entrepreneurship : Innovation + Job News

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.
 

Once you’ve become a limerick on “Wait Wait…Don't Tell Me,” the NPR news quiz, you’ve arrived, right?
 
On the March 12 show, Shanai Matteson and Colin Kloecker, who founded the Minneapolis-based social practice arts group Works Progress Studio, were surprised to hear host Peter Sagal and “judge and scorekeeper” Bill Kurtis source their new project, Water Bar, as one of the show’s weekly limericks. The surprising national exposure came hot on the heels of a Minnpost article about the couple’s art and environmental project that went viral, as well as other articles.
 
Why the explosion of attention? Especially because the Water Bar has already toured to several locations throughout the U.S., including Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas? “It’s a couple of things,” says Matteson. The Minnpost article “had a headline that was easy to share via social media and it kind of glossed over what we’re really about,” she explains. “But I also think people are really interested in water and it’s a hot topic for a number of reasons,” including climate change, drought and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.
 
“People are remembering how important water is to our lives, communities, the places where we live,” she continues. “I also realized, looking at the articles, that water is an interesting mirror. When people hear about the project they tend to see things in it that we may not see.” The responses generated by the Minnpost article, for example, “became this mirror about anxiety related to economic development in Northeast Minneapolis--some people thought we were creating a boutique retail space selling 'artisanal' water, which is not what we're doing."
 
When the Water Bar and Public Studio, as the project is officially known, opens on Central Avenue off Lowry in April, it will be a collaborative public art project or an “art and sustainability incubator or hub,” Matteson says. “It’s a space where artists, designers, researchers and organizers can learn about water and how it touches various aspects of our lives and communities, and share work they’re doing.”
 
The studio may also show films about water, provide tap water testing, and offer space to artists and organizations that want to work through their ideas about art, water, sustainability and community with like minded people. Currently, Water Bar collaborates with the Holland Neighborhood Improvement Association, the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, and the Healing Place Collaborative.
 
But the Water Bar also is a tasting room serving—you guessed it—water. Tap water. “We are not a business, even though we’re playing with the idea of ‘tap rooms’ since there are so many brewery tap rooms in Northeast,” Matteson says. “But we really will only have tap water. It won’t be for sale. It’s free. And we’re doing a lot more than that. We’re an art space.”
 
Matteson and Kloecker had intended on a quiet launch for the project, while they continued fundraising for the SIP (studio in progress) Fund. Now they’re planning a series of interactive events open to SIP funders first, then the general public; some pop-up Water Bars with guest bartenders; and a real opening during Art-A-Whirl in May.
 
For now, though, the Water Bar is “doing what we’ve always intended it to do,” Matteson says. “Spark conversation.”
 

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.
 

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.
 
 

Barely six months after its launch, Minneapolis women’s health startup Ova Woman is taking the reins as a national thought leader on issues routinely — and entirely without justification — dismissed as taboo.
 
Elise Maxwell, Ova Woman founder and CEO (and full-time Carlson School of Management MBA student), calls Ova Woman “the [country’s] only comprehensive, puberty-to-post-menopause women’s health e-commerce community.”
 
Maxwell is funding Ova Woman with the proceeds from two entrepreneurship competitions — $5,000 from the 2015 Acara Challenge and $31,000 from the 2015 MN Cup — and a $5,000 Sands Fellowship grant. According to remarks at October’s Minnesota Venture Conference, she’s targeting a $500,000 raise by June of 2016 and $1.6 million by the end of 2017.
 
Ova Woman publishes a lively mix of frank, useful content through four professional, if not always polished, channels: the Ova Vlog, a video blog usually featuring Maxwell and at least one friend or colleague; Your Questions, Our Answers, an in-depth question-and-answer resource with input from clinicians; Ova Stories, a long-form content portal; and The Speculum podcast, which “explores different intimate health issues,” says Maxwell.
 
Ova Woman is unsparing in its treatment of taboo topics. The inaugural Speculum podcast, for instance, devotes more than 20 minutes to the topic of douching; the second gives similar play to genital exams and anatomical awareness.
 
Maxwell wants to turn Ova Woman into an authoritative resource for fact-based information about women’s health, including potentially embarrassing issues that many refrain from discussing in public.
 
