Downtown : Innovation + Job News

 
 
It’s a world in which the rugged coastline of Lake Superior’s North Shore is rendered in brightly colored forms and tribal motifs, and populated with T Rexes, octopi and UFOs. National parks receive the same treatment, swirling in ribbons of pattern and color; places where silvery robots and furry Bigfoots camp and fly fish with their dinosaur pals.
 
If you haven’t guessed by now, this is Auslandish, worlds created by St. Paul artist and illustrator Sarah Nelson. She recently hosted her first pop-up art sale in the Creative Enterprise Zone of St. Paul, in conjunction with the opening of an online store featuring her work and collaborations with other artists. A hot item during the pop up was a new bag designed by Ashley Duke of Viska, a Minneapolis company, festooned with one of Nelson’s whimsical images.
 
The story begins when Nelson was working at a café and her boss told her to take a Sharpie and draw on the walls. “So I did,” she says. “And a style emerged.”
 
“The art I do is primarily whimsical and illustration based,” she says, “and incorporates a lot of detail, pattern and story.” Why the UFOs and dinosaurs? “I like to take moments and natural places that are magical and bring in the otherworldly, to reflect what’s being experienced in your mind and heart at the moment. Weird whimsical creates help commemorate that feeling.”
 
In 2013, Corner Table restaurant in Minneapolis commissioned Nelson to create a hand-illustrated, custom wallpaper for the space. “People strted resonating with the work,” she says, “and I started getting commissions,” including from City Pages. “I realized this could become a business. I decided this work was bringing joy to people.” So mashing up words like outside and outlandish, while referencing her Austrian upbringing, resulted in Auslandish. An early show of her work sold out in less then 24 hours.
 
Nelson creates from her studio in the Midway neighborhood and she’s seeking out new collaborative opportunities. She’s currently working on a local band’s album, exploring innovative work with textile artists and still designing wallpaper.
 
The online store includes prints, originals and hand-crafted goods created in collaboration with other artisans. Auslandish next pops up at the Women Artists + Entrepreneurs Holiday Bazaar, November 10 at Woodford Sister Photography in the California Building in NE Minneapolis.
 

A year ago, the Minneapolis Idea eXchange (MiX) launched its festival of ideas in downtown Minneapolis during a lively event in which innovators from throughout MSP inspired participants to think in fresh new ways about the initiatives proposed in the Minneapolis Downtown Council’s 2025 Plan. On Wednesday, October 12, MiX resumes with its 2016 program, “The Power of Ideas.” Networking begins at 4:30 p.m., with the program scheduled from 5-6 p.m. The event takes place at Brave New Workshop.
 
John Sweeney, owner of Brave New Workshop, is kicking off the event along with Elena Imaretska. The two co-wrote the recently published book The Innovative Mindset. “MiX is a program that recognizes MSP as a world-class wellspring of innovation and a place of ideas,” Sweeney says. “The premise of our book is that you choose your mindset during your every waking hour. We work on helping people take a very practical approach to cultivating and maintaining an innovative mindset, in order to use skills like brainstorming and methodologies like design thinking to solve challenges.”
 
Following Sweeney and Imaretska’s group exercise in finding an innovative mindset, Tom Fisher, director of the University of Minnesota’s Metropolitan Design Center and author of Designing Our Way to a Better World, will guide an introduction to design thinking and launch the workshop portion of the event. Other panelists scheduled to participate in the event include Sondra Samuels of Northside Achievement Zone and Peter Frosch of Greater MSP. 
 
Minneapolis is “working on a commitment to end homelessness by 2025, figuring out how bicyclists and pedestrians and cars can navigate our roads together, how we can have a more equitable distribution of graduation rates in high schools, how to make the arts more accessible for everyone—the list goes on and on,” Sweeney says. MiX was created, in part, to address and provide working solutions for such problems.
 
“I’m passionate about gathering together a group of people with many different points of view to generate opportunities for harvesting the creativity and innovation that already exist here,” adds Imaretska. “That’s the beauty of innovation: Who knows what spark of an idea may trigger something bigger.”
 
The event will include a service component: A new take on the idea of “happy hour,” during which participants will make sandwiches that will be distributed to the homeless. “By matching a sense of service with a culture of innovation, we hope powerful things will be happening," says Imaretska.
 
Sweeney adds that he hopes this year’s MiX will result in outcomes that reflect “the hopefulness of starting. When you have 200 people in a room with open minds and a beer in their hands and a smile on their faces, then it’s a start. I'm excited to be a part of something that could someday be referred to as ‘the start.’”
 
MiX is free and open to the public. Register for MiX 2016: “The Power of Ideas” here.
 

Artists are entrepreneurs. Which is why including muralist Greta McLain, founder of GoodSpace Murals, based in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis, is such a valuable addition to the Entrepreneur Expo: Essentials for Small Business Growth, on Thursday, Sept., 22, 12:30-5 p.m. at the Minneapolis Central Library.
 
McClain and Candida Gonzalez, GoodSpace Murals’ administrator and project manager, will both participate in the expo to discuss the ways in which GoodSpace Murals facilitates community development through creating large-scale artworks that express a neighborhood’s unique characteristics and values, reflect its stories, and communicate themes of inclusivity and free expression.
 
McClain and Gonzalez will speak as part of the expo’s panel Startup Success Stories: Twin Cities Entrepreneurs Tell All. The panel’s participants also include the Minnesota 2016 Small Business Person of the Year, Gloria Freeman, founder and CEO of Olu’s Home Inc. and Olu’s Center, which provide care and activities for seniors; Mohamed Omer, who owns Alimama East African Catering; and LaMont Bowens, CEO of CEO of Bowens Companies, a commercial contracting company specializing in interior and exterior construction.
 
The expo also include workshops offered by Springboard for the Arts, WomenVenture and the University of St. Thomas Small Business Development Center on topics ranging from building a website and bookkeeping to branding and business plans for artists. Nonprofit and government business development exhibitors will be on hand to share resources and answer questions about planning, licensing and funding.
 
The Entrepreneur Expo is sponsored by the Friends of the Minneapolis Central Library in collaboration with African Economic Development Solutions, Minneapolis Community Planning and Economic Development, Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, Northside Economic Opportunity Network, U.S. Small Business Administration, University of St. Thomas Small Business Development Center and WomenVenture. The event is free. Register here or call 612-543-8000.
 

Sansoro Health, a Minneapolis-based electronic health records startup, has had a pretty good month. The company announced earlier this week that it had raised approximately $1.2 million in seed capital, including a substantial sum from TreeHouse Health, a health tech incubator on Loring Park.
 
Healthy Ventures, a San Francisco-based health tech fund, led the seed round. The fund’s involvement is a clear vote of confidence not just for Sansoro Health’s innovative EHR solution, but also or the state of MSP’s medtech industry in general.
 
“The seamless clinical data exchange between EMR [EHR] platforms and digital health vendors is critically important to achieving better health outcomes,” enthused Anya Schiess, Healthy Ventures general partner, in a statement announcing the round’s closing. “Sansoro Health’s real-time integration software bridges the gap to improve patient care.”
 
And the feeling was mutual. “We are proud to have the support of investors like Healthy Ventures who share our vision for EMR integration,” added Jeremy Edes Pierotti, Sansoro Health’s CEO. “We’ve had strong revenue since inception, which enabled us to bootstrap our development. This funding will allow us to further empower innovation by providers, payers, and digital health pioneers.”
 
Sansoro Health isn’t unique in its ability to bootstrap (until now). But it’s one more data point in favor of the argument that healthcare funders, including local players like TreeHouse and Bay Area guns like Healthy Ventures, are taking a more conservative approach in a capital-raising market that many impartial observers believe is overheated. When the smart money gets conservative, companies that can demonstrate their market potential — ideally, by pointing to balance sheets with real revenue from real clients — tend to come out ahead.
 
And a more measured funding landscape is good for MSP companies in general. Though data is sparse, Minnesota companies enjoy a longstanding reputation for prudent, iterative governance — a disadvantage when funders are all about flashy “next big things,” but a pronounced benefit during pullbacks.
 
And what about Sansoro Health, specifically? The company came into its seed round with a healthy head of steam. Healthcare Informatics, a noted industry publication, selected Sansoro as one of six “up and comers” for 2016 — a prestigious honor that the company is understandably touting left and right. It also won Venture+ Forum’s 2016 startup competition at this year’s Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Annual Conference.
 

