By Dana Severson, Twin Cities Business
“Start-up: Lunchbox (an application of Mxapp)
Founded: 2009
Location: Minneapolis
Key players: Parag Shah, founder
Funding: Combination of self-funding and University of Minnesota grant
Web site: mxapp.com (getlunchbox.com, still in development)
Do you know who truly has the best hamburger in town? And not just based off of the opinion of a food critic—who’s most likely over-qualified to judge the likes of a simple burger. I’m talking about real, 100–percent authentic opinions from people like you and I, who have spent their own hard-earned dollars to buy the burger that they’re giving us their opinion on. It’s Matt’s Bar in my opinion, but then again, I’m a sucker for any food that has the potential to cause physical pain (AKA scorched by squirting cheese).”
Lunchbox in the past:
“Just Eat It!“ Minnov8 3/16/2009
“Indomitable hope guides entrepreneur” mndaily.com 3/11/2009
I had the pleasure today to sit down over coffee with the founders of a content site for attorneys called Lawyerist, based in downtown Minneapolis: Sam Glover and Aaron Street. I met Aaron at a recent monthly lunch meeting of Club Entrepreneur, which is run by my colleague Rick Brimacomb.
By Geoff Dunton Via Minov8
“…Founded by Ashish Gadnis in 2009, Koozala is secure place to store your and your family’s medical history online. So far Koozala has nearly 6,000 registered members since going live with the University of Minnesota this past fall. Koozala will continue to roll out with Universities around the country to reduce errors in verifying student immunization records. And what’s a better state than Minnesota to start a company in the health care industry?”
“MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota– Despite its name, Pedal Brain LLC’s ambitions far exceed mere bicycles. In fact, just replace “Pedal” with “Health” and you start to better understand what this angel-backed start-up wants to do.
The company recently struck a deal with HED Cycling Products USA in Shoreview to sell a software system that records real time data like speed, power, and heart rate from bike-mounted sensors and view the information on an iPhone or website. Pedal Brain has already raised $250,000 from angel investors, about half of its Series A round.”
Listen to the TECHdotMN podcast with Matt Bauer, Founder, Pedal Brain LLC
Brett Brohl originally conceived Scrubadoo in January 2009 during his last term at the University of Virginia-Darden School of Business. A few months later, MBA in hand, he found himself in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his girlfriend who had recently taken a position with one of Minnesota’s largest corporations. Then came decision time: accept a high-level consulting opportunity or scratch the entrepreneurial itch and bring Scrubadoo to life. He chose the latter and soft-launched Scrubadoo in October ‘09. From there, he listened and learned for the following 90 days, hibernated the site, regrouped in January and officially launched the functional Scrubadoo just a month ago.
Scrubadoo is a niche E-Commerce website that sells scrubs – the uniforms that health professionals wear – directly to nurses, hospital personnel and veterinarians (doctors typically receive their scrubs for free directly from the hospital). Their product line includes uniforms, shoes and accessories that culminate in over 1,000 different SKU’s. While Scrubadoo isn’t first to market, Brett saw the opportunity in a $550 million dollar space that is “antiquated and fragmented.” Original research of 1,500 nurses surveyed concluded the market was more splintered than he had originally thought – no more than 5 nurses were purchasing from any one single source.
Mr. Brohl describes the Scrubadoo competitive advantage as “High level customer service with personality, modeled after brands like Zappos and Nordstrom…think free-shipping, 24 hour live chat, loyalty incentives and more.” Combined with an aggressive sales & marketing approach to create awareness amongst private practices and hospital purchasing agents, he believes that they can quickly differentiate themselves in a niche space lacking clear leadership.
His original notion to create a better online shopping experience for health care professionals was sparked during a lengthy conversation with a friend’s father who manufactures Soft Scrubs, a generic line of health care wear. Initially, the goal was to develop a distribution website specifically for Soft Scrubs, but Brett soon realized that the opportunity was much larger than he had anticipated; Soft Scrubs now accounts for a but a fraction of the product lines available via Scrubadoo.
When asked about any local resources he’s identified and leveraged as a newcomer to the Minnesota Startup Community, he noted “The ease and effictiveness of working with the University of Minnesota as a recruiter and bringing two qualified interns on board in short order.”
Godspeed Brett
“Is it possible to design a radio app that delivers the ultimate radio experience, complete with visually stunning graphics and social media capabilities, too? Minneapolis’ own Handcast Media Labs LLC thought so, set out to prove it, and just launched the result on the iTunes App Store a couple of days ago. It’s called Spark Radio (press release), and works on the iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s available for $5.99 at this link at the App Store.”
By Samuel Axon, Mashable
“Name: MixMobi
Quick Pitch: MixMobi provides easy, fast, realtime, graphics-rich promotions for any social media, SMS or email campaign, reaching all web-enabled mobiles.
Genius Idea: MixMobi lets you create graphical coupons then send them out to your customers’ mobile phones. You don’t need any programming or advanced design skills to make it happen.”
by Son Huynh
If you’re a college student, chances are you’re on a tight budget. According to a report published by Westwood College, the average college student’s income is about $700-$800 a month. While that might seem like a lot at first, after paying tuition, bills, and various other sorts, the amount left for discretionary spending doesn’t amount to much.
ByAndy Santamaria, Connecting Me To You
“Founders Jason Cole and Jonathan Dusing wasted no time with row27 Studios. They began doing mostly video post production and quickly secured national sports clients around the country. Keeping stride, they jumped right into the iPhone app gold rush to appease sports junkies. Seeing the potential of the App Store, they created a separate company called row27 mobile to establish a new presence.”
Launch Media, based out of Plymouth Minnesota, has a vision to bridge the gap between traditional media and the interactive world via mobile device. By leveraging SMS and two dimensional (2D)/quick response (QR) technology, they aim to partner with consumer brands and retailers to enhance a customers shopping experience by creating engagement at precisely the time when actual shopping decisions are made: point of sale.
The first step is to identify established (major) brands that seek to deliver a more meaningful experience with their customers through emerging mobile consumer application space. Next, they bring their combined 40 years of retail and merchandising experience to the table and craft an in store mobile-centric campaign featuring a SMS “call to action” and/or a scanable 2D barcode that a shopper can capture and explore, in real time, on their personal mobile device. Odds are, the customer would be using a custom-branded reader application, but the barcode’s themselves can be read by any myriad of open readers available on the market. From here, customer experiences include a plethora of interactive options including but not limited to: ratings, reviews, coupons, recommendation engines, profiles (think shopping/wish lists), rich media, etc. From the retailers perspective, the immediate benefits are obvious, and to make Launch Media an even more attractive option, they have the ability to integrate advertising, hook into consumer databases, track detailed shopping habits and chart abstract trends. Yes, the QR reader technology can even be embedded within pre-existing branded mobile applications.
The software applications that go onto the phones doesn’t cost the consumer anything; while discussing the business model, Launch Media wouldn’t get much more specific than “the charge is based on how deep the engagement with the consumer goes and how much value is derived to the brand.”
Fair Enough.
The Launch Media team consists of: Scott Thomsen, Doug Thompson, Tony Frank and Adrienne Dyer.
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