TECHdotMN: News about Minnesota Startups

An early stage startup aptly known as Horse Sense Shoes has brought in just over $150k as of late, according to recent fundraising disclosures filed with the SEC.

Based in Plymouth and founded by inventor Mike McHugh, the technology involves placing an embedded sensor within the horse’s shoe that transmits indicators like heat and pressure to a SaaS dashboard.  The idea here is that performance horse owners, handlers and their care takers, can better identify serious health issues before they become irreversibly problematic or life threatening.

It’s a truly original approach to a growing problemin a multi-billion-dollar niche market.

Project Skyway, Minnesota’s first — and only — tech startup accelerator, is heads down right now preparing for their second “demo day”, the culmination of nearly three months of entrepreneurial incubation within the walls of CoCo Minneapolis.

Originally envisioned by veteran tech entrepreneur Cem Erdem in the fall of 2010 and formally launched with co founder Casey Allen in spring of 2011, Project Skyway provides cash, mentorship, office space and visibility for select emerging tech startups.

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A crowd of 500+/- are gathered today on Medtronic’s Mounds View real estate for the first notably sized event in Minnesota focused on the world of ‘big data’, including predictive, and social analytics.

“I think it’s safe to call it a conference at this stage,” remarked Sean Larson, who co-organized the all day affair with Dan Atkins, amongst others from the MinneAnalytics Forum — a sister org of Twin Cities Area SAS Users Group that counts over 2,00o local members.

“By a factor of two, or even three to one, this is the largest and most diverse crowd we’ve seen at any of our events over the past ten years.  We opened registration and couldn’t believe the volume that was coming through in batches,” Atkins says with great enthusiasm.

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A Mendota Heights health IT firm known as Healthsense is seeking to raise more investment capital — to the specific tune of $13,702,499 — according to a recent SEC filing that claims “first sale yet to occur.”

Looking back through the archives, Healthsense has been on the paper trail since 2007; it appears that $1.5m was secured in 2009, then there was a target round of $6.7m in 2010 and another $1.2 last year. The company is also in the portfolio of San Diego’s West Health Investment Fund as of 2011. From the Healthsense website:

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Emerging startup Heroic has won over a syndicate of local angel investors who are leading a first round of funding for the “e-harmony of home services” consumer play from Minneapolis.

While many pre-revenue ventures may overextend their energies wrestling with first money buy-in, often taking whatever they can get, CEO and co founder Justin Barrett says Heroic’s biggest question is “Whether our initial $600k seed round is even high enough?”

“There’s a strong appetite given the the market size, our unique model, and the credibility of our lead investors.  We’re on to something big, which is validated in part by how fast the conversations are accelerating and spreading to networks around the country.”

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Waconia startup AsystMe has inched over the half million dollar fundraising milestone to $517k in capitalization after the latest close, says CEO Joel Nash.

Nash is a seasoned entrepreneur who has been consistently raising capital from angel investors in Minnesota and his home state of North Dakota as part of a $500k target round that began early last year.

AsystMe, which is still in development stage, is “on a mission to simplify people’s lives by eliminating data overload and improving their personal productivity through the use of proactive automated personal assistants.”  It’s a consumer play that leverages Nash’s previous experience starting and running As One Technologies (now Savigent) for 15 years, a software firm that also dealt with automation in manufacturing.

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Two firms local to Minneapolis, Reve Studios and Gray Squid Division, are teaming up on a new ’2D puzzle platformer’ gaming concept for iOS with the hopes of leveraging the money and social wisdom of the crowds to fund their next product launch to the tune of $70k — or more.

Rather than contemplating a traditional bootstrapped vs. angel investor model, they’re pursuing an increasingly popular third option via the ubiquitous crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to determine if Monster! has the kind of merit to be the next big fan favoritite.

The idea for Monster! was initially birthed in 2010 by Reve Studios founder Chad Robinson who made an early attempt at launching it through a national indie video developer contest.

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Local startup FieldSolutions, makers of a robust technology suite that assists in the field sourcing of enterprise service technicians, is raising up to $3m more through a convertible note according to a recent SEC filing.

Led by CEO Mac Lewis, a veteran entrepreneur turned investor and back again (3:35), the startup has been consistently fundraising since last August when StarTec led on a $1.5m round.  After expanding across North America, FieldSolutions closed a $3.5m second round and another $2m round prior to this latest infusion, resulting in an estimated $10m in total capitalization.

“We think the opportunity for us is to build a $500m company, or perhaps bigger,” Lewis has said.

Minneapolis-based startup Drive Power has closed an $815k angel investment round through a combination of equity and convertible debt, according to CEO Will England.

Spun-out of the University of Minnesota in January, the venture is merging mobile, SaaS, and data into DriveScribe, which is slated to launch next month with “some of the largest insurance carriers and fleet operators both nationally and internationally,” England says. DriveScribe will aim to monitor and coach driving habits — while a data byproduct, The Safe Driver Score (SDS), will be “The FICO of safe driving.”

“Now the real hard work starts,” he says, noting that proceeds will be used for ongoing technical development and continuing to grow the team of statisticians and developers. Accordingly, the company is hiring for a Ruby on Rails lead and also an iOS engineer.

Richfield-based Kidblog is raising a $400k first round of capital, according to a disclosure document recently filed with the SEC.

“Kidblog.org is designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with an individual blog.  Kidblog’s simple, yet powerful tools allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over student blogs.”

Launched in January 2010 by Matt Hardy and partner Dan Flies, the company has yet to generate revenue, but has experienced exponential adoption over the years, growing the userbase to 1.5m. They must be eager to turn this passion into a real business right about now.