creative leadership : Innovation + Job News

Eureka Recycling, a homegrown, progressive recycling nonprofit based in Northeast Minneapolis, is upping its “zero waste” game. The company is sponsoring MSP’s first-ever Zero Waste Summit on September 18 from 12:30 pm to 6:30 pm.
 
Brave New Workshop, an all-purpose venue and gathering space in downtown Minneapolis, is hosting the event. General admission tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for students. Scholarship tickets, which include the cost of admission, two drink tickets and an admission scholarship for another attendee, are $100. Anyone who arrives by public or active transportation (bus, LRT, bike or foot) earns free admission to a future Brave New Workshop event of their choice.
 
“We want attendees to get information and thoughts from the people who really live the vision of zero waste,” says Lynn Hoffman, Eureka Recycling’s chief of community engagement and principal event organizer. “Equally important will be the time to connect and collaborate so we can take action while inspiration is still fresh in our hearts and minds.”
 
To that end, Eureka’s first-ever Zero Waste Summit features nearly 20 speakers, many of whom have close ties to MSP’s sustainability movement.
 
Amanda LaGrange works as marketing director for Tech Dump St. Paul, an innovative electronics recycling outfit that offers free, eco-friendly disposal services (to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds per year) and provides living-wage jobs for economically disadvantaged adults.
 
Eartha Bell is director for the soon-to-be-operational Frogtown Farm, an ambitious project that promises to be Minnesota’s largest urban farm (and one of the country’s biggest, as well).
 
Tracy Sides is director of Urban Oasis, a “sustainable food center” that offers healthy cooking education, small business training, catering with seasonal and locally sourced ingredients, and other sorely needed food services on St. Paul’s East Side.
 
These speakers and their organizations, and all the others represented at the Zero Waste Summit, live and breathe Eureka’s commitment to low-impact communities.
 
“Eureka Recycling is the only organization in Minnesota that specializes in zero waste,” says Christine Weeks, co-principal at Field Guide, a St. Paul-based boutique communications firm that caters to progressive clients. “The organization's services, programs and policy work present solutions to the social, environmental and health problems caused by wasting.”
 
“Zero waste is more than an empty garbage can,” adds Hoffman. “The way we consume accounts for almost half of the CO2 that threatens [our] healthy food, abundant resources, clean air and water, safe and reliable products, and healthy families and communities.”
 
 
 

In February 2015, Minneapolis startup Vidku raised $17 million in a 17-day Series A funding round led by Arthur Ventures, a Fargo-based venture capital group. The speed and size of Vidku’s fundraising effort was unusual: According to data from CrunchBase, the average Series A raised $6.9 million in 2014 and it often takes months to close a successful round.
 
So it’s no surprise that MSP’s investors and innovators sat up and took note of Vidku’s breakout success. CEO Jim Leslie attributes his company’s achievement both to the far-reaching capabilities of Flipgrid, its core “asynchronous video sharing” product, and the boundless belief of Vidku’s 35-plus employees.
 
“Our investors weren’t interested because they knew who [Vidku’s leaders] were or trusted us to execute,” says Leslie, a self-described “serial entrepreneur” who ran a handful of successful firms (and sold his most recent venture for a cool $100 million in 2011) before joining the Vidku team. “The passion of our entire team regarding Flipgrid’s future possibilities was infectious — our investors got as excited as we were” about Vidku and Flipgrid.
 
Users believe in Flipgrid, too. According to Leslie, the product has hosted more than 3 million video shares since its January 2014 launch, spreading chiefly through word of mouth. (Vidku has no formal marketing operation to speak of, though that may change in the future.)
 
Flipgrid admins, typically classroom educators, populate “grids” with video or text questions, prompting video responses from student users. Everyone with access to the grid can see and share the responses. There’s no limit to each grid’s capacity for questions and responses, though admins are limited to a specific number of grids per year — typically five to 10, or roughly one per class for full-time educators.
 
Though Flipgrid was originally designed for educators, Leslie is quick to point out that about 20 percent of the platform’s volume is devoted to non-educational use. Private businesses and government agencies use Flipgrid as a collaborative tool, while wedding planners and religious institutions leverage it to create more social events and environments.
 
“Flipgrid is a growing, powerful and highly effective technology tool that’s getting stronger all the time,” says Leslie. Following Vidku’s “design first” imperative, “we’re constantly developing new ways for users to participate.”
 