When it comes to women’s health issues, “[t]rust shouldn’t just mean a medical practitioner’s voice,” says Maxwell. “Other women’s opinions and experiences are valuable as well.”
 
Maxwell stresses that Ova Woman’s content isn’t meant to replace or counterbalance clinical advice. In the short term, her aim is to create a friendly, useful portal that offers actionable advice: a crowd-sourced alternative to WebMD.
 
Ova Woman’s longer-term plan — and the reason for its ambitious fundraising goal — is to build out a comprehensive retail platform with common and lesser-known products for a wide range of women’s health needs. There’s a huge market to reach: More than 100 million U.S. women experience incontinence, painful intercourse or period leaks, according to Ova Woman.
 
Ova Woman won’t manufacture its own products, at least to start. Instead, Maxwell plans to aggregate the best women’s health gear on the market for sale on its website, along with detailed, unbiased educational material, reviews and testimonials culled from a growing network of Ova Woman product testers: a cross between Amazon and Consumer Reports, with a laser focus on women’s health.
 
If Ova Woman’s retailing efforts are successful, says Maxwell, the company may launch its own white label — literally stamping its seal of approval on the best women’s health products available.
 

Thread Connected Content is MSP’s newest independent creative agency — and it’s an overnight powerhouse, thanks to its cofounders’ combined decades of agency experience, a multidisciplinary approach to creative campaigns, a unique penchant for high-touch storytelling and one of the most unique internship programs around.
 
Launched in July on St. Paul’s East Side, Thread already has 30 employees and is hiring for a handful of additional positions: digital designers, account managers and others as the need arises.
 
Thread’s client roster, burnished by its cofounders’ and employees’ past professional relationships, is already wildly diverse: blue chips like 3M and Target coexist comfortably alongside public institutions like Mia, and MSP originals like The Wedge Co-op and FOOD BUILDING.
 
“Our client strategy is a three-legged stool,” says Kim Rudrud, vice president. The first leg is “large companies with multiple brands and distinct visions,” like 3M and General Mills, she says. The second is the middle market, broadly defined: mostly MSP-, Minnesota-, and Midwest-based companies with eight- or nine-figure annual revenues and “similar cultural philosophies,” says Rudrud. And the third is “passion projects,” clients that more traditional firms might work with on a pro bono basis to burnish their creative bona fides and impress deeper-pocketed prospects.
 
“We’re not looking to leverage [the third leg] so that someone bigger and better walks through our door,” says Rudrud. “We’re actually passionate about helping these clients.” Earlier this year, Christiana Kippels, Thread’s director of accounts and business development, brought in a friend who’d just purchased St. Paul’s Treadle Yard Goods and sought to rebrand on a shoestring budget.
 
Thread’s diverse client base is reflective of its cofounders’ and employees’ diverse professional backgrounds. Many came from top-tier MSP creative agencies, like Campbell + Mithun (now simply Mithun) and Olson. Some cut their chops as internal communications and branding gurus: Kippels came over from Thymes’ product development department. Others have boutique backgrounds: Rudrud honed her storytelling intuition at WomanWise, a marketing research consultancy that “uncovers insights into what makes people tick,” she says.
 
Thread’s diverse staff, in turn, supports an impressive range of in-house capabilities: market research, brand strategy, copywriting and graphic design, technical digital marketing work, video production and more. “We do have outside research partners,” says Rudrud, “but we handle the bulk of our research and all of our production work internally.”
 
According to Rudrud, Thread’s in-house approach sets the agency apart from MSP’s smaller independents — and even many of the region’s biggest players, which tend to farm out labor-intensive production to specialized studios. “It’s not an accident that we call ourselves a ‘studio,’” says Rudrud.
 
Thread has a couple other differentiators up its sleeve, too. Compelling stories, not overcooked data, form the nub of each Thread campaign. According to Kippels, other agencies have “veered away from the creative side of marketing and branding,” creating an opportunity for an agency willing to mount comprehensive, authentic and human-scale — if subjective — campaigns.
 
“Human relationships are messy in the best possible way,” she explains. “More than ever, [marketing] is about creating useful, authentic experiences.”
 
