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.

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:

“Healthsense offers completely integrated systems based on a standard Wi-Fi platform for Personal Emergency Response Systems, Wi-Fi wireless nurse call and remote safety and wellness monitoring. These systems are scalable, flexible and are proven across a broad base of installations. The flagship Healthsense product is the eNeighbor system, which was developed under the direction of the National Institute of Aging (NIA) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The system monitors individuals in their homes and automatically calls for help if it detects a possible problem. The eNeighbor system utilizes a series of wireless sensors placed throughout the residence that capture the occupant’s activities of daily living.”

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.”

Initially conceived last June by Barrett and partner Dan Linstroth, Heroic is entering the vast ‘service provider marketplace’ dominated by incumbents like Craigslist or Angie’s List and joined by newer upstarts Task Rabbit ($25m raised) and Zaarly ($15m raised); innumerable other imitators all proclaim their unique twist.

“No question, it’s a multi-billion dollar opportunity that will see another phase of disruption over the next 2-5 years,” Barrett affirms.

“We want to own the home,” he says. “In and around the home is our initial target market and providing another level of transparency through our ‘Hero Match Algorithm’ is our primary differentiator. There’s still a big nut to crack in terms of trust in all these marketplaces, and I believe that if Heroic can solve that pain point better than anyone else, the rest will take care of itself. There is a difference between someone you would randomly come across on the Internet and a certified ‘Hero’.”

Still considered alpha stage in terms of production and customer acquisition, Heroic will be applying their first round, which “could oversubscribe into the millions,” towards building their supply side base into the tens of thousands throughout three initial US markets — Minneapolis, Denver, and Chicago.  From there, sights are already set on a larger series A round that would fund expansion into another five markets.

After talking through the plan in greater detail, probing and pressing, it’s clear that Barrett and crew have put considerable thought into their go to market strategy and subsequent revenue model, much of which Barrett declined to talk about on the record due to obvious competitive reasons.

“We have an unstoppable attitude towards success and are fortunate enough to have lead money from local investors who are as excited as we are about this bullet train,” Barrett concludes.

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.

“Apple’s Siri and others apply automation to improve how people find information, but these products can’t behave proactively.  We are seeing increasing buzz from thought leaders about the need for automation that proactively interacts via the Internet based on anticipated needs of the user,” he says.

With money comes talent, and Thomas Raeuchle is now alongside Nash as AsystMe’s new CTO;  Raeuchle earned his PhD in Computer Science from Cornell, and has worked with a multitude of companies including Honeywell,  Cray Research and and Ancor Communications.

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.

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.

“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.

“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.”

Read More…

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.

Date	Type	Company	Amt.	Note(s)
Q1	AITC	Anser Innovation	$167.5k	-
Q1	AITC	Argos Risk	$150k	-
Q1	AITC	AsystMe	$87.5k	-
Q1	AITC	CaSTT	$125k	-
Q1	AITC	(Cloud) Sports Data	$1m	-
Q1	AITC	Conservis	$520k	-
Q1	AITC	Empathic	$100k	-
Q1	AITC	Exosite	$50k	-
Q1	AITC	Instant Wireless Interpretation	$71k	-
Q1	AITC	Invenshure	$436k	-
Q1	AITC	Jericho Ventures (stealth)	$10k	-
Q1	AITC	LeagueSafe	$50k	-
Q1	AITC	LocaLoop	$372k	-
Q1	AITC	MIDART Communications	$35k	-
Q1	AITC	MBioX	$25k	-
Q1	AITC	Real Time Translation (stealth)	$220k	-
Q1	AITC	riteSOFT	$250k	-
Q1	AITC	Seeonic	$150k	-
Q1	AITC	Standard Health (stealth)	$25k	-
Q1	AITC	The Living Tree (stealth)	$10k	-
Q1	AITC	Vertical Health Solutions/OPMD	$25k	-
3/16/12	Equity	Indigo Identityware	$200k	-
1/1/12	Equity	Datacom	$2m	-
1/18/12	Equity	Code 42 Software	$52.5m	-

“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.