Vidku’s development activities have accelerated since the company spun out from an eight-person University of Minnesota team led by Dr. Charles Miller. Miller’s team is responsible for designing and building out Flipgrid’s base technology and critical elements. Leslie and co-founder Phil Soran, also a wildly successful tech entrepreneur, caught wind of Miller’s innovation and offered to form a private company capable of turning Flipgrid into a disruptive technological force.
 
“We were only interested in [spinning Flipgrid out of the U and forming Vidku] if [Miller’s] entire team was on board,” says Leslie. He didn’t need to worry: The response was an enthusiastic “yes.”
 
For Flipgrid’s core team and the U itself, the transition to private enterprise has thus far been smooth. All eight team members remain on staff at Vidku, generously compensated for their efforts and diligently working on the next big thing.
 
Perhaps more importantly, the U is a major shareholder in Vidku; Vidku’s success is quite literally the U’s success. Such public-private synergies, wherein universities drive innovation and investors provide the capital necessary to bring transformative ideas to market, are commonplace in established tech centers like Boston and Silicon Valley, says Leslie, but less so in MSP.
 
“A strong public-private linkage is the hallmark of a healthy entrepreneurial community,” he says. “We’re on the cusp of that here” in MSP.
 
In addition to Flipgrid, Vidku also offers a video-based assessment tool called Avenue. “Whereas Flipgrid is suited for discussions” and other forms of knowledge and experience delivery, Leslie explains, “Avenue is ideal for more formally assessing knowledge.”
 
Vidku’s team also handles development work for Passport, a language-learning application initially developed by St. Paul-based EMC Publishing. Though Vidku doesn’t own Passport, Fligrid and Passport are kindred spirits with the same lofty goal: reducing friction and improving knowledge delivery in the classroom.
 
Later this year, Vidku plans to launch an application that offers a “significant enhancement” to Flipgrid’s capabilities, says Leslie. The new update “is the first tangible fruit of our intensive development efforts” since spinning off from the U, he adds, though he’s mum on the software’s specifics.
 

mini_polis, the winner of Minneapolis’ third annual Creative City Challenge, will be on display August 13 at the second Creative City Market, held from 4 to 9 p.m. at the Minneapolis Convention Center Plaza. mini_polis will be on display at the plaza for the third and final Creative City Market, on September 10, and remain outdoors until October 15.
 
Dubbed “a miniature city of collective imagination,” mini_polis is a scale model of downtown Minneapolis some 50 feet in diameter.
 
Unlike the past two Creative City Challenge winners, which were constructed by small teams of dedicated artists, mini_polis is the fruit of dozens of professional and amateur craftspeople’s labor. SocialSculpture, a Minneapolis-based sculpture collective led by Niko Kubota, oversaw the basic design and provided pre-made kits for guided construction of individual houses and apartment buildings at five supervised workshops held in April and May this year. Staff members from Leonardo’s Basement were on hand at all five workshops to guide less experienced makers. All participants were invited to record their stories and thoughts for a multimedia station that accompanies mini_polis on the Convention Center Plaza.
 
mini_polis’s miniature buildings are surrounded by gentle ramps and walkways that follow the outline of Minneapolis’ Interstate highways, allowing viewers (including those in wheelchairs) to enter and explore the sculpture. According to mini_polis’s website, visitors can “respond to builder’s dreams…[and] make their own place-specific comments about the city” using chalkboard paint on the sculpture’s surface.
 
mini_polis’s showcase event, Creative City Market, is no less engaging. The Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild will be on hand to pour local craft beer favorites, with fair food (roasted corn, brats and hot dogs) for sustenance. The plaza’s performance space hosts local musician Mayda from 5 to 6, the Milu Milu Couture fashion show from 6 to 6:30, and spoken word performances (various artists) from 7 to 9. A locally produced movie, presented by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Film Society, will be shown. Local makers and vendors — painters, tattoo artists, textile and jewelry specialists, potters and others — will mingle with the crowd, educating and delighting patrons.
 
“Creative City Market is a free monthly experience in the heart of our downtown that celebrates the art of making,” says Kristen Montag, Meet Minneapolis communications and public relations manager.
 
Creative City Market is sponsored by the Minneapolis Convention Center, the City of Minneapolis and Meet Minneapolis, with support from Northern Lights.mn and the Musicant Group.
 

