entrepreneurship : Innovation + Job News

Now in its eighth year, the Minnesota Cup is ready to award $200,000 in prize money to innovative entrepreneurs, inventors, and small business owners.
 
Designed to award breakthrough business ideas, the competition has six main categories: bioscience and health IT, clean tech and renewable energy, general, high tech, social entrepreneur, and student. Since 2005, more than 6,000 people have participated in the competition, and finalists from the last three rounds have gone on to raise $45 million in capital.
 
The competition's co-founder, Scott Litman, notes that the program expands every year, which has always been one of its major goals. Also, the number of partners increases--this year, UnitedHealth Group and Proto Labs have signed on as partners, bringing more prize money to the competition.
 
In terms of trends, Litman says he's seen a good deal of energy around high tech ideas in the past few years, and he expects that this year should continue that trend.
 
The program's judges are expecting a last-minute rush--and that's meant literally. Litman says, "About 10 percent of our entries come in during the last hour of the competition, and some come in during the last couple minutes. It gets pretty intense, actually." Entrants have until May 18th to submit their ideas. The contest ends at 11:59 pm on that day.
 
That level of excitement is felt during all aspects of the Minnesota Cup, and Litman is looking forward to another lively round of competition. "We love seeing the entries, and watching people talk about the program over social media," he says. "This should be another great year."
 
Source: Scott Litman, Minnesota Cup
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

Founded about 15 years ago by two professors at Carleton College who wanted to create a French/English dictionary for students, Ultralingua has evolved from a small side project to a robust company headed for impressive growth.
 
The professors--a French linguist and a computer science prof--envisioned a quick-and-easy product that would reduce the need for reference books. They launched an initial version in 1997, and then eventually started making mobile apps for that early handheld organizer, the PalmPilot.
 
In 2008, when Apple launched its App Store, the company found itself on the fast track. "We grew really quickly, really suddenly," says Ashleigh Lincoln, Marketing and Communications Coordinator at the company. "After being two guys working in a garage, all of a sudden, we were a fast-growing business."
 
The firm has eight full-time employees, but is ramping up hiring, Lincoln says. They're looking for software developers and marketing gurus, but they're willing to take their time in finding the right fit. "This is a very fast-paced startup environment and our team is small," she says. "So we're really picky about getting the right fit for our culture."
 
It's possible that Lincoln and other team members will have to speed up the search. Ultralingua is experiencing rapid growth and gaining new customers every day, and the company is considering a move into phrase books and word games, expanding their capability beyond dictionary apps.
 
"We're having fun making the word games, and everyone is interested in pursuing that," says Lincoln. "We're excited to see where we can go from here."
 
Source: Ashleigh Lincoln, Ultralingua
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

When it comes to figuring out what's best for clients, Minneapolis-based software development firm Warecorp has Belarus on speed dial.
 
The company got its start in 2004, when entrepreneur Chris Dykstra decided to strike out on his own after working in the software and web development fields.
 
Since he'd had some experience in working with offshore software firms, particularly in Belarus, he decided that Warecorp could benefit from a similar arrangement. He quickly built up an office in Minsk, which currently has about 60 employees. Another 10 employees are located throughout the United States.
 
Minsk is a hotbed of engineering activity, Dykstra notes, and despite some challenges with communication and time zone issues, he feels that such a large office there gives Warecorp an advantage. He says, "The level of expertise there is excellent, and it's much cheaper to hire and maintain an office with that many employees there as opposed to here."
 
Warecorp also distinguishes itself in the marketplace by being choosy about projects, Dykstra says. "We try to look for companies that are doing something to make the world a better place." The company has clients in the education, healthcare, and nonprofit sectors, as well as media companies and software firms.
 
"What makes us different is that we focus on social responsibility as well as business expertise," says Dykstra. Drawing on the engineering talent in Belarus gives Warecorp the ability to keep its robust growth rate, and Dysktra believes that the company will keep increasing by almost 50 percent every year.
 
Source: Chris Dykstra, Warecorp
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

Designing Content That Sells
 
April 4
International Market Square
274 Market St., Suite 180, Minneapolis
11:30am - 1:15pm
$35 members, $55 non-members
 
Put on by the Society for Marketing Professionals, this workshop for those in the architecture and engineering industries focuses on developing effective online content. Reporter and PR professional Rachel Gold will give tips on making content interesting and on gauging how well design and content work together.
 
From Focus to Performance
 
April 6
DoubleTree Hotel
7800 Normandale Blvd., Bloomington
7:00am - 9:00am
$35
 
Sports psychologist and executive coach Dr. Justin Anderson presents the latest advancements in performance psychology and brain research, providing tips on how to use your mind in a more optimal manner to enhance sales and lead a more meaningful life.
 