When it comes to messy and authentic, thread definitely walks the walk. The agency’s website deftly blends what you’d expect from a well-produced business property — succinctly described services, employee headshots and bios, “about us” copy — with edgy, interactive elements that drive interaction. Each service description, for instance, ends with an open-ended question and live tweet button, inviting visitors to loop their followers into the conversation. Thread’s “Connect” page is a constantly evolving social feed that changes daily. Even its website logo is interactive, morphing and changing color in response to qualitative social media interactions (“a major development challenge,” says Rudrud).
 
In its employees’ admittedly biased collective opinion, Thread offers MSP’s best creative-industry internship. Dubbed “Spool,” Thread’s three- to six-month program is “not your typical internship,” says Rudrud. “Spoolers” hail from diverse academic backgrounds — from graphic design and comp sci to English lit — and can choose from several openended programs (“blogs to code,” “apps to animation,” and others).
 
“In many cases, we just give [interns] cameras, send them out into the world and tell them, ‘See what you can find,’” says Rudrud. The current crop recently spent a week producing and editing creative content onsite at the FOOD BUILDING, for instance. The results, says Rudrud, were “amazing.”
 
“The Spoolers are our Ph.Ds of pop culture,” says Rudrud. “As digital natives, they see the world differently — they provide us with insights that we don’t have and help us tell stories that we couldn’t tell on our own.”
 
 

Bringing a new medical device to market is a costly, time-consuming process. Innovations that seem like a slam dunk in the research lab often turn out not to work as intended during development. Clinical trials require minute, painstaking attention to detail. Federal regulators, understandably, demand proof that any new device is reasonably safe and works as its manufacturer claims. Each of these steps requires adequate funding and skilled manpower.
 
At the end of it all, Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance firms must be willing to reimburse providers that use the device. With rare exceptions, devices that don’t qualify for reimbursement—a highly complex consideration—fail to find traction in the market.
 
“Even with unlimited funding, it can take two years or more to complete the process for relatively simple medical devices,” says FocusStart founder and CEO Dr. Daniel Sigg.
 
Sigg and FocusStart co-founder Peter DeLange, who previously ran a successful medical device startup called Devicix (recently purchased by Nortech Systems, a local medical engineering company), had each spent years searching for a better early-stage device development model. When they met a few years back, they quickly realized their professional skills complemented each other.
 
So they founded FocusStart, a St. Paul startup that shepherds promising medical technologies through the tricky testing and development phase, refines validated devices for commercialization, and seeks strategic partners (typically multinationals) to complete the regulatory approval process and actually bring devices to market. FocusStart’s model is less capital-intensive than traditional medical device development models, though the company still assumes risk for technologies that don’t pan out during development.
 
FocusStart currently has four promising technologies in its portfolio: a cardiac product that may reduce blood clot risk following certain surgical procedures; a urological catheter that may reduce the risk of certain infections; a “smart” respiratory inhaler; and a “tissue tension sensor” that may promote better outcomes following partial and total knee replacement procedures.
 
Sigg and the team are devoting substantial energy and attention to the tissue tension sensor, which is capable of directly measuring ligament tension without requiring an invasive cut. Direct measurement enables surgeons to properly “balance” the knee during the replacement procedure, reducing the likelihood of complications or outright failure.
 
The sensor could potentially benefit other orthopedic procedures, such as rotator cuff and ACL surgeries, though FocusStart is concentrating on knee replacement for now. According to Sigg, it also has potential as a training tool for newer surgeons, who lack the intuitive “feel” of more experienced operators.
 
Although each technology is different, FocusStart’s development approach is fairly standardized. First, the company approaches a research institution to work out a licensing agreement for the technology. FocusStart works with the University of Minnesota, Mayo Clinic, the University of Zurich (in Switzerland) and an Israeli inventor.
 
“We quickly found that these agreements are fairly standard, with some variation,” says Sigg.
 
FocusStart generally would pay a royalty on future sales of the product, possibly with an equity component to sweeten the deal for the institution should the technology find its way into a marketable device.
 
