By Peter Callaghan, MinnPost
“Sure, it’s a cliche and all, but for Ryan Johnson necessity did breed invention. Johnson is the guy who built and maintains MSP Votes, a data-driven guide to elections created last spring to track the Minneapolis municipal election, and which is now looking to do the same with local races on the ballot this year.”
18 M&A transactions concerning Minnesota tech companies were counted from January 1 – March 31, 2018 (Q1). Below is a list of each of those specific deals, as well as some aggregate/meta analysis.
Thank you to local M&A pro’s Franklin Partners for underwriting this research.
It’s time once again for us to thank our readers for their ongoing feedback — directly and/or indirectly!
We continuously welcome feedback on stories, subject matter, narratives, data — on how we can better serve Minnesota’s tech community. We maintain a very open comments system, read every email [info@tech.mn], and also accept it anonymously.
Thank you again :)
What is Zubie?
Zubie is an end to end connected car platform. Utilizing an OBD2 dongle, cellular data, and cloud services, we aggregate and analyze data in mobile and web apps. Our entry level fleet management product provides location, diagnostics, safety/performance, and trip information.
Burnsville IoT startup Anser Innovation, known for flagship product PetChatz, is attracting more investment capital for a new line.
Building off our recent exploration of tech companies coming to and moving around town this — which tech companies based outside of Minnesota have a presence here?
That is the question we seek to thoroughly understand in this running post.
Presence — for the purpose of the article — is defined as two or more employees that consistently work together in a professional office environment (coworking counts since many local expansions do start that way).
Rochelle Olson, Star Tribune
“Hennepin County violated state open records laws by failing to comply promptly with a request for information on the sheriff’s use of biometric technology, the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled in a case tracked by government watchdogs, law enforcement and the media.
In August 2015, open government crusader Tony Webster requested information about Sheriff Rich Stanek’s office use of high-tech tracking methods to identify faces, irises and fingerprints. Almost three years later, Webster still doesn’t have answers, but as of Wednesday, he had a victory from the state’s highest court.”
Back and popular as ever was the 2018 Piranha Pool held at Minnebar on Saturday, organized by local attorney Jeffrey Robbins.
Piranha Pool is Minnesota’s own live take on the TV series “Shark Tank,” whereby local tech investors Ed Cannon, Cathy Connett and David Russick heard from three pre-revenue tech startups on the spot: Travel Labs, Nightware, and Little Acorn Shave Co: