“The exodus from Best Buy Co. Inc.’s executive suite continues.
Ryan Robinson, the company’s No. 2 finance official and chief financial officer for Best Buy’s U.S. business unit, is stepping down, a source close to the company told the Star Tribune.”
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Two firms local to Minneapolis, Reve Studios and Gray Squid Division, are teaming up on a new ’2D puzzle platformer’ gaming concept for iOS with the hopes of leveraging the money and social wisdom of the crowds to fund their next product launch to the tune of $70k — or more.
Rather than contemplating a traditional bootstrapped vs. angel investor model, they’re pursuing an increasingly popular third option via the ubiquitous crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to determine if Monster! has the kind of merit to be the next big fan favoritite.
The idea for Monster! was initially birthed in 2010 by Reve Studios founder Chad Robinson who made an early attempt at launching it through a national indie video developer contest.
By Niall Firth, New Scientist
“THE noise level is rising at the Shirley G. Moore Laboratory School. Children are charging through the classroom shouting, playing, picking up toys and tossing them around. All the while, in the corners of the room, five Kinect motion sensors watch and record their every move.
The unusual set-up at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development in Minneapolis is designed to look for signs of behavioural disorders. The plan is to find out if Microsoft’s gaming sensor, combined with computer-vision algorithms trained to detect behavioural abnormalities, can be used to automate the early diagnosis of autism.”
Via News Release
“BOSTON, MA – The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) and Fortune Magazine announced that Atomic Data (Rank 26) based in Minneapolis, MN was selected for the 2012 Inner City 100, a list of the fastest-growing inner city companies in the U.S. The Inner City 100 program recognizes successful inner city companies and their CEOs as role models for entrepreneurship, innovative business practices and job creation in America’s urban communities.”
There is a shortage of talent in the labor pool for dealing with very large sets of data and The University of Saint Thomas Graduate Programs in Software (GPS) is gearing up to do something about that.
The newly formed Center of Excellence for Big Data (CoE4BD) will serve as a teaching and research group that will offer education and support to groups in academia, government, and business in need of help processing big data.
As a field, big data doesn’t exactly have a concrete definition. One of the organizers of the CoE4BD, Dr. Brad Rubin, considers a problem that contains a certain amount of “volume, velocity, and variability” in its data set to fall into the big data domain. Large sets of marketing, business operations, and scientific data sets are the usual suspects. Dr. Rubin is an information retrieval specialist in the GPS program, but the idea for the center sprang from collaboration with a neuroscientist at the University of Saint Thomas.
By Joe Serrano
Last week I had a coffee with a Minnesota angel investor and we began talking about Instagram and its recent $1b exit to Facebook. I gathered that he had not heard of Instagram prior to the acquisition announcement, which really got me thinking:
If Instagram had been started in Minnesota, what would the experience of raising capital from our local investors have looked like?
First, let me set the stage. I have read commentary on the Minnesota investment ecosystem and heard from angels and venture capitalists, all of which collectively summarize that Minnesota entrepreneurs are: (a) naïve, (b) not prepared to ask for money, and ( C), not putting in the hard work.
After all, ‘Good ideas will always get funded’ – right?
Well, I’ll say it: Minnesota angel investors are not thinking big enough.
By Dan Carr, Star Tribune
“Did you know that 46 percent of adult Americans now have a smartphone, according to Pew Research? And, Flurry Mobile Analytics estimates that 45 percent of our media consumption time is spent interacting with our phones and the Web.
Business has also moved to the Web in a big way. Our enterprises sell differently, communicate expansively and track information robustly. Storage, security and software engineering — long Minnesota strengths — are being leveraged in exciting and creative new businesses, as well as large businesses.”
By Christopher Magan, St. Paul Pioneer Press
“Could the days of notes coming home to parents in students’ backpacks be numbered? Probably not entirely, but school districts across the metro are embracing digital communication more than ever.
Inver Grove Heights schools are the latest to offer digital communication options, launching a smartphone application last month.”
The Minnesota Emerging Software Advisory (MESA) must be doing something right, considering the clip at which their stable of mentees continues to expand.
Launched last summer by industry veterans seeking to “spark a movement to help Minnesota’s software economy rank among the most vibrant and respected in the nation,” MESA has recently engaged with Toovio, a Minneapolis startup pioneering ‘insight as a service’ in the enterprise retail environment.
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It might be educational for the other entrepreneurs in the community to know this isn't YC and the s...
Author: Casey AllenGood for you... congratulations! The Twin Cities is a great place to lead this charge. If you can ...
Author: Darren CoxCongrats, Heroic!
Author: Dana SeversonJustin and team rock.
Author: GraemeThickinsCan you elaborate on that?
Author: Jeff Pesek