Handsome Cycles and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts have entered into what could be MSP’s coolest creative partnership so far this year. In celebration of its 100th year, the MIA commissioned Handsome to create three custom cycles inspired by works in the museum’s world-famous collection. Handsome and MIA unveiled the bikes at MIA’s most recent Third Thursday event, on July 16. The event, dubbed “Bike Night,” turned into a celebration of all things bike.
 
Cyclists pedaled to the event from St. Paul’s Onmium Bike Shop. When they arrived, they were invited to bike right through MIA’s front doors and into its atrium. Minneapolis’ One on One Bikes was on hand with free bike checks, and both One on One and Twin Six unveiled new bike gear at adjacent booths.
 
Key MSP bike advocacy groups, including the Midtown Greenway Coalition, 30 Days of Biking and Powderhorn 24, were on hand. Custom frame builders, including Peacock Groove and Prairie Cow, networked with discerning cyclists.
 
“[MIA’s] continued support of the bike community is absolutely amazing,” says Jesse Erickson, Handsome Cycles co-founder and COO.
 
The custom bike design process unfolded over the course of several months. “Handsome Cycles...shares the museum’s commitment to embracing the local and integrating great design, technology and experimentation, while staying true to its core values and community,” says Hunter Wright, MIA’s Venture Innovation Director.
 
Handsome Cycles took inspiration from several works in MIA’s collection, notably the 1948 Tatra T87 Sedan, a petite car housed in an MIA hall; Claude Monet’s Grainstack; and Frank Stella’s Tahkt-I-Sulayman Variation II. The finished bikes blended the inspiration works’ color schemes, shapes and themes in attractive, functional packages that looked (and rode) like regular bikes.
 
The MIA-Handsome partnership didn’t end on July 16. Handsome Cycles is making a limited number of “MIA bikes” available for sale in its Northeast Minneapolis store and through MIA’s gift shop. The sleek single-speed bikes, available in white or black frames, are listed at about $1,100 on Handsome’s website.
 

Minneapolis’ status as the Internet hub of The North (and IOT, or Internet of Things), is now even more secure. Just months after opening an ultra-connected “Meet Me Room” in a new, state-of-the-art facility at the 511 Building in downtown Minneapolis, Cologix has announced a high-profile partnership with Nebraska-based Great Plains Communications, a network provider for carriers and enterprise clients across the Heartland.
 
The deal sees Great Plains establishing a major presence, known as a Point of Presence (POP), at Cologix’s Minneapolis data center, colloquially known as a “carrier hotel.” Great Plains’ Minneapolis POP will serve about 75 clients in MSP, greater Minnesota and other areas throughout The North.
 
According to Lynn Mead, Great Plains’ head of carrier and wholesale communications, the new POP is part of a major expansion and modernization drive that includes the laying of about 5,000 miles of additional broadband fiber in Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota.
 
“Across our markets, we saw new demand from customers seeking connectivity into Minnesota, including both carrier and enterprise clients,” says Mead. “Our customers want low latency and high bandwidth connections into The North” — two advantages Cologix’s carrier hotel, part of the “most connected building in Minneapolis,” is equipped to provide.
 
“Cologix’s Minneapolis facility is designed very well and the staff accommodates customers by ensuring the framework to extend fiber is in place,” she adds.
 
Cologix’s staff is thrilled to have another high-profile partner to add to the likes of Netflix, a key bandwidth user at its carrier hotel.
 
“We are thrilled to add a prominent company like Great Plains Communications to the ecosystem of our Minneapolis data center,” says Mike Hemphill, general manager at Cologix’s Minneapolis facility. “As we continue to increase the fiber connectivity with a robust collection of carriers, the network fabric of [The North] is strengthened to sustain the increasing demand we continue to see in this market.”
 
Cologix’s carrier hotel isn’t the only super-connected hub in MSP. The area is home to several other major data centers, most clustered at or near the intersection of several high-traffic fiber lines in downtown Minneapolis. For instance, the AT&T Building hosts IronGate’s main data center, which itself hosts dozens of network providers and high-bandwidth enterprise clients.
 
MSP has emerged as the Internet hub of The North — the most connected place between Chicago and Seattle, and the north-central United States’ only real data center alternative to Chicago — for a host of economic reasons. Two are worth singling out.
 