High Heels, Higher Heights
 
April 10
Minneapolis Convention Center
3:00pm - 6:00pm
$80 members, $95 non-members
 
This annual event honoring women leaders is a prime networking opportunity, and is put on by the Women's Health Leadership TRUST. This year's speaker is Teri Fontenot, president and CEO of Woman's Hospital in Louisiana. Women leaders in health care will also be recognized for two major awards.
 
MHTA Spring Conference
  
April 25
Minneapolis Convention Center
$165 member, $215 non-member
 
The Minnesota High Tech Association presents its popular spring conference, kicked off by a morning keynote address by Rick King, Thomson Reuters chief operation officer for technology. Participants can network with other technology leaders, visit an expanded exhibit hall of more than 100 technology-related businesses, and attend breakout sessions about research, funding, education, and policy development.
 

After working in the organizational and HR field for most of her career, Louise Harris found herself out of job when a project came to its planned end.
 
"I was presented with a fabulous opportunity," she says. "I thought I'd take six weeks off to rejuvenate myself." That was 10 years ago, and she still hasn't gone back into a corporate position.
 
Instead, she began consulting and set up shop as Praeeo (Latin for "to lead the way"), a firm that offers strategic development, organizational effectiveness, leader development, and change management.
 
Harris believes that she fits well into that specific niche because she brings a theoretical foundation together with practical experience. She marries psychology, sociology, training, and development in a way that allows her to balance experience with theory.
 
When she first started Praeeo, Harris considered growing the business into a mid-size consultancy at some point, but the more she worked as a solo entrepreneur, the more she liked the freedom of that structure. She says, "I think if I had a team, there would be a greater sense of responsibility to manage the business for their sake. Now, I just manage it for me."
 
In her free time, Harris is also an artist who creates works made out of recycled furnace filters. She donates most of her proceeds from the art to charity, and has been in some art shows. "It's just fun to tap into my artistic side," she says. "Although business can be an art, too."
 
Source: Louise Harris, Praeeo
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

In the middle of the recession in 2009, Jamie Millard (no relation to this writer) was ready to find work in publishing. There was just one problem: there were no jobs for her.
 
After graduating at the top of her class and having done five internships, Millard still couldn't find a position. "So, I decided to stop asking for permission and create my own," she says. Together with a couple other enthusiastic, literary friends she formed Paper Darts in order to create a new literary magazine.
 
"We saw the opportunity to jazz up that genre with a more lighthearted tone, to pull in the mainstream reader," she says. "That was our mission, to fill the void of unemployment with something useful."
 
Although Millard eventually landed a job at the Charities Review Council, she and the other founders kept the magazine going and even hired an editorial director to bring more cohesion to the firm. Recently, Paper Darts published its first book, and the staff members were excited to learn about the book publishing process from start to finish, Millard notes.
 
The firm has slowly turned into a creative agency as well. They'll be redesigning the popular Pollen newsletter, and taking on other projects as they crop up. Millard says, "We're trying to build a model that can support a full-time staff, but right now, we're just happy with the creative projects that we have. We're having fun with it."
 
Source: Jamie Millard, Paper Darts
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

To say that Burnsville-based DigitalTown has school spirit is an understatement.
 
The enterprise, founded in 1982, purchased its first web domain in 2005, when the founder, Richard Pomije, was chatting with Kay Joyce, then the principal of Burnsville High School. They talked about how effective it would be to have a site outside the school's official website that connected parents, students, and other community members.
 
Pomije bought www.burnsvilleblaze.com, and then went on a buying spree. The company now owns about 20,000 "school spirit" sites, and CEO Robert Castle notes that they have big plans.
 
"We want to build a powerful, nationwide publishing tool," he says. "We're ready to take this to the next level."
 
The sites only have local sports scores right now, but Castle envisions community-provided content as well as advertising that will give half the revenue back to the schools. The advantage of a school spirit site, he notes, is that schools don't have to manage them, or deal with liability issues that might crop up.
 
DigitalTown has 10 full- or part-time employees, but Castle sees the potential for rapid growth, which would also include hiring. "We've done the hard work in building the sites, and now we're at the point where we'll add the content to get it the rest of the way," he says.
 
Source: Robert Castle, DigitalTown
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

After Jaim Zuber's wife Cynthia discovered she was allergic to gluten and corn, going to restaurants became a daunting challenge. "We ended up with a list of maybe five or six restaurants that we knew were safe," says Zuber. "Otherwise, it was too time-consuming to call in advance and find out about the ingredients of their dishes."
 
Zuber figured that there must be others facing the same difficulties. As a software consultant and entrepreneur, he began envisioning a mobile application that would allow people to do searches of restaurants based on food allergies and sensitivities.
 
He brought the app, Food Seeking, to the entrepreneurial event Startup Weekend Twin Cities, and took second place, which boosted the fledgling firm's profile and gave Zuber the energy he needed to forge ahead.
 