CBRE, a Los Angeles-based commercial real estate company with a global footprint and a presence in virtually every major American city, is consolidating its entire Minnesota team in one chic downtown Minneapolis location. CBRE’s move is the latest in a long string of companies relocating from the suburbs to MSP’s twin downtowns.
 
The 34,000-square-foot office, on the 19th and 20th floors of LaSalle Plaza, brings together nearly 200 employees previously housed in Bloomington’s Two MarketPointe and downtown Minneapolis’ Young Quinlan Building.
 
CBRE’s Minnesota move is part of the company’s global “Workplace 360” initiative, an ambitious plan to reposition the firm as a millennial-friendly innovation engine. According to a press release, Workplace 360 “promote(s) flexibility, mobility and productivity through technology-enabled, free-address and paperless offices.”
 
In Minneapolis, Workplace 360 means open, airy offices connected by spacious hallways and a custom-designed internal staircase. CBRE’s MSP employees don’t have assigned desks; the bulk of the space qualifies as “collaborative.” (“Employees have the flexibility to choose where they want to work for the day,” says CBRE, “whether at a desk, in a team huddle room or the social cafe area.”) The office is paperless, and designed around employees’ mobile devices, not company-owned desktop computers and printers.
 
“We understand how the office environment impacts culture, productivity, and talent recruitment and retention,” says Blake Hastings, CBRE’s managing director in Minneapolis. “The nature of work is changing in our industry and we see it every day with the clients we serve.” To paraphrase, CBRE is working to attract and retain more talented young people, and keep them engaged and on point.
 
CBRE Minneapolis seems off to a good start. Though CBRE’s corporate Workplace Strategy Team oversaw the buildout in collaboration with its Project Management Team, the company did assign key design, decorating and culture choices to local employees — for instance, they selected the “WELCOME TO MINNESOTA” wall mural centerpiece and developed the office wellness program.
 
“The whole design is inspired by the Mississippi River running through Minneapolis,” says Tiffany Bagley, CBRE Workplace Strategy director, “and fully represents CBRE’s embrace of the concept ‘think globally, act locally.’”
 

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.”
 
 

On May 13, the University of St. Thomas’s Schulze School of Entrepreneurship hosted at least 50 MSP and Greater Minnesota nonprofit leaders and social entrepreneurs at DesignHack!, a one-of-a-kind event billed as a crash course in “human centered design.” The goal: to leverage the same principles behind simple but radical consumer product improvements, like OXO’s now-ubiquitous kitchen measuring cup with angled 3D fill lines.
 
DesignHack! Used Stanford University’s five-step design thinking model — which asks designers to approach problems “looking out from the inside, not outside in” — to tackle a core challenge: How do we rethink philanthropy to increase public engagement?
 
Dr. AnnMarie Thomas and Laura Dunham, who teach at the Schulze School, led attendees through design thinking’s five steps:
 

1. Empathy: Discovering users’ implicit and explicit needs — the learning phase
2. Define: Refocusing questions to drill deeper into users’ needs and determine how they can be met through design
3. Ideate: Brainstorming creative design solutions
4. Prototype: Making those solutions tangible
5. Test: Determining whether those solutions work in practice

 
The typical design project takes weeks or even months, noted Dunham. DesignHack! attendees had just a single workday, so they weren’t able to run through a proper start-to-finish simulation.
 
But they did get to wander Minneapolis’s skyway system on a busy Friday, pulling aside passersby and asking open-ended questions about their relationship with modern philanthropy. Participants worked in pairs: one lead questioner and one note-taker/observer, with roles flipping periodically.
 
Per Dunham, they followed some basic design thinking “do’s” and “don’ts”:
 

• Do listen more than you speak
• Do ask how, then follow up with why
• Do probe for specific experiences and stories, not abstractions or generalizations
• Don’t ask leading questions (“push polling”)
• Don’t monopolize the conversation
• Don’t try to fill silences
• Don’t push the respondent to wrap up or conclude
• Don’t reaffirm your own bias
• Don’t ask what respondents want

 
In other words, don’t look for empirical conclusions right away. Instead, allow respondents to create their own narratives. “Be more Oprah than Edison,” quipped Dunham.
 
