Innovation + Job News

A local boutique marketing firm is doing well by focusing on good.

Marketing That Matters is a three-year-old company started by Lori Schaefer, who has a background in corporate communications, public affairs, and progressive politics.

The emphasis is on clients Schaefer believes are making a difference in the world, including nonprofits, public sector agencies. and social entrepreneurs.

"I really wanted to see if you could take what works from the for-profit marketing world and brand/strategy world and bring some of that expertise to the nonprofit sector," says Schaefer.

The recent growth in her client list suggests you can.

Schaefer has done work for major foundations, as well as the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative (a sponsor of The Line). After working on her own or with a small group of independent contractors for the past few years, she's now preparing to hire her first one or two formal employees.

"One of the best pieces of advice I've received," she says, "is you can't be afraid to take the leap when you see the growth starting to happen."

Schaefer credits the growth to her team's hard work, as well as the company's clearly focused niche, which seems to be timely. More for-profits appear to be recognizing the importance of social responsibility and their role in the community , she says. Meanwhile, President Obama's campaign seems to have started to change the way nonprofits and public agencies think about branding and marketing issues.

Source: Lori Schaefer, Marketing That Matters
Writer: Dan Haugen

Bringing a new medical device to market is a complicated, highly regulated process, one that requires documentation at every turn.

Kristin Mortenson doesn't believe there's been a simple solution for most medical device companies to keep track of it all, until now.

Mortenson is co-founder of Acera Innovation, maker of a software-as-a-service application built specifically to help medical device companies manage workflow and collaboration around product development, regulatory compliance, and quality management.

"Our goal to lower their time, risk, and cost to bring their product to market," says Mortenson.

Most medical device companies are like the ones Mortenson has worked with the past 20 years: fewer than 100 employees and too small to be able to afford large enterprise software customized to their needs.

As a consultant, she looked for software that would help clients stay organized but couldn't find any good solutions. As a result, regulatory compliance became a time-consuming headache for many firms.

About a year and a half ago she met with a couple of software entrepreneurs, Myke Miller and Steve Swartz, and they formed Acera Innovation. The company signed up its first paying user about a year ago. It's in a "limited-release" mode right now with about a dozen customers, mostly in the Twin Cities.

Because it's a cloud-based service, companies don't need any specialized staff or hardware to run the program, just a computer with Internet access. This frees up companies to concentrate on the task at hand:

"Placing the energy and the time and the creativity on the device."

Acera Innovation is currently raising money and also preparing to release an updated version of the software in the fall.

Source: Kristin Mortenson, Acera Innovation
Writer: Dan Haugen

A Minneapolis video game developer scored second place last week in a Boing Boing Arcade contest for a game called Infiltration at Dusk.

Creating video games is actually a hobby of Zachary Johnson, whose day job is working as a user experience developer at Worrell, Inc.

The Boing Boing contest asked developers to build a game inspired by a piece of chip music, the chimey tunes used in old-school video games.

Johnson guesses he's made about a dozen video games since the mid-90s. This one took about 30 hours to create and incorporates unique controls. No memorizing buttons. Just mash your keyboard in the direction you want to shoot.

The premise: you're the last gunman protecting a village from a "horde of biomechanical abominations" trying to rid Earth of all humans.

Sound pretty dark? Well, things are looking brighter for indie video game makers.

"The indie game market is big right now," says Johnson. The cost and accessibility of computing power have given hobbyists tools that professionals could have only dreamed about two decades ago.

Meanwhile, indie video game developers have open markets to sell and distribute their creations via mobile devices or web browsers. That said, Johnson has no plans for quitting his day job.

"It's still a hobby for me. For me, it would be more exciting if I made a game that resonated with thousands of people," says Johnson. "It might earn me enough money that I could pour into another game."

Source: Zach Johnson
Writer: Dan Haugen

 

A Burnsville startup is making progress vetting its promising but still unproven diabetes treatment.

Exsulin CEO Lisa Jansa says the company's Phase II clinical trial at the Mayo Clinic and Canada's McGill University is now more than 50 percent enrolled and on track to be completed by the end of the year.

"The good news is we're very close to having data," says Jansa, one of more than two dozen scheduled speakers at a diabetes innovation summit Wednesday at Park Nicollet's International Diabetes Center.

