entrepreneurship : Innovation + Job News

A Twin Cities software entrepreneur has announced plans for a new venture called Project Skyway that will aim to connect young entrepreneurs with mentors, resources, and funding.

Cem Erdem, born in Turkey, founded Augusoft in 1994 after reading about the Internet in a magazine on his flight from Turkey to the United States with his new wife.

The company makes online software for education administration. A decade and a half later, Erdem has a management team in place that can run the company without his day-to-day involvement, freeing him up to take on a new challenge.

Erdem says he's decided he wants the next phase of his life to be about helping other entrepreneurs achieve their goals faster, better, and more efficiently than he was able to do.

Project Skyway will be a new-business seed fund and incubator, launching in July 2011. The details are still coming together, Erdem admits, but above all he wants it to be a connector.

Erdem envisions a program that will build connections among ideas, entrepreneurs, investors, and other innovation hubs, and bring them together both online and in physical space.

He believes there are probably would-be entrepreneurs attending community colleges, as he did, who are not being reached out to. He wants to use his education connections to cast a broad net for potential entrepreneurs and bring them into an innovation community.

"Lots of people have e-business ideas, but they are not necessarily the programmers. They don't know how to take a concept to the virtual world, and we can help them with that," says Erdem.

Some of the other values that he's making a priority as he develops the program include a focus on long-term value, ethical practices, and making sure the program is accessible.

Erdem admits it's a "high-level model" right now. He's prepared to spend his own money getting the program off the ground. He's not seeking funding help, but he is seeking ideas.

Erdem says people looking to get involved should contact him at [email protected].

Source: Cem Erdem, Augusoft
Writer: Dan Haugen

Another prize should help extinguish any doubts about EarthClean's potential.

The Minneapolis startup, which produces a non-toxic, biodegradable firefighting gel, was one of three winners named last week in the region's first annual Cleantech Open competition.

Other winners for the Cleantech Open North Central region were Xolve, a Platteville, Wisc., company that makes nanocoatings for energy generation and storage, and Silicon Solar Solutions of Rogers, Ark., whose technology improves silicon-based solar power cells.

NewWater, a startup that's using University of Minnesota technology to develop an atrazine filter for municipal water treatment plants, won given a regional sustainability award.

EarthClean (which we've previously written about here and here) was also the grand prize winner in this year's Minnesota Cup entrepreneur competition.

The field for the Cleantech Open North Central competition also included companies from Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

"That's a really important part of the program, to connect all these different geographies and create this ecosystem across the entire Midwest," says regional director Justin Kastor.

The three winners will receive a prize package that includes cash and services worth up to $30,000. They'll also compete for a $250,000 prize at a Nov. 17 national competition.

Next year's North Central competition is likely to include companies from Ohio and Illinois as the Cleantech Open prepares to launch a separate Midwest division in 2012.

The organization aims to help create 100,000 green-collar jobs in the United States by 2015.

Source: Justin Kastor, Clean Tech Open
Writer: Dan Haugen

If you're a bicycle commuter, you owe a debt of thanks to Steve Flagg, owner and founder of Quality Bicycle Products (QBP). Flagg, who in September was named the University of Minnesota's 2010 Entrepreneur of the Year by the Carlson School of Management, not only leads one of the country's largest bike distribution centers, but uses his company as a vehicle for promoting cycling as an alternative to cars.

From its launch in 1981, QBP has fueled rapid growth by serving as the go-to source for hard-to-find bike components. From a one-man operation, it's grown to employ some 450 workers who service 5,000 independent dealers around the country.

Equally important, says Flagg, is his company's commitment to advocacy. "We have a full-time advocate on staff," he explains, whose job it is to work with politicians and community organizations to build trails and generally support the cycling community. "Our values are deeply integrated into our business."

Given Flagg's focus on cycling, it's not surprising that these core values extend to environmentalism. "We have a strong environmental ethos," he says. QBP operates out of a Bloomington warehouse that earned one of the of the nation's first LEED Gold ratings for a warehouse.

The headquarters sits adjacent to the Hyland Lake Park Reserve bike trail system, with commuter links to Minneapolis. QBP rewards employees who commute by bicycle with a four-dollar-a-day bonus.

While the company's been hit by the downturn, they've maintained positive growth--a fact that Flagg attributes at least in part to being a values-driven business. "There's a huge payoff," he says. "Not only are you doing the right thing, but at the end of the day, you get lower turnover and more motivated employees."

Source: Steve Flagg, Quality Bicycle Products
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 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

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

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

After signing a lease for its future brewery in downtown Minneapolis, Fulton Beer has a plan for its next round of growth.

First, though, it needs to make sure it can pay the tab.

The company is named after the Minneapolis neighborhood where the its four founders started home brewing together. They started leasing time at at Wisconsin brewery last fall so that they could brew beer for commercial sale.

The guys--Ryan Petz, Jim Diley, Brian Hoffman and Peter Grande--have doubled production twice since then, and their hoppy Sweet Child of Vine brew is now on tap at a little over 100 bars and restaurants in the Twin Cities.