“We find it easier to develop relationships locally,” says Sigg, adding that his Swiss background (he grew up in Switzerland and attended medical school at the University of Basel) probably helped with the Zurich partnership.
 
FocusStart’s lean model helps, too. “Once [our partners] understood our approach, we become more successful in finding very interesting technologies,” says Sigg. And the combined expertise of the firm’s principals—Sigg was a board-certified anesthesiologist and subsequently amassed almost two decades of medical research and development experience, while DeLange had the business chops to build Devicix into a successful concern and boasts insider knowledge of the medical device field—doesn’t hurt.
 
But that doesn’t mean swift success is assured. FocusStart has been “fortunate” to receive National Institutes of Health grants during the early going, but the company continues to seek government grants and private funding—a process that will likely continue as Sigg and DeLange seek out and develop promising new technologies.
 
There’s no such thing as a perfect batting record in the medical device business. “As we do our own work, we may find challenges or problems that weren’t apparent previously,” says Sigg. “Occasionally, you have to know when to say ‘that’s it’ and walk away [from a technology].”
 

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)

 
 

Any attentive MSP citizen knows that F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, was a born-and-bred St. Paulite. Fitzgerald’s most famous novel explored the excesses of 1920s “Jazz Age” culture in the New York City area, but St. Paul was a pretty hopping place back then, too. Now, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age tour, hosted by St. Paul pastry chef and local historian Joan Mathison, lets you experience the era firsthand.
 
“I looked at the assets that would differentiate St. Paul from Minneapolis and appeal to a wide audience of travelers and potential residents,” explains Mathison, founder of Adventures with a Locavore. “It also happens that the 1920s is my favorite era in history.” Her next tour commences on Saturday, October 10.
 
Mathison’s tour, a walking excursion that winds through downtown St. Paul, hits more than a dozen examples of Art Deco design—an ascendant architectural style during the 1920s.
 
“St. Paul is the only city designated as a Distinctive American Destination by the National Trust, so I decided to focus the tour on historic preservation,” she says.
 
Mathison also conducted a fair bit of original research during the run-up to her inaugural tour this year. She was particularly intrigued by the old Kilmarnock Bookstore, which (according to period maps) sat at the corner of 4th and Cedar in downtown St. Paul.
 
Founded by a wealthy intellectual with a penchant for rare books and managed by a talented, aspiring writer (Thomas Boyd of Through the Wheat fame), the Kilmarnock was never financially successful. In fact, it lasted less than a decade. But for a brief period during the early 1920s, it was the haunt for the cream of the American literary crop. On cold winter afternoons, Fitzgerald and other young writers met around the fireplace in the Kilmarnock’s smoky back room to trade stories and inspiration.
 
“The important thing I learned from that research was how critical collaboration is to innovation,” says Mathison. “The young writers that gathered in the back room of the avant-garde Kilmarnock Bookstore to talk about their work and other books...did the best work of their careers during those few years in the early 1920s.”
 
As an ode to the Jazz Age’s literary side, Mathison chose to pair the tour with three well-known books (not all written in the 1920s): Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, a nod to “St. Paul's sustainability evolution;” The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, which ties in to former St. Paul mayor George Latimer's downtown revitalization efforts; and, naturally, The Great Gatsby.
 
The Kilmarnock inspired Mathison to connect with the just-as-vibrant community of modern artists and makers who live and work in downtown St. Paul. Mathison produced a “Meet the Makers” guide highlighting some of downtown’s top creatives; every tour-goer gets a complimentary copy.
 
Featured makers and artists include Susan Brown of Mademoiselle Miel, Stephen Gallilvan of Leprechaun's Dreamcycle, Alicia Hinze of The Buttered Tin, Jeff Moriarty of Tin Whiskers, Monica Larsen and Bill Moran of Hamilton Ink Spot, and Jan Selby of Quiet Island Films.
 
John Anfinson, superintendent of the Mississippi River & National Recreation Area, Lee George of the James J. Hill Center, and Andy Sturdevant of Springboard for the Arts are also involved.
 
Longer-term, Mathison wants to bring her special brand of walking tour to other MSP neighborhoods. “I'm curious about 38th and Chicago [in Minneapolis], and Lake Street is so amazing,” she says. “The more tours we can offer in the Twin Cities, the higher we’ll raise our profile as a tourist destination.”
 