The company's product, a drug called ExsulinTM, aims to help the body regenerate insulin-producing cells within the pancreas. If it proves successful, it could reverse the effects of diabetes in Type 1 and Type 2 patients and reduce the use of injected insulin.

Jansa says there's reason for optimism based on previous animal and clinical studies. If the current 27-patient trial suggests the drug is safe and effective, then larger studies will follow. If those are also successful and the drug is approved by regulators, it could be for sale within five years.

Exsulin TM's progress is being tracked closely by the diabetes industry because it's the only treatment of its kind at this stage of development, Jansa said. If it makes it all the way to pharmacy shelves, the product would likely find a massive potential market. Diabetes affects 24 million Americans. In Minnesota alone, 15,000 people are diagnosed each year.

The Twin Cities could play a key role in developing treatments for those patients. The region has strong research expertise at the Mayo Clinic, University of Minnesota, and International Diabetes Center, says Jansa, as well as emerging companies like Exsulin that could help diversify the area's reputation beyond medical devices. She hopes Wednesday's event will give a glimpse of that future.

"I'm hoping it'll be the first of what we'll see as some real momentum in the region."

Source: Lisa Jansa, Exsulin Corporation
Writer: Dan Haugen

Drivers looking to kick their gasoline habits can now get directions on their iPhones.

A new iPhone app by Minneapolis-based DriveAlternatives lets users search for and get directions to the nearest alternative fuel stations and carshares anywhere in the country.

The startup claims to have built the nation's largest database of its kind, compiling information from government and industry sources, as well as some 10,000 phone calls to fuel stations. The app's database covers biodiesel, E85 ethanol, hydrogen, compressed natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, and electric vehicle charging stations, as well as carshare locations.

CEO Kavi Turnbull started thinking about the problem five years ago while he was working for statewide DFL political campaigns, which tried to fill up on ethanol or biodiesel whenever possible. Turnbull's job included finding these types of fueling stations and relaying the information to staff out on the campaign trail.

It turned out to be a tricky and at times frustrating task. The Department of Energy hosted a searchable database on its website, but at the time much of the information was outdated or incorrect.

"I was just sick of bad data," says Turnbull.

Turnbull went on to earn an MBA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While studying there and interning at a venture capital fund he developed the business plan for DriveAlternatives.

The app is free to download. The company plans to make its money selling advertising and sponsorships to alternative fuel stations. The number of such stations is projected to surge from around 15,000 today to more than 1 million five years from now.

The app will count on crowdsourcing from users and station owners to help keep the database up to date. Turnbull expects the early adopters to include fleet operators, especially government agencies that require employees to use ethanol or other biofuels when available.

Source: Kavi Turnbull, DriveAlternatives
Writer: Dan Haugen

A south Minneapolis garage this week gave supporters a sneak peek at its new business, and a glimpse of what might be the future of the automobile.

ReGo Electric Conversions will open for business Aug. 19, but it hosted an open house on Monday for partners and curious neighbors to take a look. Its shop is located under the same solar-panel-covered roof as Mulroy's Body Shop, at 3920 Nicollet Ave. S. in the Kingfield neighborhood.

The company will convert gas-electric hybrid vehicles into plug-in hybrids, which contain an extra battery that can be charged off an ordinary electrical outlet.

Co-founder Shayna Berkowitz says a few years ago she was looking for someone to convert her Toyota RAV4 to an all-electric vehicle. When she couldn't find any shops in town that could do the job, she thought there might be an opportunity.

Gas-to-hybrid-or-electric vehicle conversions are an expensive proposition, more than $40,000 per vehicle. The market for them doesn't exist today, but Berkowitz believes it will someday, and that ReGo will be ready when it arrives. Meanwhile, Berkowitz and her business partner, Alex Danovitch, believe there's enough work to keep them busy converting hybrids to plug-in hybrids.

The company has 11 employees. Over the past two years they've developed a process for winterizing and installing existing battery technology into gas-electric hybrid vehicles. The extra battery allows a hybrid car to travel at higher
speeds and longer distances on battery power alone, which can help save money and reduce emissions. The conversion process takes about 24 hours and costs around $5,000. One of ReGo's first customers is the city of Minneapolis, which is paying to convert one of its Priuses to a plug-in hybrid for Mayor R.T. Rybak.