"There are about four or five people working on this right now, and it's a good mix of people and talents," he says. "We would love to get to the point where we could afford to make this our full-time jobs."
 
The app is in beta version right now, and Zuber thinks it may launch in early June. In the meantime, he's collecting information on restaurants and specific dishes, and encouraging beta testers to share their experiences as well.
 
"I think my true long-term goal is to take my wife out to dinner in any neighborhood," he says. "Having the ability to just tap in a restaurant name and get a list of safe dishes would be a dream come true."
 
Source: Jaim Zuber, Food Seeking
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

The Office for Technology Commercialization (OTC) has helped numerous University of Minnesota researchers, becoming an engine for economic development. Now, it's even more useful for university-based entrepreneurs.
 
A new program will eliminate the kind of roadblocks that have challenged researchers in the past. Previously, researchers have had difficulties launching startups within the university, since some federal business grants require a certain amount of time spent on the business. Researchers struggled to fit their entrepreneurial ventures together with their academic duties.
 
But now, they can turn to the OTC for assistance, notes university spokesperson John Merritt. The office will help faculty members create companies and avoid conflicts of interest. Entrepreneurs can use the school's lab for business projects, and the university will own 49 percent of the company.
 
The OTC will guide faculty in the formation of a business, and will assist in recruitment of formal management teams for each new company.
 
The new approach is part of a move toward making the university more entrepreneurial, and geared more toward winning federal grants like Small Business Technology Transfer and Small Business Innovation Research.
 
Merritt adds that the OTC has been in a process of reinvention itself over the last three or four years. This fresh program should help university researchers and faculty to be more competitive for grants, and pursue entrepreneurial ventures in the future.
 
Source: John Merritt, University of Minnesota
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

In 2010, Sonal Gerten was pregnant, and began looking for cute clothes for the baby boy she was expecting. "I just wanted clothes he could get dirty," she recalls. "Something really bright and fun."
 
Although there were no shortage of clothes options, nothing seemed quite right, especially for boys. She found a wealth of muted colors, but nothing like the beautiful colors and patterns that she saw every time she visited relatives in India.
 
She decided to abandon her search and start her own company instead, launching Tumblewalla (the Hindi word for "one who tumbles") in December 2011. She focused on making play clothes without zippers, stiff fabrics, or complicated button closures, and the colors are crayon-level bright.
 
One distinctive part of the company is Gerten's emphasis on initiatives that give kids more opportunities to play (whether wearing their Tumblewalla duds or not). In an effort she calls Tumble & Tickle, the entrepreneur supports The Priynaka Foundation, which supports children facing chronic and terminal illness, as well as One Home Many Hopes, a Kenyan organization that houses and educates abandoned and orphaned girls in that country.
 
Over a year after starting the company, Gerten is seeing traction and is hopeful about growing and expanding operations over the coming year. She wants to increase awareness of the two Tumble & Tickle organizations, and to expand her product line as well. She's been getting picked up in some local retail stores, and envisions going beyond clothing into other play-related items like coloring books and toys.
 
"I have high hopes for this, and I'm excited about how it's been going," she says. "We're just gauging the consumer appetite right now, but it's looking like a very bright future."
 
Source: Sonal Gerten, Tumblewalla
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

Marketing to the Millennial age group--18-to-28-year-olds--can be more than tricky, but a new Minneapolis-based agency has the savvy and background to help. After all, it's run by a couple of Millennials.
 
Started in January 2011, The Social Lights got started when friends Martha McCarthy and Emily Pritchard decided to combine their entrepreneurial energies while they were both attending the University of St. Thomas.
 
They did business plan competitions together and took classes in journalism as well as business topics. They created The Social Lights during their last semester at school, and McCarthy recalls that it wasn't easy. "We were doing homework and pitching clients at the same time," she says.
 
After graduation, they came to a full boil and took on numerous campaigns, focusing on others in their age group. "Sometimes companies that are trying to use social media can have a hard time reaching Millennials," says McCarthy. "They know how to use the tools, but they don't know how to communicate with them. Since we're in that age range, we have insight into what that audience needs."
 
With an increasing number of clients, the firm is getting ready to hire its first non-founder employee this summer. McCarthy believes that the hire will be another major step forward for the company: "We're not sure how large we'd like to get eventually, but this is very exciting, to get to this point."
 
Source: Martha McCarthy, The Social Lights
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

Entrepreneurial incubation program Project Skyway was much heralded for its first round of tech acceleration. Although the initial cycle saw a couple of speed bumps--which the founders expected, given that it's the state's first seed-stage startup program--it resulted in the growth of several early-stage companies.
 