 

MSP’s rapidly growing pro-pollinator community is turning the region into an urban oasis for honeybees and other pollinating insects, raising the likelihood that future generations will know the joys of easily accessible fresh produce and biodiverse green spaces.
 
But plenty of intrepid pollinator entrepreneurs are focused on the here and now. Susan Brown of Mademoiselle Miel, a hyper-local sweet treats company based in downtown St. Paul, was an early evangelist for pollinator power—and continues to inspire a growing cohort of makers, chefs and educators who earn a living at the intersection of urban agriculture, environmental stewardship and old-fashioned craftiness.
 
Mademoiselle Miel is a “beekeeping chocolatier” specializing in rich chocolate honey bon-bons, many wrapped in edible 23 karat gold leaf—“a brilliant union of elegance and raw nature,” according to Brown’s website. The bon-bons come in several varieties, including a decadent Scotch infusion and various seasonal flavors.
 
The honey for Brown’s bon-bons comes from hives situated on rooftops throughout MSP—for instance, at Union Depot (near Brown’s downtown St. Paul headquarters) and atop Tiny Diner in Longfellow. The bees collect pollen from whatever flowers happen to be in bloom, providing Brown’s creations with an ever-changing array of local flavors.
 
Brown has been fascinated with bees and honey since she her youth. Ironically, though, she hasn’t always been a fan of honey’s taste. “I didn't actually like the taste of honey when I was young,” she told CityPages earlier this year. “I just started cooking with it because I was trying to eat in a way that made me feel good.”
 
In the intervening decades, Brown embarked on a successful cooking and catering career that found plenty of uses for the sticky substance. But she didn’t start making honey full-time until 2011, when she launched Mademoiselle Miel in St. Paul.
 
Hungry for a hyper-local alternative to sickly sweet candies and ho-hum storebought honey without a distinctive terroir, MSP foodies embraced Brown’s concept with gusto. Her creations quickly found their way into high-end cooking stores like Cooks of Crocus Hill and crunchy grocery outlets like Seward Co-op.
 
Brown’s products have since appeared in prominent hotel and restaurant properties around the area: high-end Minneapolis hotels like the Hyatt Regency, W Minneapolis and Le Meridien Chambers are customers, as is Surdyks Flights (at MSP International) and the Walker Art Center.
 
More exciting still, Mademoiselle Miel has lately joined a growing list of successful Minnesota exports. Brown’s sweet creations aren’t quite as well-known or widely available as SPAM and Post-it notes—yet —but they’re nevertheless available at select boutiques in New York City, Seattle and the Washington, D.C., area. More accounts could be in the works, though Brown’s production capacity is somewhat limited by bee, hive and rooftop counts.
 

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.”
 

There’s about to be a new way for amateur and professional musicians to collaborate on original music without regard for geography — and it’s made in MSP.
 
Record Together, an innovative recording and idea-sharing platform developed and promoted by MSP brothers Scott and Mike Bishop, is nearing the launch of a completely revamped application that allows multiple musicians to collaborate on the same song, no matter where they live or whether they have access to sophisticated instruments and recording equipment.
 
Think of Record Together as a virtual, remote music studio that connects musicians who’d otherwise never even hear of each other, let alone meet up for a recording session. Users lay down one or more tracks — anything from an isolated piano line to a four-piece band’s guitar, bass, drum and vocal tracks. They then “draw in” outlines for other tracks (for instance, a vocal harmony to accompany the piano line) using automated music software and publish to Record Together’s online marketplace. Once published, other users record their own tracks to replace the drawn-in outlines and create a whole (or at least more complete) composition.
 
Record Together is intentionally designed for musicians of all ages, abilities and levels of seriousness. “We cater to professional jazz musicians with mindblowing musical skills and years of experience,” says Mike Bishop, “along with high school kids just messing around with a guitar or saxophone in the basement.”
 
The Bishop brothers fleshed out the revamped Record Together platform with non-technical, cost-conscious users in mind. According to Scott Bishop, Record Together isn’t the only cloud-based music recording solution that empowers cross-border collaboration. But musicians would be hard-pressed to find a simpler, more cost-effective option.
 