In 2011, the Minnesota State Legislature passed a 20-year tax holiday on qualifying data center investments, including infrastructure and power generation. That dramatically lowers the cost of opening and maintaining data centers here.
 
MSP’s climate helps, too. The long cold season reduces year-round cooling bills — typically a huge overhead expense for data centers, which are prone to overheating. In places like Dallas and Jacksonville, both popular data center hubs with famously scorching summers, cooling costs can eat into centers’ profits and raise costs for carriers and enterprise clients.
 
 
 

Though debate continues as to whether the average person needs eight glasses of water per day, many of us still forget to stay hydrated when we’re busy. Hidrate co-founder and recent University of Minnesota graduate Nadya Nguyen found out the hard way.
 
On the bus home from a 10-hour volunteer shift at TEDxMinneapolis, Nguyen felt faint and disoriented. Her head was pounding. With effort, she recounted the events of her jam-packed day and realized that she hadn’t taken a single sip of water since the morning. She simply hadn’t had the time, to say nothing of the mental bandwidth necessary, to stop what she was doing and take a drink.
 
Then it hit her: In the age of cloud-connected smartphones and tiny, powerful sensors, she didn’t need to remember to drink water. She could simply build an app that connected to a special water bottle that would remind her to hydrate. Along with three other recent U of M grads, she built out the app and a prototype water bottle—called Hidrate—during least year’s Twin Cities Startup Weekend.
 
“It’s so easy to forget to take care of yourself when life gets busy,” says Nguyen. “I wanted to create something that would make life better for people in this small but important way.”
 
The idea is breathtakingly simple: Users download the app for free on their phones and enter personal parameters (weight and other factors), location (temperature, relative humidity and altitude can affect water needs), and daily activity level, editing over time as this information changes. Hidrate uses this data to create a personal “daily water goal,” expressed in both ounces and water bottle equivalents. The app syncs with a 24-ounce, BPA-free, dishwasher-safe water bottle that can sense its own fill level and updates your total daily intake whenever you take a sip. If you go too long without drinking, a reminder message appears on your phone; if you really fall behind, the bottle glows gently until your fluid intake gets back on pace.
 
Hidrate isn’t the first smart water bottle to hit the market. But the talented, driven team enjoys the benefits of a heavily discounted shared workspace at Startup Venture Loft in the North Loop — a huge help for any startup operating on a shoestring budget.
 
The company’s Kickstarter campaign, launched June 1, had a seemingly ambitious goal: $35,000. Thanks to tremendous support from what Nguyen calls “a dedicated group of early adopters” and a high-visibility mention in widely read tech publication TechCrunch, the campaign blew through that ceiling in a couple days, notching nearly $200,000 from more than 2,500 individual donors in its first week. Everyone who donates $39 or more gets a personal bottle, with delivery expected in December 2015 or January 2016.
 
The Kickstarter campaign’s proceeds will mostly cover costs for the initial bottle-manufacturing round, which is likely to be larger than expected given the campaign’s success. Nguyen and the team are still working out a retail price for the bottle, but “it’ll probably be in the $39 to $45 range,” she says.
 
For now, interested buyers can reserve a bottle — in the color of their choosing — on Hidrate’s website. Longer-term, Nguyen expects to sell through gyms, sporting goods stores and other retailers. The team is already courting potential partners, though nothing’s ready to announce.
 
“We’re willing to work with any gym, specialty store or retailer that caters to our customer base,” says Nguyen. “We’ve been blown away by early demand for the product and can’t wait for the next phase of our growth.”

 
Hidrate Jobs in Minneapolis
 

1. iOS Mobile Developer
2. Android Mobile Developer

 

In the groan-inducing 2000 film What Women Want, Mel Gibson’s misogynistic executive used an acquired ability to hear women’s thoughts to amusing, mostly self-serving ends.
 
Mary Van Note and Beth Perro-Jarvis, MSP-based Ginger Consulting’s co-founders, can’t read minds. But thanks to decades of marketing experience and a comprehensive, highly authoritative survey for female householders, they’ve got a pretty good handle on what drives women consumers in MSP and across the country — certainly more so than Gibson’s fictional mind-reading cad.
 
Van Note and Perro-Jarvis released their sixth annual “What Women Want” survey in April. The survey touched on of-the-moment health trends, like juicing and the Paleo diet, plus political issues, personal finance, household division of labor, popular culture and more.
 
