Innovation + Job News

If inefficient data storage is the corporate equivalent of searching for your lost car keys, Digitiliti provides valet service. The downtown-St. Paul�based company offers an integrated data management service that files, stores, secures, and backs up company data seamlessly and automatically--functions that are typically spread across half a dozen software platforms.

"The biggest problem is that for data, there's a point solution for every problem," he says. "If you want to store your data, you buy backup software. If you want disaster recovery, you take it offsite. If you want to be able to collaborate, you buy software for that. We've integrated it into one system."

For this nifty achievement, the company picked up a Tech Award Circle gold medal in July and a nomination for a Tekne Award from the Minnesota High Tech Association in September.

The company launched in 2005 with a data protection service, but quickly identified the need for a broader product, explains Ken Peters, executive vice president in sales and marketing. The company's DigiLIBE (Digital Library) product launched two years ago, and has fueled remarkable growth for the tech company right through the recession, doubling the company's workforce to about two dozen.

In growth, Digitiliti has maintained its flexibility. Headquarters are located in St. Paul's artsy Lowertown neighborhood, an environment that "fosters innovation," according to Peters. And rather than bulk up on staff, they've taken a nimble approach to growth: "We have built a flexible workforce, both internal and external," he says. "Our approach is, hire the best talent. It doesn't matter where they're located."

Source: Ken Peters, Digitiliti
Writer: Joe Hart

Some folks toss the fundraising pitch from their alma mater; others reach for their checkbooks. The St. Paul�based Reeher company aims to help colleges and universities determine which category you fit�before the direct mailers go out.

This task requires "predictive analytics" that crunch data collected about individuals to sort who is likely to donate, and why. "Traditionally, institutions would build that kind of system themselves, which is expensive and requires pretty specialized people," explains company founder Andy Reeher. "We can give them that functionality within a matter of weeks."

Reeher is further differentiated by the fact that its service is web-based, which eliminates any need for software installation and minimizes training.

Growth of the company has been rapid, fueled in part by lean budgets and diminishing funding sources at institutions of higher ed. A number of larger institutions, including Tulane and Johns Hopkins, have signed on for the service. Two weeks ago the company signed up McGill University, one of the oldest and largest institutions in Canada, and it just inked a deal with the University of Kentucky which Reeher says will be announced shortly.

"We're doing very well as a business right now," Reeher says. "With the economy in a tough situation, organizations are learning to use their resources more wisely." Reeher's service helps them do so--and save money while they're doing it.

Source, Andy Reeher, Reeher LLC
Writer: Joe Hart

When you think of environmentally friendly businesses, you probably don't think of auto body repair shops. But a chat with Pete Latuff, president of the family-run Latuff Brothers auto body shop in St. Paul is enough to dispel your stereotypes of the industry. In the past five years, the company has introduced a number of environmental innovations--and it's saving them money.

"We saw the trend of going toward green," says Latuff, "and we thought it would be a good way to go."

The business began by introducing a low-emission paint system. "Our licensing is all based on emissions, so there's a cost factor there," explains Latuff. The new paint reduces emissions by 58 percent. It also cuts drying time by 30 percent, resulting in a significant reduction in energy use. Not long after, Latuff went to a paperless office, introducing further savings.

What began as a trend- and cash-savvy business strategy has taken hold as a principle, according to Latuff. "As we get more and more down this road we start thinking about it more and more, too," he says. "We've moved away from plastic bottles now, too, and put in a water cooler with paper cups. We're always thinking about different ways to reduce our trash and try to recycle everything we can."

This kind of self-examination "has made us a more efficient business," Latuff says, while reducing the environmental footprint of the operations. Good for business, and good for the planet--that goes some distance toward taking the sting out of your next fender bender.

Source: Pete Latuff, Latuff Brothers
Writer: Joe Hart

A Minneapolis software developer is expanding his solo business into a three-person firm this month and moving into an office in the Loring Park neighborhood.

Jon De Long started the Composit Group in July 2009. His company makes automation software to help large, custom manufacturers operate more efficiently. The CAD software lets someone input order specs and generate custom product designs on the spot, instead of having a sales rep relay specs to an engineer.

De Long signed a lease last week on a new office space. (He previously worked from his condo.) He was hauling in equipment by the end of the week. He was also preparing to hire his first two employees by the end of the month.

"Right now, with the economy, manufacturers have the impetus--and oddly enough, also the cash--to try to improve upon their processes," says De Long. "We want to scale up now so we can handle the business down the road."