About six months ago they started searching for a spot to build their own brewery, and last month they signed a lease on an empty warehouse just northwest of Target Field at 414 N. 6th Ave.

"We couldn't be happier with what we found," says Petz.

The plan is to construct a 15- to 20-barrel brewhouse that would be open to the public for tours and growler sales. They're talking to architects, contractors, and equipment manufacturers. The time line will depend on financing.

"As you can imagine, it's a pretty expensive endeavor. We're looking at getting some traditional bank financing, but are not exactly sure how that is going to play out," says Petz. "We've been able to start saving a little bit of money from our current operations, but it may be that we have to continue to do that longer or find some other alternative means in order to get this thing together."

They're hoping to be brewing beer within about six months of securing financing.

Source: Ryan Petz, Fulton Beer
Writer: Dan Haugen

A nice thing about taking the skyways: you can walk around with your phone in front of your face and not worry about getting hit by a car.

A pair of local developers have created a free iPhone app to help people navigate and explore the Minneapolis skyway system.

The Minneapolis Skyway app, by Frypan Digital, includes a map and business directory that lets users search for stores, see reviews and save favorites.

Co-creator Casey Holley says the app has been downloaded more than 3,000 times since it was posted in the App Store a few months ago. They're hoping downloads will pick up some when winter arrives and more people are using the skyways to avoid the elements.

"We've had a real steady number of downloads," says Holley. "I think it's just iPhone users saying man, this is confusing, there has to be an app for that."

One of the biggest challenge so far has been keeping information up to date. With around 400 different retail spaces, there's a fairly regular turnover among tenants. They're relying largely on the crowd to keep track of changes, which has worked well so far.

Holley says they've had lots of requests for an Android edition. That's in the long-range plan, but for now their focus is increasing use of the iPhone app and then building out services for skyway business owners to advertise and promote specials.

Source: Casey Holley, Frypan Digital
Writer: Dan Haugen

Minnesota's breakthrough ideas this year include a battery for storing solar power, a device to help doctors communicate across language barriers, and a service for managing online movie and music ratings.

Minnesota Cup organizers last week announced division finalists for this year's sixth annual statewide entrepreneur contest. (We've pasted the complete list below.)

"Some of these ideas, you can tell they are thinking really big, and that's obviously what we want to see," says Matt Hilker, director of the Minnesota Cup.

Next, the finalists will make 12-minute oral presentations to the judges on Aug. 31 before division winners are named. The grand prize winner will then be announced Sept. 13 at McNamara Alumni Center.

One finalist in each division will receive $20,000 in seed capital. The grand prize winner will be awarded an additional $20,000. The student division winner receives a $5,000 prize.

The division finalists are:

High Tech Division

Curation Station--provides a multifaceted tool for gathering, curating and sharing content of nearly any media type on the web.
 
GeaCom--developing a multilingual medical communication system.
 
Open Preferences--provides a service that allows users to manage and control their ratings and preferences across many different media (e.g., music, movies, TV) and services (e.g., Netflix, TiVo, Yahoo, Last.FM, Pandora).

BioSciences Division

BioMatRx--provides tissue engineering products, equipment and information to the dental industry.
 
MRI Robotics--designs and tests medical equipment for use inside an MRI scanner.
 
NirvaMed--developing an organ-specific therapy-delivery technology platform for various clinical applications.

Clean Tech & Renewable Energy Division

EarthClean--commercializing an environmentally safe liquid that is exponentially more effective than water, Class-A Foams, and toxic retardants at stopping fires.
 
Silent Power--manufactures and markets easy-to-install, highly reliable, power inverters for the renewable energy and backup power markets.
 
Visiam--provider of processing technology that reduces the volume of municipal solid waste, dramatically increasing recycling rates and decreasing transportation costs.
 
General Division

Fresh EcoHarvest--developing a revolutionary greenhouse technology that allows growers to produce abundant, healthy food locally and in any climate with minimal environmental impact.
 
Fruchi--provides a line of nutritious, real fruit frozen smoothies.
 
Go Home Gorgeous--provides postpartum recovery treatments that have proven effective in decreasing the physical and emotional stress commonly associated with childbirth.

Student Division

Blue Water Ponds--provides environmentally-friendly services for restoring ponds through the use of barley straw and pond weed harvesting in an effort to control aquatic plants in the long term.
 
OncomiR--developing a data repository of microRNA expression profiles; this information is critical to the development of drugs for cancer treatment.
 
Power Trowel Solution Applicator--developing a device that allows a power trowel operator rather than a bystander to apply a chemical solution that slows the rate at which concrete dries.

Source: Matt Hilker, Minnesota Cup
Writer: Dan Haugen

A former Medtronic manager has found a second career giving greeting cards a second life.

Last fall Christy Eichers started selling kits to help consumers reuse old greeting cards. Regreet kits come with fresh envelopes and recycled-paper labels to affix over the original signatures.