Some of the headline findings were surprising. For instance, nearly two-thirds of survey respondents believe the “latest diet and nutrition trends” — i.e., Paleo — are “just fads.” A similar proportion claimed to be fine with making dinner at home every night. And more than a quarter believed that Hillary Clinton and any other female Presidential candidates in the 2016 election cycle will be judged more harshly than male candidates — in other words, that voters hold prospective women leaders to a higher standard.
 
The “What Women Want” survey processes responses from Ginger Consulting’s Alpha Panel, a 350-strong cohort of hand-selected women, most of them affluent and well-educated.
 
“The Alpha Panel isn’t a random sample,” explains Van Note. “We have longstanding relationships with most of these women and value their input in a way that goes beyond many other consumer surveys.” Ginger’s partners are particularly dismissive of teen surveys, which are highly sought after by marketers due to teens’ notoriously fickle tastes — but can be unreliable to the point of uselessness precisely because teens are so fickle.
 
By contrast, “our ‘alpha-females’ are a representative sample of America’s largest consumer group — the powerhouse that buys and sells 85 percent of all products bought and sold in the U.S.,” says Perro-Jarvis, referring to the single and family-attached women who make the vast majority of purchasing decisions, often on behalf of domestic partners and dependents. “Naturally, they have a lot to say about the marketplace, and life in it.”
 
In many ways, Perro-Jarvis and Van Note epitomize their Alpha Panel. Whip-smart, both left prominent positions at Fallon (the two were team members for some time, in fact) to work on their own terms and achieve that elusive work-life balance.
 
“The world of marketing and advertising is incredibly stressful and not particularly conducive to raising a family,” says Van Note. “At the same time, we were having these back-of-the-napkin conversations about what it would look like if we went into business together.”
 
During those conversations, the pair decided to focus more on big-picture, data-driven strategy instead of the full-service marketing work typically done by larger agencies.
 
“We don’t have the resources to manage the teams we’d need to execute client campaigns,” explains Perro-Jarvis. “We’ve found a niche as ‘strategy outsourcing’ specialists who consult on high-level tactics, custom research, ideation and brand strategy.”
 
“We’re basically strategic brains for hire,” she adds.
 
Now that they’re masters of their own destiny, Van Note and Perro-Jarvis are reaping the rewards. “We take calls in line at Target, work out of home offices and structure our workdays around other obligations,” says Perro-Jarvis.
 
“Who wants an office anyway?” she laughs. “It’s just another place to clean up.”
 

A while back, as Prodality co-founder Parag Shah scanned a credit card statement, he noticed a restaurant charge that seemed suspiciously high. Though he couldn’t remember the bill’s exact amount, he recalled the meal well enough to know he’d been overcharged. But Shah couldn’t find his receipt, and thus couldn’t confront the restaurant about the mistake.
 
“I hate paper, so I probably just threw the receipt out after signing,” says Shah. “But the experience made me ask why I didn’t have the option to receive my receipt by email and search through an archive of all my purchases.” Such an archive would also help with returns that required a receipt, he reasoned.
 
Shah set about developing the searchable receipt database that would become PurchaseBox. He soon saw the value in including promo emails in the concept: “The average person gets way too many promotional messages to keep track of, even with email systems like Gmail [which collects promo emails in a separate inbox],” explains Shah. “Most people just delete them as they come in, even if there’s a chance that they’d come in handy at a later time.”
 
By organizing retailer-specific promotional emails in a searchable database, PurchaseBox makes it easier for consumers to call up and use coupons while shopping online or in-store. Each PurchaseBox user gets an @purchasebox.com email account to which retailers can send digital offers and receipts. (Users can also photograph and upload paper receipts to their accounts, though that’s likely to become less common as more retailers switch to digital receipts.)
 
PurchaseBox exemplifies the customer-first approach to big-picture technology solutions of its parent company, Prodality. From its office near Uptown, Prodality is honing a unique business-building approach that could have a big impact on MSP’s burgeoning startup economy.
 
Shah, who serves as founder and chief executive, runs Prodality with business partner Whitney Johnson, who serves as director of marketing and oversees the company’s day-to-day operations. According to Johnson, Prodality is a “mix between a startup incubator and a capital investment firm.” Prodality turns ideas into new subsidiaries, taking an equity stake in every concept that makes it past the idea stage.
 