Source: Jon De Long, Composit Group
Writer: Dan Haugen

A local software shop is up for an innovation award for a web app that streamlines the process of finding new patients for clinical studies.

Fortress Medical Systems, which is based in Hopkins, is one of five finalists for the Society for Clinical Data Management's 2010 Data Driven Innovation Award. The company makes software for managing clinical trial data, particularly for medical device studies, which require tracking of more variables than drug studies.

"What differentiates us is our flexibility, because medical device trials are really different than pharmaceutical trials," says CEO Mark Jones.

Fortress' customers include a few dozen medical device companies in the Twin Cities, from industry giants like Medtronic to emerging startup companies.

Typically, a company conducting a clinical trial will hire a call center to screen prospective patients. The call center then relays information back to the research company, which then contacts the patient's doctor or hospital about enrollment.

Fortress is up for an award for helping design a web-based software program that lets call center screeners report information directly to the doctors or hospitals.

"The benefits are that it increases the speed at which patients can potentially get enrolled into the study," minimizing the risk of patients changing their minds or being lost in the shuffle, explains Jones.

Fortress was founded in 1997 and has nine employees. The Society for Clinical Data Management will announce the innovation award winner at its annual conference in Minneapolis on October 17-20.

Source: Mark Jones, Fortress Medical Systems
Writer: Dan Haugen

A local mobile app developer's profile is rising like, well, a weather balloon.

Sevnthsin has doubled in size over the past two years to 14 employees today. The company's mobile site is on display this week as the Mobile Site of the Day for Wednesday, Sept. 22, on the Favorite Website Awards, a site where marketers and developers go for ideas and inspiration.

And last week it landed on the front page of the Pioneer Press for attaching a cooler full of cameras and mobile devices to a weather balloon and sending it into the upper atmosphere. "We are doing this out of curiosity, as a way to test the limits of mobile-phone technology," Sevnthsin owner Jamey Erickson told reporter Julio Ojeda-Zapata.

Sevnthsin was originally the name of Erickson's band, which never took off. But his web-building business did. During college he started doing web work for various local bands. As those contacts generated more work, he eventually started a full-time company in June 2006.

Erickson's company still does work for local musicians, including Doomtree and Rhymesayers Entertainment, but his clients now also include the likes of Target, Caribou Coffee, and Toyota.

"We basically help clients build a conversation with a twentysomething audience," says Erickson. It's a younger, tech-savvy audience that expects more two-way communication.

Sevnthsin has grown through the recession, and Erickson believes it's because the economy is encouraging companies to experiment with new technologies that cost less than mass media.

"People are trying to innovate and come up with new solutions as the world is rapidly changing around us"--from both a technological and an economic standpoint, says Erickson. "We see people willing to experiment with these new technologies, and experiment with them more seriously."

Sevnthsin plans to launch another weather balloon on Friday, Sept. 24.

Source: Jamey Erickson, Sevnthsin
Writer: Dan Haugen

A new venture in Minneapolis is innovating ways to connect nonprofits with young professionals who want to give their time and skills.

Jim Delaney, a former director with The LEAD Project, started Engine L3C after an experience as a board member at the YMCA.

"I wanted to do more than show up once a quarter and provide my advice and raise a little bit of money in the meantime," says Delaney. "I wanted to use what I thought were my skills and capabilities a little bit more directly to solve the problems that the 'Y' was facing."

So many nonprofit volunteer opportunities consist of one-day opportunities, helping out here and there with events and fundraising, he thought. Meanwhile, he understood that most directors were too busy with day-to-day demands to tackle big-picture challenges.

Delaney's idea: put together small strike teams of young professional volunteers to tackle big-picture projects. He pitched it to the YMCA and recruited 24 volunteers to work on six projects. One team created a guide for social media use. Another created a 140-page best practices handbook after analyzing the best practices at each of the local YMCA's 14 branches and camps.

Delaney recruits and matches volunteers to the project teams that best match their skills. A typical project lasts about six months, after which the volunteers are free to move on or get involved in a different way.

The young volunteers, most of whom are between the ages of 25 and 35, get personal and professional development, as well as a more satisfying volunteer experience. Meanwhile, the nonprofits, which pay $1,000 per month per project, get professional services for a fraction of what they would otherwise cost.

After 10 projects with the YMCA, about a month ago Engine started another project with the Neighborhood Development Center. Next, Delaney hopes to get corporations involved by offering the program to their employees as a professional development tool.

Source: Jim Delaney, Engine L3C
Writer: Dan Haugen

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

The Nerdery's plot for global domination is going according to plan.

