TECHdotMN: News about Minnesota Startups

Often times, tech startups are focused on chasing the money rather than making the money.

The the popular tech press perpetuates this perception, for it’s much sexier to hear about fundraising than it is to talk about actual monthly revenues. That is, if there are any monthly revenues to report at all, considering that reality bites for most startups.

Yet not all entrepreneurs are concerned with funding, as some don’t even need it. Clay Collins, the founder of LeadBrite, counts himself amongst the lucky few. LeadBrite’s primary product, LeadPages, is a SaaS for marketers creating, deploying and optimizing landing pages.

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Twin Cities HealthIT startup Activation Life is fundraising a million dollar equity round according to a recent disclosure filed with the SEC.

The company is pursuing a “Digital Mobile Music System with Studio-Grade Resonate Frequency head phones,” to administer patients with tones that enter through the ears and vibrate throughout the body’s skeletal and vestibular system.  According the website, this involves both iOS and Android mobile applications.

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Last month, Adventium Labs announced the expansion of mobile gaming division Andamio Games to “Pursue the creation of  collaborative, mobile device games that comply with educational standards and take full advantage of the capabilities in mobile computing.”

Now they are taking their pursuits to Kickstarter with iNeuron, a mobile game that teaches high school neuroscience in a multi-player mobile environment.

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At least 24 Minnesota tech ventures raised in excess of $28 million dollars in the first quarter of 2013, according to information collected and analyzed from Jan 1 through March 31, 2013.

The data includes on the record activity compiled from multiple sources and actual numbers are estimated to be 20%+ higher according to investors who are not inclined to disclose their investment activity publicly. While imperfect, it’s a solid proxy of current local funding activity and trends — considered a worse case scenario.

As a comparison — in Q1 2012, 24 companies raised $58.6m, heavily skewed by one anomalous $52.5m deal; a more balanced comparison would be that 23 companies raised $6.1m in Q1 2013. The largest deal of Q1 was UpdateLogic ($10.9m), followed by Cachet ($7.9m) and Conservis ($1.46m).

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The Minnesota Angel Tax credits program that provides a 25% refundable tax credit for accredited angel investors who invest in qualified tech ventures are no longer available for the year 2013.

It appeared that things were moving right out the gate this year, although it’s always difficult to say forsure with the ebb and flow of investment activity; one or two big deals can really put a big dent in in the pot.

“The Angel Tax Credit Program is no longer accepting credit allocation applications because it has exhausted its credits for 2013,” said Jeff Nelson Angel Tax Credit Program Coordinator with the Department of Employment and Economic Development.

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It became quite clear right away that Minneapolis startup Spark Devices had found a winner with their Spark Core Kickstarter campaign.

The Core “Wi-Fi for everything” kit has since crossed $200k in funding commitments from some 2,400+ backers, and still has 23 days remaining. Today, the company announced some big collaborations designed to maximize the potential applications of Core:

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Jeffrey Robbins sensed that the early stage investment community in Minnesota had completely bottomed out in 2010.

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Minnesota tech (IT, SaaS, web, mobile, hardware) entrepreneurs interested in fundraising are invited to to the seventh TECHdotMN Capital Call on Thursday, May 23rd at CoCo Minneapolis.

This gathering will be an intimate experience focused on one thing: money. Two guest speakers will be sharing their respective insights — tech entrepreneur Andrew Kamin-Lyndgaard and venture capitalist David Dalvey.

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Via News Release

“ST. PAUL, Minn., May 3, 2013  — Primordial today announced that it has received $848,791 in Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts to develop a multi-camera immersive surveillance system called Tentacle.

Tentacle fuses sensor feeds from fixed cameras, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), and manned vehicles into a single three-dimensional (3D) display that enables one analyst to effectively monitor dozens of cameras. Tentacle’s 3D display is comprised of imagery, terrain, buildings, and avatars representing entities such as people and vehicles.”

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Less than 90 minutes from launching, the Spark Core on Kickstarter has already amassed some 250+ backers who have pushed the campaign past the $10k minimum campaign target ($14,000 and counting).

Although scaled back, Spark’s reinvention is off to a much stronger start than before, on a trajectory that’s reminiscent of the popular demand surrounding
SmartThings connected device campaign.

“We knew we had something exciting but we didn’t realize how quickly people would jump on board! This is just the beginning, we can’t wait to see how far we can take this,” says Spark Co founder and CEO Zach Supalla. It will be interesting to see where this goes…