“Channel your inner two-year-old,” added Thomas. “Ask ‘how this’ and ‘why that.’”
 
It’s safe to bet that DesignHack! attendees didn’t solve philanthropy’s engagement problem in the course of a single afternoon. But they definitely left Minneapolis equipped with new tools for tackling the complex issues that vex their organizations every day.
 

Assemble, a new player in MSP’s growing coworking scene, recently opened a 16,000-square-foot coworking hub near the Nicollet Mall LRT station, in the historic 15 Building. Outside the building, Bob Dylan’s gigantic visage (Eduardo Kobra’s mural) marks the way for Hennepin Avenue pedestrians and cyclists. Inside, entrepreneurs and solo professionals put their noses to the grindstone in a 24/7, all-inclusive shared office.
 
Assemble’s key differentiator is its pricing model: Unlike many coworking spaces, Assemble doesn’t charge members extra to use certain amenities. The conference room, printer, 24/7 access, coffee (offered in partnership with locally owned Driven Coffee) and cleaning service are included in the price of membership for all members.
 
Packages start at $350 per month and increase depending on space requirements and employee counts. Until further notice, Assemble lets new members try our the space for one month free. Flexible month-to-month leases are available, and are ideal for growing or seasonal businesses that don’t want to be locked into long-term space commitments. And Assemble is dog friendly, so the office mascot can come along, too.
 
Assemble offers several workspace options. Stimulation-seeking solo professionals can use Assemble’s shared coworking space — a bullpen-style area perfect for collaboration. Shared workspaces split the difference between collaborative and private space, while glass-walled offices cater to larger teams looking to remain sequestered.
 
“What Assemble will uniquely bring to the Minneapolis coworking market is twofold. The first is a turnkey solution for a shared office, where everything is included in the cost of your space,” says Phillip Domenico, Assemble co-founder. “And second, it’s a community where we regularly offer networking and business development opportunities to enhance our members’ businesses, yet if they need privacy they can have it in their own space without interruption. Our goal is to listen to our members and provide them with benefits that best fit their work/life style.”
 
Assemble has at least seven anchor tenants in its downtown Minneapolis space: Synergy Construction, GO Intellectual Capital, Flipboard, Fresh Expertise, Praxis Capital, Ranstrom-Berg Wealth Management and Walden University. The company isn’t ruling out additional coworking spaces in MSP, and is also planning an ambitious nationwide expansion in the coming year: workspaces in Atlanta, Austin, Columbus, Denver, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Milwaukee, Nashville, Philadelphia and Raleigh are slated to come online by next spring.
 

Phantom Records AMG-TCLA, an ascendant Minneapolis-based record label, hopes to raise MSP’s already significant profile as a creative hub for the auditory arts. Phantom is the brainchild of founder Alex Guerrero (stage name: Dweedo). He pulls quintuple duty as a producer, songwriter, talent scout, manager and promoter.
 
“Our inspiration for starting up a record label is to give Minnesota the attention it deserves within the music industry,” says Guerrero. “We want to continue the work of former producers like Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who put MSP on the map. …[B]ut we [also] want the world to see that...amazing sounds are being produced outside New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.”
 
Guerrero has help from four other MSP music notables. Ariel Padilla (stage name: A.P.) serves as associate producer. Julian Scott (JuChefe) is the in-house arranger and DJ. Rob Skalsky (Robby Cur$ed) is co-talent scout, assistant editor, photographer/videographer and musical artist. Lou Oberg (J3b Adea) is lead graphic designer and co-photographer/videographer. And Cameron McCrimmon (Malovinci) is a promising artist.
 
Record labels come and go. Phantom plans to stick around by adding a human touch to an industry that’s increasingly focused on flashy, transient trends — good for the bottom line, perhaps, but not for music lovers or artists.
 
“Our goal is simple: we want to make music that you can feel and relate to on another level,” explains Guerrero. “We want to be more than just a record label. We want to be a part of our listeners’ experience.”

“Phantom Records is all about putting emotion back into music,” he adds.

