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.

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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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.

By Rip Empson, TechCrunch

“With the passage of the JOBS Act, crowdfunding is going to get a whole lot more interesting — and a whole lot more crowded. Now that everyone and their mother can invest in startups, hundreds of crowdfunding portals are starting their engines.

Wahooly happened to jump on the trend early, soft-launching back in September, before the buzz. Well, when we say “early,” Wahooly is by no means a prime mover compared to the likes of Kickstarter, but it still has the advantage of a headstart — if it can capitalize.”

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At least 24 early-stage Minnesota tech companies raised a cumulative $58.6m in financing according to information collected and analyzed for the first quarter 2012 Capital Review.

Excluding Code 42 Software’s behemoth $52.5m first round, 23 companies raised $6.1 million, a more balanced picture of Minnesota’s tech investment climate on record for the start of this year.

21 of those 23 raised $3.9m in capital under the Minnesota Angel Investor Tax Credit within the first 90 days of the year, so says DEED’s data. Approximately 33 cents of each dollar invested through the program went into IT, Software, web, mobile, hardware, and telecom areas.

This data set does not include off-the-record and otherwise publicly undisclosed transactions; for a comprehensive historical review of Minnesota tech fundraising over the past few years, see: 2010; Q1 2011; Q2 2011; Q3 2011; Q4 2011. If anything was missed, please leave a note in the comments section and we’ll update.

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Wayzata startup Vizsy has closed on a first round of $600k in funding from local investors, according to CEO Bill Farrell.

“Vizsy is turning chaos to calm with a web and mobile platform for organization and communication that covers all your family, work and play needs,” says the former Medtronic executive turned entrepreneur.

Farrell discussed general functionality such as dynamic to-do lists, group communications and private social networks being amongst the initial (B2C & B2B) release, expected for July, after having been in the works for about a year.

“It was difficult, but we did it,” he notes, speaking to the funding initiative, which began last year — although declining to name specific investors involved in the private placement.  Proceeds are going towards continued product development; as such, Vizsy is hiring for a web application developer.