TECHdotMN: News about Minnesota Startups

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Via News Release

“CHICAGO and MINNEAPOLIS (May 21, 2012) – Avery Dennison Medical Solutions today announced a partnership with Preventice, Inc., to produce patch-based wearable sensors for clinical monitoring of a patient’s unique physiological characteristics.

Preventice is a break-through developer of mobile health applications and patient monitoring systems that deliver continuous care, wherever an individual might be. Mobile health applications, like those developed by Preventice, improve the doctor-patient relationship by establishing a constant connection and exchange of information between care providers and their patients. This connection encourages patients to stay engaged in actively managing their health while away from their health care providers, and feeds data to clinicians about a patient’s health status without impacting their daily lifestyle.”

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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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Three years after entrepreneur Christopher Black started his web consulting company Blacktop Interactive, he’s making the transition into mobile product development — and learning a lot as he goes.

Based in St. Paul, Blacktop Interactive is a small start-up, consisting of Black and interns Emily Lyman and Jake Merringer. Thus far, they have released two apps, both of which are designed for children.

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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.