Berkowitz points to the war in Iraq, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the growing issues of global warming and air pollution as reasons why ReGo couldn't be starting up at better time.

"People have really made a commitment to hybrid vehicles, which have been the best option available for people who want to move toward a more sustainable transportation sector," says Berkowitz. "We're in a place now to be able to offer people a next step with those hybrids."

Source: Shayna Berkowitz, ReGo Electric Conversions
Writer: Dan Haugen

Minnesota economic development officials expect to be able to launch the state's new angel investor tax credit program sometime next week.

The Department of Employment and Economic Development this week was completing and testing back-office systems for the program, says coordinator Jeff Nelson. If all goes as planned, the department expects to post applications on a new web page the week of July 19, two weeks before the deadline set by the Legislature.

The 25 percent tax credit is designed to incentivize up to $48 million per year in investments in emerging and high-tech startups in the state. The Legislature set aside $11 million for 2010 and $12 million annually for 2011 through 2014.

The money will be awarded through a two-step, first-come-first-served process. First, investors and companies need to be certified to ensure they qualify for the tax credit. Next, the investor may apply for the tax credit allocation.

Among the criteria for companies to qualify: They must be less than 10 years old and have fewer than 25 employees. Their headquarters and more than half their payroll and employees must be in Minnesota, and all employees must make at least $18.55 per hour. Qualifying companies also need to be using or researching proprietary technology in a high-technology field.

Nelson says that based on the volume of questions and requests his office has had, they very well might be swamped in the next few weeks, but it's impossible to say for sure.

"We've had a lot of interest from all parties, but we have no experience in this, so it's kind of hard to tell," says Nelson.

We'll see next week, maybe.

Source: Jeff Nelson, Department of Employment and Economic Development
Writer: Dan Haugen

A local company that tests software for quality assurance says business is picking up. Could it be a sign the tech economy is preparing for growth?

"Maybe," says Todd Hauschildt, CEO of SWAT Solutions in Plymouth. "We're starting to see a lot of interest in what we do. Quality is getting more and more important as companies are preparing for growth."

SWAT Solutions makes sure software products--everything from iPhone apps to medical devices--work the way they're supposed to before its clients take them to market.

"We make sure it was built and runs as it was designed," says Hauschildt.

Most of its clients are in the Twin Cities, and it's ramping up for what it expects to be a very busy third and fourth quarter. The company had six new job positions posted on its website this week, and planned more new hires before the end of summer.

Hauschildt was hired as CEO earlier this year after resigning from a position at Thomson Reuters.

"I'd been in big companies all my career and I've got too many friends who say, dude, you've got to try this," he says. "I really do like it. It's a different type of work, different type of problems, but it's fun and it's sort of re-energized me."

He said another factor in SWAT's recent pickup is likely a "reshoring" trend by companies that had offshored their quality assurance to other countries.

Source: Todd Hauschildt, Swat Technologies
Writer: Dan Haugen

All that hopey, changey stuff? It's actually working out quite nicely for GovDelivery.

The fast-growing St. Paul company helps government agencies manage digital communications, everything from e-mail newsletters to social media feeds.

President Obama signed an Open Government Initiative shortly after taking office that calls on federal agencies to be more participatory and transparent in the way they do business. The order has resulted in a spike in demand for the kind of services that GovDelivery provides.

Meanwhile, many state and local governments are facing budget cuts and looking for ways to communicate more efficiently with their constituents.

"There's a lot going on in the public sector market," says GovDelivery founder/CEO Scott Burns. "There's a lot of pressure to communicate what's going on and a lot of pressure to be more efficient and more effective."

GovDelivery recently advertised 14 new positions to keep up with growing demand for its services, which are used to send out more than 10 million messages a day. The company has about 75 employees.

The company was founded in 1999 with an emphasis on local government. It launched a beta version of its e-mail subscription service for the city of St. Paul in 2000. If you've ever signed-up to receive snow emergency alerts in St. Paul, then you've used a GovDelivery service.

The company's clients now include the FBI, the National Guard and U.S. Health & Human Services, which used GovDelivery to get the word out about H1N1 flu.

"We're getting out information on H1N1. We're getting out information on cyber crime. We're getting out information on your local park hours," says Burns. "This is stuff that needs to get into people's hands and that makes their lives better."

Source: Scott Burns, GovDelivery
Writer: Dan Haugen

Minneapolis and St. Paul announced an economic development partnership last week aimed at boosting green manufacturing in the region.

