suggestion: Grab whatever video recording device you can—cameraphones included—and record the audio-visual pulse of your neighborhood.

On the final Saturday of April, the Twin Cities and 10 other U.S. metros will host the fourth installment of One Day on Earth’s celebration of film, culture, and all-around placemaking. Founded by Los Angeles-based film producers Kyle Ruddick and Brandon Litman, One Day on Earth (ODOE) has a “goal of creating a unique worldwide media event where thousands of participants would simultaneously film over a 24-hour period,” according to its website.

The first event took place on October 10, 2010 (10-10-10); 11-11-11 and 12-12-12 followed. ODOE skipped 2013, but its organizers weren’t about to wait until 2101 for their next shot. Instead, they selected a spring Saturday—both to accommodate amateur filmmakers with 9-to-5 jobs, and to give participants in the Northern Hemisphere longer daylight hours to work with—for a bigger, bolder, slightly revamped version of the event.

For the first time, participants get 10 questions to inspire their creativity and guide their storytelling, from “What is the best thing happening in your city today?” to “Who is your city not serving?” The goal is to create a multi-frame snapshot of “cities in progress,” one that doesn’t simply answer the who-what-where of the places it covers.

As One Day in the Twin Cities’ point person, Lippold supervises local filmmakers and pitched the project to dozens of partner organizations, including the Science Museum of Minnesota and Springboard for the Arts to visual media companies like Cinequipt and Vimeo. (The McKnight Foundation and the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative are the largest local sponsors.)

The upside? “[The event] is a great way to shine a light on all the hard work that our nonprofit community does,” says Lippold.

Lippold also works with a handful of local ambassadors, some of whom enjoy national acclaim. These include noted cinematographer Jeff Stonehouse, veteran documentarian Matt Ehling, and community-focused filmmaker D.A. Bullock. They’ll be contributing their talents—and stature—to One Day in the Twin Cities’ promotion and execution.

One Day in the Twin Cities could be seen well beyond Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Along with their counterparts from other participating cities, local filmmakers may see their work incorporated into a condensed, three-part series that Litman and Lichtbau will market to PBS affiliates around the country. No word on whether TPT will air the special, but TPT Rewire has agreed to publicize the event in the coming weeks.

The real stars of One Day in the Twin Cities, though, are its filmmakers. Even if you’ve never filmed anything in your life, says Lippold, you can contribute meaningful work. Thanks to an interactive map feature on ODOE’s main site, the work will visible to anyone who visits.

“If I were just starting out in video, I would see this as a huge opportunity,” says Lippold. Since all contributions are credited by name and location, each participant “instantly becomes a documentary filmmaker,” she adds.

Source: Lu Lippold
Writer: Brian Martucci

To say that Minneapolis-based Code 42 Software is having a good year already is something of an understatement.
 
In late January, the firm announced that it had secured $52.5 million in venture funding, which will accelerate product development and greatly expand the company's sales and marketing efforts. A few weeks later, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy, favorable review of its data backup system, CrashPlan.
 
"This year has started with a bang, that's for sure," says Code 42 co-founder and CEO Matthew Dornquast. "We're very happy with how it's been going in terms of growth in the past few years."
 
The company has added about 60 employees within the last year--bringing the total number to 86--and expects to hire more in the months ahead as CrashPlan gains an even broader customer base. In the last three years, Code 42 has experienced more than 500 percent growth.
 
First offered in 2007, CrashPlan was developed as a way to streamline backup. The company developed multiple versions of the product, targeting home users, private and public cloud creators, small businesses, and large enterprises.
 
With the new infusion of financing, Code 42 has become the recipient of the largest venture round ever for a private Minnesota-based software company. Now, that's the way to ring in a new year.
 
Source: Matthew Dornquast, Code 42
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

If you're familiar with the concept of software-as-a-service, consider this lawyering-as-a-service.

The Glover Law Firm in Minneapolis has launched a new practice aimed at serving tech startups, with a billing model inspired by the flat-rate, tiered pricing associated with many web applications.

"We're trying to build a firm that feels similar to the types of businesses we hope to represent," says owner/founder Sam Glover.

Clients choose from one of four service plans that range from $150 to $1,200 per month and include document preparation, annual reviews, and weekly, monthly or quarterly check-ins.

It sounds simple, and that's what makes it such a departure for the legal industry. Since the 1960s, law firms have almost universally charged clients based on "billable hours." Attorneys tally up every six-minute increment of work they do for a client and add it to their tab.

But that system, says Glover, rewards inefficiency and encourages clients to put off asking questions, even though a quick answer might help prevent bigger problems down the line. Glover's model allows an entrepreneur to call with a question without worrying about a new bill.

"It's great for the clients because they know how much they're going to pay next month," says Glover. "It's great for us because we know the money that's coming in next month."

Glover started his law firm in 2005 focusing on business and consumer protection law. He and business partner Aaron Street started signing up clients for the startup practice last month at startuplawyer.mn.

Source: Sam Glover, The Glover Law Firm, LLC
Writer: Dan Haugen