MinneSpark, the newest addition to the Minne* family, announced today the three beneficiaries of their first crowdsourced micro fundraising initiative.
Less than two months ago, MinneSpark kicked-off its innovative approach to funding early stage ideas, concepts, plans and prototypes. From the MinneSpark website:
“MinneSpark will award 1 to n grants of at least $1,000 to Minnesota-based teams who demonstrate to our trustees the ability to take that money and turn it into something real. This is about doing more with less, and building a profitable business from day one. Winners will get some help along the way in the form of mentoring from the trustees and services from sponsors.”
Fast forward: with over 30 entrants and roughly 6k raised in $100 increments via “trustees”, three winners have been selected to each receive $2,000 cash + $4,000 worth of in-kind services including:
- Hosting / internet access services from ipHouse
- 1 month of full-time coworking space at CoCo
- Months of Startup Saturdays at The 3rd Place
- Legal services from New Counsel
- Tax Startup Package Tax services from Kaiser Tax
- Backup Services from Crash Plan
- 1 year subscription to Milemarker Idea
The three winners are:
frequently.at (no website yet) will bring customer loyalty programs into the digital/location-based age via a smart phone application. “Loyalty programs always available to users on their mobile phone with convenient access to all participating customer loyalty programs, frequently.at will provide a better opportunity to redeem loyalty offers.” says idea originator Andrew Kaiser.
Sky High Harvest Rooftop Farm will be the Twin Cities’ first commercial rooftop farming company. Pioneered by Dayna Burtness, the mission is “to build rooftop farms that produce high-quality food for local venues, create green jobs, and add to the vitality and sustainability of Minneapolis.”
Train Brain is a simple app serving a real need: more convenient Metro Transit train schedule access on iPhone. While Train Brain has been on the market for a while now, developer Andy Atkinson’s focus will be on “delivering a completed Bus Brain iPhone app as the next step.”