Thinc.GreenMSP is a marketing and resource-sharing plan aimed largely at growing demand for products from local green businesses in the two cities.

"We think if we grow the demand for for their products, they'll stay and grow," says Cathy Polasky, economic development director for the city of Minneapolis.

The plan lays out five strategies. The first two involve getting the cities to adopt similar green buying and green building policies. Minneapolis requires its departments to buy green office and cleaning products whenever possible, but St. Paul does not. Meanwhile, St. Paul requires both government and city-funded projects to meet certain green building requirements, but Minneapolis only does so for government projects.

Other strategies include establishing a program to recognize green business leaders in both cities, exploring a potential green industrial park or parks, and creating programs and networking opportunities to help green entrepreneurs finance their businesses. The latter may involve helping new business owners network with private investors or tailoring existing city finance programs to better fit green businesses.

Polasky says the partnership will also include working with the private sector. She cited the city's recent work with the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce to create a green business-to-business networking group.

"We think we have a solid green environment here already," says Polasky, "and so we think that we have a good starting point to be competitive."

Source: Cathy Polasky, City of Minneapolis
Writer: Dan Haugen

When musician David Byrne stopped in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago for a forum on bicycling, he mentioned on stage that he had a chance to visit local bike rack manufacturer, Dero Bike Racks.

We checked in with Dero co-owner Hans Steege last week to ask about getting a shout-out from Byrne, as well as how business has been lately.

The fifteen-year-old company has cruised through the recession. Steege said Dero hasn't had to lay off anyone from its Seward neighborhood shop, which has been busier than ever. He declined to share specific revenue numbers, only that they've averaged double-digit growth in recent years.

What are the factors behind its growth? "A big one, I think, is just kind of a sea change in the way that Americans are looking at bicycling as a form of transportation," says Steege.

As for Byrne, Dero's relationship with him predates the musician's most recent visit. Steege and others from Dero visited Byrne in New York last year to pitch manufacturing a line of Byrne-designed bicycle racks. "It's not a done deal yet, but we're hoping it works out," says Steege.

Even though it wasn't their first meeting, it was still a rush to have the former Talking Head pay a visit. "He's a really interesting, mild-mannered guy. Very humble and super creative. It was a lot of fun to have him walk around our shop, look at our stuff and give us his two cents."

Dero's customers include cities, schools, corporate campuses, and homeowners. It recently started rolling out a system it calls the Dero ZAP, a solar-powered check-in station for tracking and rewarding students or employees who commute by bicycle.

Source: Hans Steege, Dero Bike Racks
Writer: Dan Haugen

Customers rummaging through the iPhone App Store last week found a new bargain: a free version of iGarageSale.

The garage-sale-mapping app by Performant Design of Maple Grove was downloaded about 10,000 times last week, by far its highest ever weekly total. Now the developer hopes some of those downloaders will eventually decide to upgrade to the $2.99 pro version.

Performant Design is the name for the one-man, bootstrapped company founded in 2007 by Aaron Kardell. It initially focused on Facebook apps, including the Risk-like strategy game World Conquest, which Kardell sold to Sillicon Valley-based SGN.

iGarageSale, Performant's first mobile app, has been in and out of the Top 100 apps for its category since it was introduced about a year ago. Kardell estimated the iGarageSale paid app has been downloaded between 12,000 and 15,000 times.

"If you look at the graphs, I'd characterize it as a little bit of a roller coaster," says Kardell. The app's first big spike came last September when Apple featured it in the "New and Noteworthy" section of its app store homepage. The pace of downloading slowed over winter as garage sale season cooled, but it's picked up again this spring. Last week was the app's biggest week for downloads, although the majority of them were for the free, basic version.

"What we're really looking forward to seeing now is the conversion rate," says Kardell. The paid verison of the app allows users to save favorite locations and search the text of garage sale ads, which are culled from craigslist postings.

Kardell also recently created a company called MobileRealtyApps.com, which creates branded home search apps for realtors.

Source: Aaron Kardell, Performant Design
Writer: Dan Haugen

A Minneapolis digital communications firm is grabbing attention--and bystanders--with a new interactive billboard in Times Square.

Space150 recently became the agency of record for Forever21, the trendy youth fashion chain. Its first project: creating a giant high-tech display for the retailer's flagship store in New York's Times Square.