According to Guerrero, Phantom is actively recruiting “hardworking, dedicated artists” willing to work with a startup label. He’s also hunting for “influential” artists capable of lending visibility to a nascent label in a crowded marketplace.

“We plan on keeping up with the latest trends, while having veteran artists over time help groom younger artists coming into the industry,” says Guerrero. “We want our artists, our company and our values to feel like they're part of a really special movement that brings people together from all walks of life.” Phantom Records plans to keep its operational base in MSP for the foreseeable future.
 

MSP has long been the hub of winter biking innovation and locals are staying car-free through the winter in ever-growing numbers. But this week, MSP is actually the center of the winter biking universe.
 
That’s because the annual Winter Cycling Congress is in town through February 4. As the St. Paul Winter Carnival sashays to a jolly crescendo, several hundred hardy souls are suiting up across (and around) town to show off the latest in winter biking technology and policy.
 
Winter Cycling Congress 2016 is the fourth ever and the first to be held in the United States. (Previous locations: Oulu, Finland; Winnipeg, Manitoba; and Leeuwarden, Netherlands.
 
Winter Cycling Congress 2016 “celebrate[s] the diversity of the North American cycling movement while also welcoming inspiration, best practices and lessons from bicycle-friendly communities around the world,” according to the event’s website. The event takes place at four venues: The Commons Hotel in Downtown East, Minneapolis; Coffman Memorial Union at the U of M; the Weisman Art Museum, also at the U of M; and, of course, at the St. Paul Winter Carnival.
 
Winter Cycling Congress 2016’s programming includes formal lectures from cycling experts, meet-and-greet networking sessions, informal discussions, group workshops, extracurricular activities (such as bike-themed trivia at St. Paul’s Amsterdam Bar), and — of course — lots and lots of cycling.
 
Winter Cycling Congress 2016 is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to kick local bike culture into another gear. Although MSP takes for granted its hardy winter cyclists, the region’s winter cycling rates (known as mode share) actually trail many European cities’.
 
Oulu, the first Winter Cycling Congress host city, maintains a 25 percent cycling mode share through the entire winter, despite a snowier climate and a near-Arctic location that makes for depressingly short winter days. In MSP, cycling’s mode share drops precipitously on cold days, according to data collected by Nice Ride, and falls further once the snow starts flying.
 
“One of our goals is to make bicycling more inclusive for everyone and we recognize that our climate plays a role in that. We know there are creative strategies to enable people to be able to still bike in the more snowy months,” said Janelle Waldock, vice president of community health and health equity for Winter Cycling Congress 2016 title sponsor BlueCross and BlueShield of Minnesota, in a recent MinnPost feature.
 
The Winter Cycling Congress is organized by the Winter Cycling Federation, an international organization dedicated to furthering winter cycling, and locally by the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota. Keep up with the latest news from Winter Cycling Congress 2016 on the event’s website or follow the hashtag #WCC16 (official Twitter handle @wintercycle2016).
 

Accolades for MSP’s enviable work-life benefits are flying faster and thicker than snow this season, and it’s getting tough to keep up with the latest hits. Earlier this month, influential personal finance site NerdWallet dropped the latest data-driven love letter to the Twin Cities: a Best Cities for Young Entrepreneurs roundup that placed MSP fifth, ahead of regional rivals (Madison) and heavy-hitting coastal tech hubs (Seattle and Boston).
 
The study examined about 180 of the country’s largest metro areas and assigned a young entrepreneur friendliness score to each. MSP earned its fifth-place spot thanks to two data points in particular: unemployment rate and SBA loan value per 100,000 residents.
 
On the unemployment front, MSP is peerless among major cities. Metro-wide unemployment was just a tick over 3 percent as of September 2015, the latest month for which final figures were available as the study went to press. That’s lower than San Francisco (3.4 percent), Denver (4.2 percent) and Washington, D.C. (7.5 percent).
 
The SBA loans metric is admittedly wonkier, but it’s a critical factor in local small business health. Many startups rely on SBA funding to get off the ground and gain traction; an adequate SBA loan is often the difference-maker for businesses navigating the dreaded “death zone” — the first two to three years of existence.
 