“Access to a professional recording studio is a major barrier to entry for most musicians,” he says, “due to the high cost of reserving studio space and the limited amount of space available.” Musicians who record demo tapes or digital imprints on their own solve the cost problem, he adds, but sacrifice collaborative potential and sound quality.
 
“Our objective with Record Together is to reduce recording expenses and remove every possible barrier to enjoyment and creativity,” says Mike Bishop. “We want to move users closer to their end goal — making great music.”
 
The updated Record Together app replaces a legacy platform born in 2011. The legacy platform was built around “opportunities” — calls for single-track contributions to unfinished songs. For each opportunity, users submitted recordings that fit the stated requirements; the opportunity’s poster then selected the winner and paid the creator an agreed-upon sum. The new platform is still transactional — “We want users to get something back for their contributions,” says Scott Bishop — but the “draw in” feature allows for a more seamless and expansive collaboration process.
 
Although the Bishops are coy about when the new platform will roll out to the public, they’re not shy about their plans or ambition. The brothers are currently putting out feelers for a seed funding round, says Scott Bishop, in the hopes of scaling the platform and ensuring that “everyone who wants to use it will be able to from day one.”
 
After that, the sky’s the limit. “We believe that Record Together has the potential to do for music what YouTube did for video,” he says.
 

In February 2015, Minneapolis startup Vidku raised $17 million in a 17-day Series A funding round led by Arthur Ventures, a Fargo-based venture capital group. The speed and size of Vidku’s fundraising effort was unusual: According to data from CrunchBase, the average Series A raised $6.9 million in 2014 and it often takes months to close a successful round.
 
So it’s no surprise that MSP’s investors and innovators sat up and took note of Vidku’s breakout success. CEO Jim Leslie attributes his company’s achievement both to the far-reaching capabilities of Flipgrid, its core “asynchronous video sharing” product, and the boundless belief of Vidku’s 35-plus employees.
 
“Our investors weren’t interested because they knew who [Vidku’s leaders] were or trusted us to execute,” says Leslie, a self-described “serial entrepreneur” who ran a handful of successful firms (and sold his most recent venture for a cool $100 million in 2011) before joining the Vidku team. “The passion of our entire team regarding Flipgrid’s future possibilities was infectious — our investors got as excited as we were” about Vidku and Flipgrid.
 
Users believe in Flipgrid, too. According to Leslie, the product has hosted more than 3 million video shares since its January 2014 launch, spreading chiefly through word of mouth. (Vidku has no formal marketing operation to speak of, though that may change in the future.)
 
Flipgrid admins, typically classroom educators, populate “grids” with video or text questions, prompting video responses from student users. Everyone with access to the grid can see and share the responses. There’s no limit to each grid’s capacity for questions and responses, though admins are limited to a specific number of grids per year — typically five to 10, or roughly one per class for full-time educators.
 
Though Flipgrid was originally designed for educators, Leslie is quick to point out that about 20 percent of the platform’s volume is devoted to non-educational use. Private businesses and government agencies use Flipgrid as a collaborative tool, while wedding planners and religious institutions leverage it to create more social events and environments.
 
“Flipgrid is a growing, powerful and highly effective technology tool that’s getting stronger all the time,” says Leslie. Following Vidku’s “design first” imperative, “we’re constantly developing new ways for users to participate.”
 
Vidku’s development activities have accelerated since the company spun out from an eight-person University of Minnesota team led by Dr. Charles Miller. Miller’s team is responsible for designing and building out Flipgrid’s base technology and critical elements. Leslie and co-founder Phil Soran, also a wildly successful tech entrepreneur, caught wind of Miller’s innovation and offered to form a private company capable of turning Flipgrid into a disruptive technological force.
 
“We were only interested in [spinning Flipgrid out of the U and forming Vidku] if [Miller’s] entire team was on board,” says Leslie. He didn’t need to worry: The response was an enthusiastic “yes.”
 
For Flipgrid’s core team and the U itself, the transition to private enterprise has thus far been smooth. All eight team members remain on staff at Vidku, generously compensated for their efforts and diligently working on the next big thing.
 