To get each new business off the ground, Prodality’s core team offers “labor support” during the startup phase, says Johnson, then builds “specific teams around each company as they continue to grow.” Prodality's startups are structured as separate legal entities, not departments of Prodality itself.
 
Prodality focuses on “big ideas” that can potentially achieve seven- or eight-figure valuations within three to five years, Shah says. “Before launching a new idea, we ask ourselves, is it a large enough opportunity?” he explains. “If the answer is ‘no,’ we don’t pursue it.”
 
Prodality’s ideas generally focus on business and consumer needs, depending on the company. Its most successful subsidiary to date, BookBottles, is an event management platform that caters to nightclub and entertainment venue owners. Regardless of target audience, Prodality’s startups must be cost-effective and “bootstrappable,” backed by software systems — either web or mobile — capable of being rolled out within weeks.
 
“One of the biggest advantages of our model is that it’s scalable,” says Shah. “We’ve put together a framework for providing the seed funding and labor to develop apps and other necessary technologies really quickly.”
 
Prodality’s model is attractive to local and national tech investors, who have participated in multiple funding rounds for the firm’s most successful startups. The ultimate goal of any Prodality backed startup, says Shah, is a full exit: the sale of Prodality’s stake to another firm or investment group. Prodality reinvests the proceeds of these sales into new ideas, some of which — hopefully — eventually make it through the same cycle.
 
As for PurchaseBox, it’s still early days. The app remains invite-only as the team works on functionality enhancements and tests new features, which Johnson says are critical to PurchaseBox’s eventual success. Current users tend to be tech-savvy “early adopters,” she says. “We count on experienced technology users to evangelize the product for us, and we always welcome feedback that helps us focus our development efforts.”
 
“The goal is to make PurchaseBox as user-friendly, seamless and convenient as possible,” Johnson adds. “Those attributes are what will ultimately drive adoption.”
 
According to Shah and Johnson, PurchaseBox is planning a big push — aided, again, by its early users — to put the app in front of retailers in MSP and beyond. “Our goal is to build a base of at least one million users” in the near term, says Shah. “Hitting that target will create a compelling value proposition for merchants and encourage adoption.”
 
Though one million users sounds like an ambitious target for an app that’s still technically in beta mode, Shah and Johnson clearly believe in PurchaseBox’s potential. And they’re fresh off a big visibility boost: PurchaseBox was one of a few hundred startups (out of 15,000 applicants) to appear at this year’s Collision, an annual tech expo held in Las Vegas in early May.
 

It’s no secret that women and minority entrepreneurs struggle to achieve equal footing with their white male counterparts, particularly in the fast-growing science and tech fields. The problem isn’t unique to MSP: According to American Express OPEN’s much-cited 2014 State of Women-Owned Businesses report, women-owned firms account for 30 percent of all U.S. businesses. Though the number of women entrepreneurs is growing at a rapid clip, women-owned businesses still employ just 6 percent of all U.S. workers — a proportion that hasn’t budged since the late 1990s.
 
MSP’s talented cohort of current and future women entrepreneurs may soon lead the nation on these critical representation and employment metrics. Locally based Technovation[MN] is expanding an exciting new initiative to level the playing field for local women and girls, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds — and seeing impressive early results.
 
Now in its second year, Technovation[MN] helps small, all-female teams conceive, develop and pitch apps to the thousands-strong audience at the global Technovation Challenge, held in San Francisco every June since the late 2000s.
 
Led by Thomson Reuters veteran (now Bluespire marketing director of product development) Shawn Stavseth and sponsored in part by Code Savvy, the volunteer-run organization draws entrants mostly from MSP (including historically disadvantaged areas like Cedar-Riverside and North Minneapolis), its suburbs and the Rochester area. According to International Falls native Stavseth, the organization plans a push into outstate Minnesota over the next couple years.
 
Technovation[MN]’s volunteer mentors — tech-savvy parents, local tech entrepreneurs or computer science entrepreneurs — walk participating kids through an intense, 12-week course that includes ideation, competitor research, big-picture market analysis, actual app building and pitch practice. According to Stavseth, most apps focus on social entrepreneurship.
 
“The girls are incredibly passionate about the social issues of our time,” she says.
 
Each team works roughly four hours per week, usually after school or at local community centers. Due to the significant time investment required and the fact that mentors are usually busy professionals, Technovation[MN] requires no fewer than three mentors per team — basically a one-mentor-to-one-student ratio. The 12-week course culminates in a pitch day called Appapalooza, when each team debuts its idea.
 