According to Jonathan Todd, the study’s author, the SBA loan factor counts for 20 percent of the overall score, more than unemployment rate, small businesses per 100 residents and other factors. MSP ranked seventh, just behind famously entrepreneurial Austin and industrious Salt Lake City — and well ahead of major metropolises like New York City, which ranked 52nd.
 
In the study, Todd notes that small business success comes down to a confluence of other factors: cost of living, educational attainment and existing resources for entrepreneurs. MSP has long led most other big cities with regards to cost of living and educational attainment. Until recently, though, it hasn’t done so hot on the admittedly hard-to-measure entrepreneurial resources metric.
 
Here’s a sign of change and that MSP’s startup-friendly secret is finally getting out: Industrious, a well-funded coworking company with outposts in more than a dozen major U.S. cities, recently opened a gleaming new space in the North Loop. Industrious’s arrival comes on the heels of COCO NE’s debut — joining the swelling ranks of private coworking spaces around the Twin Cities.
 
Entrepreneurs take note: MSP is open for business.
 
 

In August, downtown Minneapolis-based healthcare incubator TreeHouse Health teamed up with LifeScience Alley, a local biotech accelerator, for a well-attended demo day called Healthcare Innovation Is Alive and Well in Minnesota. According to Dr. John Blank, a TreeHouse Health cofounder (and, previously, a pediatric oncologist and health system administrator), the event supported TreeHouse’s ambitious-sounding mission: to turn MSP into the “Silicon Valley of medical technology innovation.”
 
Healthcare Innovation is Alive and Well featured lectures and workshops on pressing issues facing early-stage medical technology and life science companies — raising capital, bringing ideas to market, becoming cashflow-positive and more — plus an open, craft brew-fueled networking hour with some of the region’s top healthcare decision-makers.
 
But the real stars of the show were the innovative startups tapped to pitch their solutions to the high-profile crowd. Many were current TreeHouse Health tenants: Cellanyx, whose diagnostic solution could revolutionize the industry’s approach to certain cancers; PerkHealth, a virtual health coaching app that made The Line’s 10 life-changing startups list last year; and VitalSims, an education platform for medical professionals.
 
TreeHouse Health’s portfolio is compelling. But Blank believes that if MSP is to live up to TreeHouse’s “Silicon Valley” promise, more needs to be done to support current and future medical technology entrepreneurs. At the moment, MSP lacks a critical mass of native venture capitalists willing to go out on a limb for potentially disruptive healthcare ideas.
 
Blank cites an early-stage health IT firm, currently in residence at TreeHouse Health, that had struggled to meet a $2 million funding round target with local backers despite a proven technology solution and more than $1 million in annual revenues. After six or seven months of banging on doors in MSP, the firm broadened its search and eventually completed the round with outside investors.
 
“There are plenty of investors interested in the health IT space,” says Blank, a Massachusetts native, “but they’re mostly based on the East or West Coasts and tend to fly over Minnesota.”
 
That’s why Blank and the TreeHouse team are fanatical about boosting the visibility of the companies in and outside of TreeHouse’s portfolio, starting with initiatives like the Life Science Alley collaboration.
 
TreeHouse is also working to attract promising companies that began life in regions better known for tech innovation, like Boston (arguably the capital of the U.S. life sciences industry) and the Bay Area. According to Blank, TreeHouse currently has one tenant from each region, with an eye for more.
 
A key selling point for TreeHouse and MSP in general, he says, is location. “You can easily travel anywhere in the continental United States and back within a 24-hour period, or even in the same business day” from MSP, says Blank. He mentions a TreeHouse tenant that recently flew overnight to Seattle for morning meetings with hospital executives there, then caught an early-afternoon flight back in time for dinner—a nearly 3,000-mile round trip in less than 24 hours.
 
“That kind of turnaround isn’t possible when you’re based on the coasts,” says Blank.
 
Another big advantage for MSP: a diverse array of established medical “payers” (health systems like Mayo and HealthPartners), insurers (like UnitedHealth Group), and device/technology manufacturers (like Medtronic and St. Jude Medical).
 
