TECHdotMN: News about Minnesota Startups

There is a new driver in place for Minneapolis-based startup Drive Power. Will England, the company’s former CEO and seed investor, is stepping aside and handing the wheel over to Augeo, one of the venture’s founding shareholders.

Drive Power was spun-out of the University of Minnesota’s Office for Technology and Commercialization in January of 2012 with intellectual property invented inside the University of Minnesota’s Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute.

The firm subsequently raised over $1 million in investment capital, including an 815k angel round in May 2012. Drive Power’s flagship product, DriveScribe, enjoyed national attention and press over the past year for its software platform that monitors, coaches, and encourages safe driving habits, with a focus on teenage drivers.

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By Kate Freeman, Mashable

“We know that cellphones and driving don’t mix. Despite the accidents and known risks, 89% of teens say they reply to a text message or email within five minutes, driving or not. So can the technology responsible for distracting many drivers, also serve to prevent roadway collisions and close-calls?

A new app called DriveScribe turns your phone into a “driving coach.” Aimed in particular at helping those new drivers learn the rules-of-the-road, the app monitors speed, and blocks all texts, updates and calls while the car is in motion. It uses GPS, social media, real-time voice feedback and a jamming function to block texts and calls. The app will tell drivers to slow down if they’re going too fast.”

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At least 37 early-stage Minnesota tech companies raised a cumulative $28m in financing during the months of April, May and June according to information collected and analyzed for the second quarter 2012 Capital Review.

The data set represents a proxy of local investment activity into IT/High Tech: Saas, web/mobile, hardware and robotics systems.  It is imperfect, considering that there will always be undisclosed transactions and those which are off the record.

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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.

Via myFox9.com

“A new smartphone application will help teens avoid distractions while driving. It blocks text messages and prevents teens from making calls, unless they dial 911.

The app, called DriveScribe, also monitors the speed of the car and compares that against a database of legal speed limits.”

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Intellectual property invented inside the University of Minnesota’s Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute has been licensed by a newborn startup called Drive Power, led by CEO Will England.

The deal, which was finalized in late December, combines multiple technologies — mobile, data and software — to focus on encouraging safe driving habits, particularly among teenage drivers. It’s based on the Teen Driver Support System and lead technical developer Alec Gorjestani joins Drive Power as VP of Technology.

DriveScribe is the go to market product, which is anticipated to publicly launch in April.  Using a smartphone accelerometer, GPS and gyroscope combined with GIS map data and SaaS dashboard, DriveScribe aims to be a digital driving coach.

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