They also come with tracking labels that let users go online and see how many times the cards have been reused and where they wind up (as with the Where's George? dollar bill tracker.)

Eichers describes the inspiration as "a bit of necessity and a bit of red wine."

She was back home visiting family and friends in Mankato two winters ago when the idea struck. She couldn't motivate herself to go out into the cold to buy a birthday card for a friend, so her her mother suggested reusing one of the cards her father had just received for his birthday.

Her first thought: Where's the White Out? But later she started to wonder whether her crafty solution might contain a business idea. She took that thought to a WomenVenture class, developed a business plan, and started her company in October 2009.

Along the way she decided to take a voluntary severance package from her former employer, Medtronic, where she worked as part of the community affairs team. "A little bit of craziness," she says," but sometimes you just have to take the leap."

Regreet's card reuse kits are now for sale online and in 14 retail stores in seven states. And cards with the labels affixed have logged more than 138,000 miles around the globe.

Eichers doesn't have any employees, but she has a regular circle of consultants and creative professionals who work on contract, and she recently started signing up sales reps, too. Much of her energy is going toward building awareness and educating consumers about the product.

The $11.99 kits come with supplies to repurpose eight greeting cards, which works out to about $1.50 per card. In September, $2 from every purchase will support breast cancer research and awareness through the the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation.

Source: Christy Eichers, Regreet
Writer: Dan Haugen

 

A local company's creative outsourcing model is helping put laid-off technicians back to work.

Field Solutions recently announced the completion of its first round of outside fundraising, a $1.5 million investment led by StarTec Investments, whose president, Joy Lindsay, will join Field Solutions' board of directors.

Marty Reader, the company's executive vice president for sales and marketing, says the infusion will allow the company to stay on the aggressive growth track it's been on since it was founded in 2007.

Field Solutions connects large companies with independent field technicians wherever they're needed in North America. The company screens technicians for skills and performance, matches them to the jobs, and handles all the administrative tasks, like pay and taxes.

They're typically small jobs. The average assignment is for less than two hours. A work order, for example, might involve hiring numerous temp technicians to swap out cash registers at several thousand fast food restaurants. Reader says that Field Solutions can save companies 30 percent to 70 percent of what full-time employees would cost.

The company's business has tripled over the past three years, says Reader. It has more than 25 employees at its headquarters in St. Louis Park, but it works with 22,000 independent field technicians.

"This is the working unemployed," says Reader. Scores of skilled people have been laid off during the recession, and many of them, especially older workers, may never find permanent work again. Field Solutions gives them a chance to string together regular work, he says.

Some make over $80,000 a year, and quite a few make over $40,000 a year, according to Reader.

Source: Marty Reader, Field Solutions
Writer: Dan Haugen

A local mobile marketing startup bubbled up to the semifinals this month in a contest-like request by PepsiCo for promising new media communications technology tools.

MixMobi ended up losing its fizz as the field was narrowed from 40 to 20 companies, but founder Lisa Foote says their platform is gaining traction at home and elsewhere.

MixMobi has developed a light, versatile platform that lets retailers, restaurants, and other businesses create and send simple offers and promotions to customers' cell phones.

Unlike other mobile marketing platforms, MixMobi's promotions work on any phone with a web browser. They're delivered via tweets, short links, or, most recently, QR bar codes.

The company's technology is being used to run the QR code promotions in the July and August issues of Minneapolis/St. Paul magazine. It's also the engine that powers the location-based advertising on the DriveAlternatives app, which we wrote about earlier this month.

"We're the engine that helps them, but we're very happy being in the background," says Foote.

Foote says it seems like the company is getting more traction. The interest in mobile coupons and promotions is on the rise. MixMobi solves a lot of problems for agencies, which are getting more and more requests to push promotions on multiple different mobile platforms.

Foote started the company in 2008 with her husband, Brad Roberts, and chief technology officer Kelly Heikkila. The company launched publicly in February and has already earned positive reviews from blogs and analysts, including Mashable.com and Juniper Research.

The next step for MixMobi may be augmented reality, the new technology that layers visuals, directional signals, and other information onto digital images of the real world. The company was in talks with a major augmented reality developer about laying MixMobi offers into its augmented reality worlds.

Source: Lisa Foote, MixMobi
Writer: Dan Haugen

One week after launching the state's new angel investor tax credit program, state officials had received 20 applications for certification as of Monday.

All businesses, investors, and angel funds must be certified before applying for a tax credit allocation. Officials have already received one application for credit allocation.

The statute says state officials can only release the names of businesses and investors that have been certified.

Six entities had been certified through Monday. They include:

    --OrthoCor Medical, Inc., a company that makes a device for treating knee pain

    --Investors Donald Schreifels, Sheri Aggarwal, and Charles Floyd

    --and the Twin Cities Angel II, LLC, fund

Spokeswoman Kirsten Morell said more applications are coming in every day.

Source: Kirsten Morell, Department of Employment and Economic Development
Writer: Dan Haugen