In other words, local life science and medical technology startups that do manage to find funding here are apt to find lots of paying customers close by, regardless of niche—an important measure of security for any early-stage company. Over the long term, that existing customer base, coupled with a healthy dose of Minnesota nice, should prove enticing for coastal entrepreneurs looking to relocate to a cheaper, business-friendly locale.
 
“[MSP] is one of the few places in the country where you have Fortune 100 companies in every major healthcare sector,” says Blank. “And it’s a friendly enough place that you can make real progress toward building a professional network within a few days.”
 

Healthcare spending accounts for a huge chunk of national GDP. And with dozens of major providers, insurers and medical device companies headquartered in and around MSP, the sector is absolutely critical for the local economy.
 
But the healthcare industry is notoriously inefficient. “Up to 30 percent of every dollar spent on healthcare is wasted due to unnecessary variations in care,” says Patrick Yoder, founder and CEO of LogicStream Health.
 
Yoder and LogicStream co-founder Dan Rubin want to bring healthcare delivery into the 21st century by making hospitals, clinics and individual medical professionals smarter about the care they provide.
 
Dozens of hospitals around the country believe in LogicStream’s solutions. Fairview, one of MSP’s largest hospital systems, is a current client; so is Yale-New Haven, a prestigious East Coast provider. LogicStream has nearly 500 ambulatory (walk-in) clinics in its system, too; not bad for a company that got its start just two years ago and still offices out of TreeHouse Health, a downtown Minneapolis healthcare business incubator.
 
LogicStream is built around the aptly named LogicStream Intelligence Platform, an algorithmic “learning system built for standardization,” as Yoder described it in an October 1 presentation at the MN Venture Conference. The goal of the LogicStream Intelligence Platform is to “improve clinical quality, provider satisfaction and cost efficiencies throughout the enterprise [while reducing or even eliminating] some critical hospital acquired conditions,” according to the company’s website.
 
While the technical aspects of LogicStream’s platform are complex, the gist is simple: It runs the huge amounts of data generated by each patient’s journey through the hospital or ambulatory clinic through a constantly evolving algorithm that spots trends and develops “rigid, clinically appropriate” (in other words, medically sound) protocols to reduce the risk of complications or waste.
 
LogicStream’s platform is designed to develop protocols rapidly, without hands-on human guidance. The platform’s speed and accuracy allows it to cover potentially thousands of life-threatening conditions that can affect hospital and clinic patients.
 
One early success: venous thromboembolism, a common clotting condition responsible for thousands of hospital deaths each year. According to a LogicStream case study, one client “reduced the rate of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in post-surgical patients by more than 80%, resulting in a significant overall decline in associated morbidity and mortality and $1.1M in cost savings.”
 
Yoder notes that, in most cases, reducing VTE risk is straightforward: Upon admission, “a patient’s care team needs to assess his or her individual risk for clots,” he says, not rely on statistical data that may not be relevant to the situation. LogicStream’s VTE protocols include an individual risk assessment; most electronic health records (EHRs), which clinicians use to track patient data and monitor condition changes, don’t.
 
As more clients discover LogicStream’s solution, Yoder expects the LogicStream Intelligence Platform to scale rapidly. At MN Venture, he projected three- to four-fold growth in total protocol content between Q3 2015 and Q1 2017, a huge boost to the platform’s power and reach. The company currently has 12 employees, and that count is likely to increase through 2016.
 
Job Listings
 

1. Executive Vice President of Sales, Minneapolis (downtown)

 
 

The Minneapolis Idea eXchange (MiX) was launched a year ago during an interactive event at City Center featuring city leaders, performances and networking between the hundreds of attendees curious about MiX. The brainchild of the city’s Downtown 2025 Plan’s Festival of Ideas committee, MiX’s purpose is to bring together citizens and visitors with energetic thinking and civic engagement in order to further Minneapolis’ already considerable vitality.
 
On September 28, and October 1 and 2, MiX builds on its momentum with a free speaker series created in collaboration with Westminster Town Hall Forum. Pete Docter, a Bloomington native who helped create the blockbuster films “Toy Story,” “Wall-E,” “Up” and “Inside Out” with Pixar Animation Studios, speaks on Monday, September 28 (7 p.m.), on “Inside the Creative Community: The Power and Process of Animated Film.”
 