Now comes round two, with a quartet of businesses that are looking to be the next big thing in tech. Here's the lineup, which will be worth watching over the next couple of months:
 
YumZing: This service is similar to Yelp, but instead of collecting information on restaurants, it'll list menu items. So, if you want to find the best taco in town, or a list of creative cocktails, the site will guide you there.
 
HypeSpark: Users of this site can earn rewards and freebies by endorsing brands through social media.
 
Energy Resource Insights: An aggregator of data from thousands of reports, this service relies on a central database that can provide current information on regional energy programs.
 
Political Harmony: The name might sound like an oxymoron, but the site's creators intend for the service to help voters choose political candidates more effectively.
 
Focused on building companies that promise long-term and sustainable growth, Project Skyway provides mentorship and support. For this latest round, the competition was ferocious.
 
"These companies beat out ambitious entrepreneurs from five states and four different countries," says Project Skyway co-founder Casey Allen. "In a nutshell, they're all solid entrepreneurs that we believe are working on solid ideas."
 
Source: Casey Allen, Project Skyway
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

Urban farming is experiencing a huge boom in the Twin Cities, and is expected to grow stronger in the near future. Community gardens, employer gardens, and mini-farmers'-markets are popping up everywhere, and more municipal initiatives are geared toward encouraging growth.
 
So it's not surprising that a major new farm could take root. Stone's Throw Urban Farm brings together seven farmers and 12 vacant lots in both Minneapolis and St. Paul, covering four acres altogether.
 
To get the necessary startup capital, the group just launched a Kickstarter campaign. One of the farmers, Alex Liebman, notes that they wanted to put themselves on the path of independence, where they didn't rely on external funding in order to run.
 
The farm will offer shares in its community-supported agriculture (CSA) program, and will sell at the Mill City Farmers Market, but it turned to Kickstarter for the funds needed for initial projects, like building a hoophouse that will house spring transplants.
 
"Our goal is to provide a financially viable source of employment, while also tackling bigger ecological issues," says Liebman. Vegetables and fruits are grown without chemical fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides, and the farmers will hold tours and volunteer days so local residents can participate in the farm.
 
"There's a lot of coordination with this many sites, and so many people involved," Liebman notes. "But the benefits outweigh the challenges. There's a lot of excitement and great ideas happening right now."
 
Source: Alex Liebman, Stone's Throw Urban Farm
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

The Twin Cities has been lauded many times for its bike-friendly routes and strategies, but what happens if you have a flat at 10pm?
 
Until now, repair service has been limited to bike shop hours, but local startup Bike Fixtation aims to change that. Started by entrepreneurs Chad DeBaker and Alex Anderson, the firm creates kiosks that pair a large vending machine with a standalone bike repair rack.
 
The idea was sparked during DeBaker's bachelor party, when he and a group of friends were bar-hopping by bike. One of them got a flat tire, and no one had a spare tube.
 
"We thought it was crazy that we live in one of the biggest biking places in the country and we couldn't get a tube after 8pm," he says.
 
Bicyclists can buy products such as tubes, patch kits, tools, and even sunscreen and energy bars, whenever they like. The repair rack features a collection of tools, attached by theft-proof cords, and an electric tire pump.
 
The first kiosk was installed inside the Uptown Transit Station, just above the Midtown Greenway. A second location is planned for Lake Street and Hiawatha, in the light rail station there.
 
Bike Fixtation has been building up its capital by selling equipment--like the bike repair station--worldwide, so other cities can duplicate the effort. In addition to more locations, the company is also working to bring out more products, like public bicycle pumps.
 
"In general, everyone has been very supportive of the project," says DeBaker. "Cyclists are getting a lot of use out of it, and that's great to see."
 
Source: Chad DeBaker, Bike Fixtation
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

Launched in late February, Minneapolis-based PH Digital Labs may utilize a number of technologies in order to manage brands, but the firm distinguishes itself by focusing on an old-fashioned concept: personal connection.
 
"The gap that we see in the space is that people still want to connect with brands in a personal way," says co-founder and Director of Strategy Kyle Meehan. "That can get lost in the digital space. We want to make that connection deeper, more meaningful, and more relevant and authentic. We want to turn 'likes' into 'loves.'"
 
Offering search engine marketing, digital content, web design services, and social media marketing, PH Digital Labs aims to build a customized, digital strategy for each client.
 
The firm comes out of Pocket Hercules (see The Line's coverage of that company here), a branding and ad agency that's found success in creating its own products as well as representing major clients. Meehan notes that the relationship is advantageous, because it allows PH Digital Labs to pull from the talent at Pocket Hercules for specific projects.
 
For the future, he expects that PH Digital Labs will do more hiring to expand its in-house team. Until then, the firm is readying itself for growth through some initial clients.
 
"Our growth will come from a couple of decent-sized projects, and we're confident that those will come our way soon," says Meehan.
 
Source: Kyle Meehan, PH Digital Labs
Writer: Elizabeth Millard