The Bloomington-based web/mobile development shop opened a Chicago office on Aug. 1. Now it's taking notes on what works and what doesn't in preparation to open another remote office next year.

"As it stands right now, the Chicago office is working really well," says owner Luke Bucklin.

"We're not running into as many challenges as we expected, so I think we're well on our way to global domination through opening new offices," Bucklin deadpans.

He's joking about that global domination thing, right? The Nerdery's numbers suggest maybe not: The 7-year-old company started the year with 101 employees. Today it has 147 (including seven in Chicago.) This year's revenue is on track to hit about $14 million compared to $8.6 million in 2009.

The company's primary clients are advertising and marketing agencies, which are having a harder time keeping up with the increasingly specialized programming demands of their customers.

Just five years ago, an agency could more easily get by with a handful of in-house developers. A team of generalists could stay up to speed with all the programming disciplines necessary.

Today, though, advertising and marketing clients are demanding more interactive work, while at the same time the technology has splintered into more and more specialties. Agencies now need to offer development for iPhones, iPads, BlackBerry, Android, mobile web, social media.

"The list is significantly longer now than it used to be," says Bucklin. "We've solved that problem in a way the agencies aren't able to," by hiring teams of specialists in each area. "Today we have specialists in technologies that didn't even exist three years ago."

The Nerdery is looking into Dallas, New York and San Francisco as possible expansion locations in 2011.

Source: Luke Bucklin, The Nerdery
Writer: Dan Haugen

A local IT consulting firm has packed up its computers and relocated to St. Paul, where it joins a growing cluster of technology companies in the Capital City.

Instrumental, Inc., announced last week that it's moved from Bloomington to a new headquarters at 1450 Energy Park Drive in St. Paul. The company, which has about 15 employees, specializes in consulting for high-performance computing and data storage projects.

"We wanted to be in this cluster of technology companies like Cray and Lawson," says Bill Zwicky, vice president for operations. "There's a lot of access to universities just within a five mile radius of our new St. Paul location."

Instrumental was founded as a software company in 1991 and later transformed itself into a vendor-neutral consulting company. Its management team includes veterans of Cray Research in St. Paul.

The company's clients range from U.S. intelligence and defense agencies to Fortune 1,000 companies. CEO Henry Newman said they've had some "significant" wins in the past 45 days, but added that he wasn't able to disclose either of two new contracts yet.

Instrumental was recently awarded a contract to help the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration design, develop, and implement a data storage system so that historical weather data is safe and accessible to weather and climate researchers.

Source: Bill Zwicky, Instrumental
Writer: Dan Haugen

A group of civic and business leaders announced an initiative Tuesday to try put Minneapolis-St. Paul on the map in the areas of creativity and innovation.

The nonprofit 4FRONT is made up of local business, education, arts, and government leaders who want the region to take its "rightful place on the world stage."

Executive director John Foley points to a recent ranking of innovative cities worldwide in which Minneapolis slipped to 45th overall from 33rd the previous year.

"Cities all over the world get it. They're working really hard at innovation and trying to figure out how to attract talent, and we're acting like we're not even in the race," says Foley. "We continue to compare ourselves to the likes of Sioux Falls and Mississippi, literally. It's like we don't get it. We're not there yet. We just don't understand the dimensions of this race, and we're missing the big picture that we're competing with Amsterdam and Paris and San Francisco" and other major cities around the globe.

The plan is for 4FRONT to attract, retain, and nurture talent in the areas of food, health, design, and the arts. The centerpiece will be an international symposium and awards event that they hope will annually attract more than 40,000 people.

The Twin Cities are in a global competition for talent, says Foley, and the hope is that the awards will be a way to identify talent and give them a connection to the region. The goal is for Minneapolis-St. Paul to be recognized as the world's premier center of innovation and creativity by 2015 in health, food, design and the arts.

The group is working toward holding its first major event in the summer of 2012, with an abridged event and awards ceremony to introduce the concept in 2011.

Source: John Foley, 4FRONT
Writer: Dan Haugen

BusinessCard2 just padded its rolodex.

Workface Inc., creator of the BusinessCard2 online business card platform, announced last week that it has acquired a rival service called card.ly. The deal comes with card.ly's more than 40,000 user accounts, which will be converted into BusinessCard2 accounts in the coming months.

"It was less of a defensive move, in terms of trying to defend our market share, but more of an opportunity to grow our footprint," says CEO Lief Larson.

The BusinessCard2 service lets users create and share virtual business cards, which can be easily attached to e-mail signatures or posted to social networks.

A challenge for BusinessCard2 and many other free, web-based services is building up a critical mass of users so that it can become more than just another app.

Larson has always been tight-lipped about how many people use Workface's virtual business card service, but he said the company is seeing double-digit growth month after month. It has users in more than 60 countries but the biggest concentration is in its own backyard in the Twin Cities. Card.ly brings added geographic diversity to its user base.

Workface is based in Northeast Minneapolis and has five full-time employees.

Source: Lief Larson, Workface
Writer: Dan Haugen

A few years ago, a group of Twin Cities advertising leaders realized they were missing an opportunity by not better marketing their industry to students with diverse backgrounds.

Their concerns led to the creation of The BrandLab, a school outreach and scholarship program, which is expanding to a dozen metro-area classrooms this school year.

Twin Cities agencies routinely create campaigns for diverse populations around the world, says BrandLab executive director Jim Cousins. Yet if you look around at the makeup of the staffs creating them, they don't always match the target audience.

BrandLab was started by OLSON in 2007 and expanded to include other agencies the following year. Its goal is to create opportunities in the marketing industry for students with diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Since the pilot at South High School, the program has expanded to two, then six, and now twelve classrooms at schools in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Bloomington.

"You can't really ask for a job in an industry that you don't know exists," says Cousins.

That's why the program starts with exposure, explaining to students what kind of careers exist in marketing. The hands-on curriculum is often integrated with an existing media arts or mass communication class. The most promising and energetic students then have a chance to apply for internships and scholarships, with two of each awarded per class.

Schools participating this year include South, North, and Patrick Henry high schools in Minneapolis, Arlington High School and Community of Peace Academy in St. Paul, Kennedy High School in Bloomington, and Minnesota Transitions Charter High School.

Source: Jim Cousins, BrandLab
Writer: Dan Haugen

Sara Pearce's baby is growing up fast.

The registered nurse and midwife started Amma Maternity in 2007, leasing time at a Minneapolis yoga studio to offer a popular parenting class for new mothers. Amma Maternity has since been named the exclusive provider of childbirth and newborn classes for Park Nicollet Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park.

Meanwhile, Pearce has left the yoga studio for her first storefront location, at 3511 Hazelton Road in the Yorktown Mall in Edina. The company is now looking to partner with other hospitals that would like to outsource their childbirth classes, which are inconvenient and unprofitable for most hospitals.

Pearce says she borrowed the business model from a childbirth center in Boston. She believes Amma Maternity is only the second company nationwide to implement it.

What's a hassle for hospitals can be profitable for Amma Maternity because of its other products and services. In short: they come for the pre-natal, but often sign-up for new-parent classes or shop at the retail boutique. Parents like the service because it's in a "really cute, consumer-friendly space" with up-to-date AV equipment, and provides a sense of community, says Pearce.

"I think people are attracted to the setting and the idea of an updated experience," says Pearce.

The business has been profitable from day one, says Pearce. She estimates that she sees about 125 new families per month, and it's all hospital referrals or word of mouth.

(Amma Maternity is hosting an open house on Tuesday, Sept. 14.)

Source: Sara Pearce, Amma Maternity
Writer: Dan Haugen

Six division winners are in the running for the Minnesota Cup grand prize. The winners of the sixth annual entrepreneur competition were announced last week. Each will receive $20,000, except for the student division winner, which gets $5,000.

"This year's Minnesota Cup winners are behind some of our state's most innovative new business ideas," Minnesota Cup co-founder Scott Litman said in a statement.

The winners are:

     GeaCom, a Duluth company developing a device to help doctors and patients communicate across language barriers

    BioMatRx, a Twin Cities company that provides tissue engineering products, equipment and information to the dental industry
 
    EarthClean, a Minneapolis startup that is commercializing a non-toxic, biodegradable firefighting gel (See our previous coverage)

    Go Home Gorgeous, a Twin Cities company that provides postpartum recovery treatments to reduce the stress associated with childbirth
 
    Springboard for the Arts, a Twin Cities organization that connects artists with skills, contacts, information, and services

    Blue Water Ponds, a Twin Cities company that provides pond restoration services using barley straw and pond weed harvesting

A grand prize winner, to be named on Sept. 13, will win another $20,000. An awards ceremony is scheduled for 5 pm, Sept. 13 at the U of M's McNamara Alumni Center.

Source: Minnesota Cup
Writer: Dan Haugen