TECHdotMN: News about Minnesota Startups

“We’re the twins in the black AppViz shirts,” was the message received from Dustin as I was en route to our meeting. Sometimes interviews can take a little time to get the conversation flowing, but not with twin entrepreneurs Dylan and Dustin Bruzenak.

I quickly realized these two were some of the most passionate startup founders I’ve ever met, and it shows in AppViz — a software application for developers to monitor their iOS and Mac product sales from the Apple/Mac App Store.

Both Dustin and Dylan came from Adobe, and AppViz started when Dylan’s contract was up in late 2007. He decided to try writing his first iPhone app, but when he published it, realized that there was no way to track sales.

AppViz was then created in response and began as the classic case of the minimum viable product, with a mere two sales in the first month. Dustin recalls pushing his brother to Dylan to “just ship something.”

“The first version was bad,” they admit, “…and I basically just tweeted it and told my friends about it. Luckily, one of the most popular tech blogger in Ireland picked it up,” says Dylan, “which was enough for us to continue.”

Read More…

Similar to MinneBar, Product Camp is an “unconference” where attendees (more appropriately, participants) are encouraged to set the agenda and lead discussions throughout the day. Product Camp is geared to be hyper relevant to product developers, managers and marketers — since they’re creating their own experiences.

Set for Saturday, November 12, Product Camp III will take place at the University of St. Thomas Minneapolis campus. Organizer Barry Doctor is expecting between 150-200 participants throughout the day, consistent with years past;  registration is free thanks  to sponsors like Lawson Software and AIPMM.

Read More…

Entrepreneur Neal Tovsen’s obsession for the last two years can been found in capturing data from the real world and displaying it in the virtual world.

During the winter of 2010, he left the 9 – 5  with XATA and embarked on  his first startup, TelemetryWeb, a SaaS for web connected hardware devices to “observe data at a distance”.

He says that  the biggest pitfall of systems he’s dealt with in the past is that too often assumptions were made about how the data will be used.  “Since I’ve run into major limitations with past systems, I’ve designed TelemetryWeb to be very flexible around what can be done with information that has been collected.”

Read More…

Jim Ryan is intimately familiar with how loyalty programs and promotions work, as he’s been in the business for much of his professional career. More recently, Ryan served as CEO of Minneapolis- based Carlson Marketing for nearly a decade.

Now called Carlson Marketing Worldwide, Inc., his former company is a well known leader in relationship marketing and and consumer engagement programs for Fortune 1000 clients. In the fall of 2009, the firm was sold to Groupe Aeroplan for $175m. Since his departure in 2004, the executive turned entrepreneur has been building a marketing agency that recently spun out a product-based business dubbed PickPointz.

Ryan’s new endeavor “is a technology enabled loyalty game geared towards sports fans,” he says.

Read More…

After bootstrapping for the past year and a half, PointTunes founder and president Bill Cunningham is gearing up to launch a digital goods distribution platform positioned towards loyalty reward program administrators.

In essence, loyalty reward programs are a marketing tactic designed to identify and cultivate loyal consumer behavior; the most common example generally include some form of ‘membership’ which incentives ongoing purchases by subsidizing or giving away products and services.  And more often than not, these rewards offered are tangible big ticket items.

According to a 2011 COLLOQUY report, there are more than 2 billion memberships across all loyalty reward programs, or an average of 18 per household in the US alone. This translates to $48 billion in value of goods and services delivered each year through these programs.

Read More…

Instead of offering email subscribers a new deal per city each day, a new Minnesota startup launched last week called Inbox Cupid is delivering a daily dater per city.

The brainchild of co-founder Kareem Ahmed, the goal is to conveniently and automatically connect local singles in a virtual speed dating kind of way.

Once enrolled, you receive a daily date in your inbox which you can simply ignore, glance over and consider or send an initial message if the person seems like someone you would like to get to know more. It’s so easy in fact that you don’t even need to go to to the website (or any dating site) whereas you simply check your email — something you’re already doing on a regular basis.

Read More…

If you’ve owned your own products business, then you likely know how much time and effort it can take to issue and manage Purchase Orders (POs).

Minneapolis-based Rocware has recently appeared on the Minnesota technology scene and is ready to transform the way businesses manage their POs through a connected online system that makes interacting with business partners less painful.

Two of the three Co-founders — James Erck and John Erck — experienced the hassles of issuing and managing purchase orders first hand when John started a new business with his father called Extreme Bubbles . Around the same time, his brother James had also recently started a product based business called MPLS Ink.

As John recalls, “We were spending most of our time administrating our businesses, as opposed to growing them. The tools available at the time were all ‘accounting centric’ as opposed to how we thought about our businesses, which you could characterize as ‘product centric’.” That’s when the Erck brothers brought in sister Sarah Erck Welle and formed a partnership with one simple mission in mind: make it easier to run a product based business using new tools.

Read More…

As you should know by now, the US has fallen behind in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education efficacy compared to other super powers.  A symptom of this problem hits especially close to home, where Minnesota was recently graded 9% on K-12 computer science standards.

And you should also understand how important these disciplines are going to be for us to have a shot at regaining our competitiveness — as a country and a state.

To address this issue head on, a new startup called Logix Learning has introduced a 12-week STEM course for high school level educators and learners.  The curriculum has an emphasis on IT/programming — beginning with the basics of computer applications, followed by designing and developing a game, finished with creating a marketing plan for said game. Logix Learningoffers  the curriculum, called GAME:IT, built on the open-source Game Maker platform.

Read More…

Imagine this: I walk into a large company and, with a little social engineering and my amazing charm, I’m able to get passed the receptionist. With me, I have a small computer about the size of a power adapter that I simply plug into any outlet that’s somewhat hidden.

I was able to build this small computer with cheap hardware from manufacturers like Gumstix or Ardunio with little hardware knowledge and basic programming skills. I now have a “pivot point” into the large company’s network — and quite possibly — full control over any computer connected to that network.

This is exactly what Jeremiah Talamantes, founder of RedTeam Security, predicts will be the next threat in IT security. To combat it, he invented The PlugBot, an open source a covert hardware bot device designed for use during physical penetration tests.  PlugBot is a small computer with an ARM11 cpu, about 512mb of ram, an ethernet port, built in wifi, SD card slot, a USB port and even a small solid state hard drive; it’s powerful enough to scan, collect and deliver data remotely.

Read More…

Pedal biking has grown to become such a big part of Minnesota that Bicycling Magazine recently named Minneapolis the number one bike city in America.

It’s only fitting that new Minnesota startup Velolet (bike + lend) was founded here as a bike rental hub. Velolet connects bicycle owners — individuals and businesses — with an instantaneous global market.

The website consists of two sections: The first is the area where cyclists can list their own bikes for rent with a photo, description and daily rental price. The second is the default homepage where people can quickly search for inventory in a given location.

Considering some airlines charge up to $200 each way, the service is ideal for those who don’t want to ship their road bikes when they travel. Combined with the inconvenience of transporting (either in whole or disassembled), co founder and CEO Dan Cleary initially conceived the idea out of personal necessity.  He describes the business model as common sense, saying “by putting bikes to work, we are enabling owners  to better monetize their assets and by lowering the hassle and total cost, we save cyclists time and money.”

Read More…