In addition to the usual suspects like local financial institutions and tech companies, says Stavseth, Technovation[MN] has cross-disciplinary classroom support.
 
“We’ve heard from English teachers who frame coding as a second language and make the argument that kids who can ‘talk’ to computers will be more successful than those who can’t,” says Stavseth. Meanwhile, “[g]ym teachers and coaches are enthusiastic about the wearable-device revolution” and want students to know how to make fitness apps for those devices.
 
Despite its newcomer status, Technovation[MN] is clearly on the ascendancy. The global Technovation Challenge’s judging panel chooses a relative handful of finalists — this year featured just 10 teams in all, split between high school and middle school groups — from among hundreds of global entries. Though no MSP teams are slated to compete at this year’s event, a Rochester-area middle school team called Furst Class did make the finalist cut.
 
Technovation[MN] is also growing. The group boasted 28 teams this year, up from 11 last year, and Stavseth expects even more to sign up this coming school year, despite a barebones publicity campaign that turns mainly on word of mouth. But Stavseth cautions that Technovation[MN] can only grow so fast: Since its talented teens need intense support from mentors, the total number of teams depends on how many parents, educators and community members are willing to devote substantial amounts of their time to the cause.
 
“We’re very pleased with how things are going, but we’re also fighting a huge battle,” says Stavseth. “There’s a tremendous need to have girls in computer science and to fight the stereotypes associated with the field.”
 

St. Paul’s Macalester College is aiming to be the first higher education institution in MSP to generate all of its electricity from renewable sources. In mid-April, the college announced a partnership with SunEdison, a leading builder of solar generation infrastructure, to purchase a share of the output of a soon-to-be-constructed community solar garden in rural Dakota County. The deal permits Macalester to offset up to 120 percent of its campus consumption.
 
According to the college and SunEdison, the solar garden should be mostly built out by the end of the year and will be operational sometime in 2016. As soon as the facility is reliably generating enough electricity to offset consumption on Macalester’s campus, the college will be functionally carbon-free (or better). The agreement will remain in force for 25 years, guaranteeing Macalester’s carbon-free status for a generation.
 
“Given our projected consumption patterns and the expected rising trend in electricity rates over the period of the agreement, we believe that the savings over the term of the agreement could be in the millions of dollars,” said David Wheaton, Macalester’s vice president for finance and administration, in a recent release.
 
Wheaton estimates that the partnership will cut the college’s power bills by 50 to 67 percent over the life of the agreement, though the exact savings depend on long-term pricing for carbon-intensive energy sources. It costs more than $1 million annually to power Macalester’s roughly 50-acre campus at current prices. Colorado College, a similarly sized institution near Colorado Springs, has saved more than $1 million per year since switching to solar.
 
Macalester also recently applied for a state grant to fund the installation of solar panels on the roof of Markim Hall, a building on campus. Those panels would supply some of the energy used on that part of campus and would help make up any deficit if output at the SunEdison garden dips temporarily.
 
Given the clear financial benefits — not to mention the cachet of being a sustainable trailblazer — other MSP higher education institutions may soon hop on the solar bandwagon. Just down Summit Avenue from Macalester, the much larger University of St. Thomas has committed to carbon-neutrality by 2035, and may push that timetable forward if circumstances dictate. Even the University of Minnesota, a far larger institution, has made noises about going carbon-neutral. Such moves could be a boon to Minnesota’s solar industry, which employed about 1,000 people last year, not to mention MSP companies like SimpleRay Solar.
 
Macalester’s ambitious 100 percent-solar initiative was made possible by the passage of a solar-friendly law during last year’s legislative session. Though Xcel Energy, Minnesota’s largest utility, recently warned the state utility commission that the law was promoting the growth of “utility-scale” solar installations that could have unintended consequences for the state’s energy grid, the commission isn’t bound to act on Xcel’s recommendations. Macalester officials have expressed confidence that the college can make good on its 100 percent-solar commitment in the still-unlikely event that the SunEdison deal falls through.
 

Gardening Matters, a community gardening nonprofit based in South Minneapolis, is putting on an MSP-wide seed and plant distribution event Saturday, May 16, at three locations around town: St. Olaf Lutheran Church in North Minneapolis, Waite House in South Minneapolis and Great River School in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood.
 