Later in the week, on Thursday evening (7 p.m.), October 1, author and social justice advocate Tavis Smiley will galvanize audience members with his talk, “No One Left Out: Creating Communities of Justice.” Friday, October 2, at noon, Minnesotan Dan Buettner — explorer, educator and three-time world record holder for endurance bicycling — discusses Blue Zones, the organization he founded to help people live longer, healthier lives.
 
The overall idea behind the series, says Mary Shaffer, co-chair of the MiX organizational committee, “is to inspire people to think about how they want to live, work and play in their city.” To that end, activities will also take place outside of Westminster Presbyterian Church (the location for the speaker series), at the corner of Nicollet Mall and 12th Street.
 
“We’re not only offering participants a chance to hear these high caliber, nationally recognized speakers, but we’re also activating the area outside the church to bring new energy to that part of the city and further conversation,” Shaffer says. The Independent Film Project will capture attendee responses to Docter’s speech and their thoughts about the future of Minneapolis; a screening of a Docter film may also take place. Brave New Workshop will host improv workshops in conjunction with Smiley’s talk. The downtown YWCA will offer fitness classes and the Minneapolis Bike Coalition will be present for Buettner’s appearance.
 
“For last century, Minneapolis has been a leader in innovation,” says Rev. Dr. Timothy Hart-Andersen, senior pastor, Westminster Presbyterian Church, and chair of the MiX committee. “MiX is simply picking up on the innovative, creative spirit of civic engagement in our city. The three speakers will each bring fascinating and provocative perspectives to the question of how we can be a better city and better citizens.”
 
Continuing, Hart-Andersen adds that, “Part of what makes Minneapolis work so well is the social connectivity, and the civic engagement, not only inside board rooms, classrooms, labs and churches across the city, but also over a beer and something good to eat. The space we’re activating at the end of the mall will give people the opportunity to enjoy food and beverages, share time together and further the conversations that began with the speakers.”
 

Eureka Recycling, a homegrown, progressive recycling nonprofit based in Northeast Minneapolis, is upping its “zero waste” game. The company is sponsoring MSP’s first-ever Zero Waste Summit on September 18 from 12:30 pm to 6:30 pm.
 
Brave New Workshop, an all-purpose venue and gathering space in downtown Minneapolis, is hosting the event. General admission tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for students. Scholarship tickets, which include the cost of admission, two drink tickets and an admission scholarship for another attendee, are $100. Anyone who arrives by public or active transportation (bus, LRT, bike or foot) earns free admission to a future Brave New Workshop event of their choice.
 
“We want attendees to get information and thoughts from the people who really live the vision of zero waste,” says Lynn Hoffman, Eureka Recycling’s chief of community engagement and principal event organizer. “Equally important will be the time to connect and collaborate so we can take action while inspiration is still fresh in our hearts and minds.”
 
To that end, Eureka’s first-ever Zero Waste Summit features nearly 20 speakers, many of whom have close ties to MSP’s sustainability movement.
 
Amanda LaGrange works as marketing director for Tech Dump St. Paul, an innovative electronics recycling outfit that offers free, eco-friendly disposal services (to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds per year) and provides living-wage jobs for economically disadvantaged adults.
 
Eartha Bell is director for the soon-to-be-operational Frogtown Farm, an ambitious project that promises to be Minnesota’s largest urban farm (and one of the country’s biggest, as well).
 
Tracy Sides is director of Urban Oasis, a “sustainable food center” that offers healthy cooking education, small business training, catering with seasonal and locally sourced ingredients, and other sorely needed food services on St. Paul’s East Side.
 
These speakers and their organizations, and all the others represented at the Zero Waste Summit, live and breathe Eureka’s commitment to low-impact communities.
 
“Eureka Recycling is the only organization in Minnesota that specializes in zero waste,” says Christine Weeks, co-principal at Field Guide, a St. Paul-based boutique communications firm that caters to progressive clients. “The organization's services, programs and policy work present solutions to the social, environmental and health problems caused by wasting.”
 
“Zero waste is more than an empty garbage can,” adds Hoffman. “The way we consume accounts for almost half of the CO2 that threatens [our] healthy food, abundant resources, clean air and water, safe and reliable products, and healthy families and communities.”