In most places, a 61-foot-tall video screen would be enough to turn heads, but not in Times Square. Over the past decade the center has been overtaken by increasingly enormous screens to the point that it now looks like a sports bar for giants. Space150 decided to go different instead of bigger.

"We looked at it and said this is almost like a giant computer screen, versus a television screen where you just have the one-way interaction," says space150 founder/CEO Billy Jurewicz.

The firm created a series of interactive "episodes" that rotate across the screen. One displays recent tweets that include the phrases "love" and "Forever21." Another is "Forever Runway," an ongoing loop of user-generated videos showing fans walking from one side of the screen to the other.
 
The real eye-catcher, though, is a bit called "getting picked up by a model." A super-high-definition camera mounted on the billboard displays a real-time stream of the people standing below. A superimposed model enters the screen, then reaches out and plucks a person's image from the live video feed. The model might kiss the person, or put them in a shopping bag, or flick them away.

"This is sensational. It's a live image of the crowd. People just start mobbing like they're watching the World Cup or something," says Jurewicz. "If you see it, you're going to say that's something you want to do as a tourist in New York, to go get picked up by a model at Times Square."

Jurewicz founded space150 in March 2000. The company recently celebrated its tenth anniversary in the midst of an expansion. The firm has grown to about 140 employees from about 90 at the start of the year. It's hired about 20 in the past three weeks alone.

Source: Billy Jurewicz, space150
Writer: Dan Haugen

A pair of industrial designers hopes their new St. Paul firm can help clients create greener housewares and other consumer goods.

Strom Studio celebrates its launch on Thursday, July 1, at its new downtown office in the CoCo coworking space. The industrial design shop will focus on design research and sustainable development.

Co-founders Kerstin Strom and Marshall Young have backgrounds in the children's safety products and medical devices, respectively. They already have clients from networking at this spring's International Home + Housewares Show in Chicago, though they can't drop any names yet.

The timing is right, says Strom, because many companies' green marketing efforts are being met with greenwashing accusations. Strom Studio will help companies work through sustainability issues early on in a product's development instead of waiting until it's complete.

Strom credits CoCo, too, for the timing of their company launch. (She's also events coordinator for CoCo.) The coworking space eliminated much of the overhead related to starting a company, she said.

Another key factor: CoCo is across the street from what's expected by 2014 to be a high-speed rail stop connecting St. Paul to Chicago, where Strom has clients already.

"It's a great opportunity for us to stay in the Twin Cities," Strom says about the future rail link, which she expects will generate significant commerce back and forth between the Twin Cities and Chicago.

Strom Studio celebrates its launch with a open house 4-10 p.m., Thursday, July 1, at CoCo, 213 4th St E., 4th Floor, in St Paul.

Source: Kerstin Strom, Strom Studio
Writer: Dan Haugen

A University of Minnesota student team edged out competitors for second place last week in a cross-country solar-powered vehicle race.

The student group was among 18 teams that designed, built and drove a solar-powered car more than 1,100 miles, from Tulsa, Okla., to Chicago, Ill., as part of the 2010 American Solar Challenge.

"It's a rather significant feat that in two years a bunch of college kids design, build and race a car from scratch," says Alan Jacobs, a materials science student and project manager of this year's car.

The Minnesota team prides itself on building extremely light and aerodynamic solar cars. This year's model, called Centaurus II, is the school's ninth solar car project. It's about 3 feet tall, 16 feet long, and 6 feet wide, and weighs less than 400 pounds without a driver.

The competition takes place on public highways, meaning the teams need to contend with traffic and gawkers. The vehicles begin charging each morning at 7 a.m., then leave the starting line at 9 a.m. Most of the vehicles have no problem going the speed limit, 55 to 65 mph.

The Gopher team briefly took the lead during Day 5 but then ran out of juice and had to pull over to recharge while Michigan and Stanford passed them by. The Minnesotans passed Stanford the next day but were unable to catch Michigan, which held on to win first place.

"It was a really close race," says Jacobs. "We were just trying to keep going the best we could."

About 30 students from the College of Science and Engineering actively participated in the project, which is funded through cash and in-kind donations of parts and materials.

Source: Alan Jacobs, University of Minnesota Solar Vehicle Project
Writer: Dan Haugen