Perhaps more importantly, the U is a major shareholder in Vidku; Vidku’s success is quite literally the U’s success. Such public-private synergies, wherein universities drive innovation and investors provide the capital necessary to bring transformative ideas to market, are commonplace in established tech centers like Boston and Silicon Valley, says Leslie, but less so in MSP.
 
“A strong public-private linkage is the hallmark of a healthy entrepreneurial community,” he says. “We’re on the cusp of that here” in MSP.
 
In addition to Flipgrid, Vidku also offers a video-based assessment tool called Avenue. “Whereas Flipgrid is suited for discussions” and other forms of knowledge and experience delivery, Leslie explains, “Avenue is ideal for more formally assessing knowledge.”
 
Vidku’s team also handles development work for Passport, a language-learning application initially developed by St. Paul-based EMC Publishing. Though Vidku doesn’t own Passport, Fligrid and Passport are kindred spirits with the same lofty goal: reducing friction and improving knowledge delivery in the classroom.
 
Later this year, Vidku plans to launch an application that offers a “significant enhancement” to Flipgrid’s capabilities, says Leslie. The new update “is the first tangible fruit of our intensive development efforts” since spinning off from the U, he adds, though he’s mum on the software’s specifics.
 

Seven recent graduates of the University of Minnesota, who met in the Carlson School’s Entrepreneurship in Action class, are taking the course’s title to heart. Within weeks of coming together last fall, the group had hatched an idea for a homegrown premium hard cider brand called Lionheart Cider.
 
Thanks in part to ample startup funding secured through Entrepreneurship in Action, Lionheart was a student division semi-finalist in the 2015 MN Cup — a huge leap for a concept that has yet to see its first birthday.
 
Lionheart closed its first production round last month and is now on shelves in about 120 liquor stores in MSP and surrounding areas, with Artisan Beer Company handling distribution. The suggested retail price on its 16-ounce can 4-packs is $7.99, which co-founder Anna Lin says is “affordable” relative to other premium craft cider brands.
 
Co-founder Jason Dayton, one half of an avid father-son home cidermaking team, developed Lionheart’s “not too sweet” recipe. “Lionheart is designed for people who find popular brands like Angry Orchard to sweet,” Lin says.
 
Lionheart’s co-founders aren’t typical startup types. Some were finance and business majors, but others focused on journalism (like Lin), agriculture and music during their undergrad years. All are first-time entrepreneurs “who don’t always know what we’re doing,” says Lin, who admits that the group has quibbled over plans and tactics.
 
“But the difficult periods present the greatest learning opportunities,” she adds.
 
Some Lionheart co-founders do have entrepreneurial pedigrees, including Lin herself. Lin’s father, a former truck driver, worked his way into the fueling industry shortly after China’s economy liberalized in the 1980s. He now owns a thriving gas station business. Not to be outdone, her mother runs two coffee shop franchises in China.
 
“[My parents’] hard work is why I’m here in Minnesota, speaking a second language fluently, meeting amazing people,” and learning firsthand what it takes to be an entrepreneur, says Lin.
 
In the near term, Lionheart’s team is looking forward to soliciting customer feedback on its original cider recipe and growing its Minnesota account base. But Dayton and the rest of the group are already mulling new flavors and styles within the “not too sweet” universe, plus an expanded distribution footprint.
 
“We eventually hope to have several varieties and distribute in multiple states, perhaps even nationally,” says Lin.
 
Lin herself may not take part in Lionheart’s long-term growth. Her current visa expires next year, and she’ll have to find work in journalism or a related field — and a sponsorship from any potential employer (Lionheart may not count) — to qualify for a longer-term work visa that allows her to stay in the United States. Given federal work visa caps and intense competition from highly qualified candidates, Lin knows she might not make the cut — though she’s eternally optimistic.
 
Regardless of how Lionheart’s leadership team — or the company itself — looks in three years, the experience has already been immensely rewarding for Lin and her colleagues. “It’s an amazing blessing to be able to come [to the United States] and work on a project like this,” she says. “I never would have hung out with or spoken to any of [my colleagues] were it not for Lionheart.”