The organization’s members can choose from three packages. Per Gardening Matters’ website, a Small Garden Package contains 12 seed packs and 12 seedlings, enough for a container garden, small plot or raised bed. With 20 seed packs and 20 seedlings, a Medium Garden Package is sufficient for a 12’ x 12’ backyard garden or community plot. A Large Garden Package, brimming with 40 seed packs and 72 seedlings, is ideal for a “very large” backyard garden or larger community garden plot.
 
Each package comes with a suggested membership fee, calculated at a significant discount to the seeds’ and plants’ retail value. Members can further defray their packages’ cost by participating in Gardening Matters’ work-share program, which requires at least one annual volunteer stint at a Gardening Matters event.
 
With snacks, kid-friendly outdoor activities and live music, each May 16 distribution hub will double as a “pop-up celebration of spring,” says Susan Phillips, Gardening Matters’ executive director — a great kick-off to the growing season after a long winter hibernation.
 
“Broadly speaking, Gardening Matters’ mission is to support MSP residents who want to grow their own food, either as part of a community garden or in their own backyards, while building connections and facilitating knowledge-sharing among its members,” says Phillips.
 
This mission is gaining traction by the month. The three May 16 distribution locations are just three of about 10 Food Resource Hubs across MSP: three in St. Paul and seven in Minneapolis, up from none in St. Paul and just three in Minneapolis when Gardening Matters launched the Food Resource Hubs program in 2011. Collectively, Food Resource Hubs serve 3,000 adult members and 3,000 kids, with about 20 urban acres under cultivation as a direct result of members’ activities.
 
(Incidentally, Gardening Matters is likely to rename the Food Resource Hubs program soon due to a conflict with an unrelated but similarly named federal program.)
 
Although Gardening Matters still plays a critical role in overseeing and organizing each hub, the organization ultimately aims for hubs to be semi-autonomous and largely self-sustaining. “Each of our hubs has a unique mix of members and a unique culture,” explains Phillips.
 
Gardening Matters’ hubs also serve as a focal point for education and leadership training, both critical to fostering self-sustaining networks — not to mention good gardening practices. Founded to support cooperation among community gardeners, the group’s community-building power isn’t to be underestimated: Phillips recounts the story of a Gardening Matters-affiliated North Minneapolis community garden whose members cooperated to clean up a blighted, drug-ridden property on their block.
 
Thanks to the connections the neighbors built in the garden, says Phillips, “they were empowered to tackle bigger issues in their community.”
 
Phillips is turning Gardening Matters into a force for advocacy and city-wide change, too. “Land tenure is a huge issue right now,” she says, noting that many MSP community gardens have long waiting lists. This year, Gardening Matters is launching a major push to empower renters who don’t have access to suitable outdoor plots. Container gardens, which can easily fit on porches or even windowsills, are viable solutions for thousands of land-poor urban gardeners; the challenge is educating people about how to properly set up and care for them.
 
Phillips is also spearheading educational programs and outreach initiatives targeting immigrant communities, particularly Latino and Hmong groups, whose first-generation members have prior agricultural experience but aren’t aware of the urban gardening resources available in their adopted city.
 
“In everything Gardening Matters does, the goal is to expand the number of [MSP residents] who feel empowered to grow their own food,” says Phillips.
 
 

 
The BrandLab, an innovative nonprofit supported by MSP’s biggest creative agencies, is actively broadening creative-industry networks to introduce young people from diverse backgrounds to the dynamic world of advertising and marketing. With more than 600 students enrolled in The BrandLab's classes this semester and with ambitious plans for growth, the organization is wrapping up a curriculum revamp that will make its lessons even more engaging to MSP’s brightest young minds.
 
The BrandLab has a simple yet ambitious goal: To boost diversity and inclusion in the creative industries through education and network building. According to Ellen Walthour, The BrandLab’s executive director, MSP’s advertising and marketing agencies — from big players like Olson and Carmichael Lynch to smaller, independently run outfits — should be every bit as diverse as the clients they represent and the consumers to whom they market.
 
“The ad industry is trying to break out of traditional modes of hiring, which tend to be network-based and thus less diverse than the talent pool as a whole,” says Walthour. “The BrandLab’s goal is not to eliminate personal networks from the equation, but rather to broaden and reframe them to include a more representative range of perspectives.”
 
According to Walthour, the industry’s long-term success could turn on its ability to attract and retain diverse talent. “Our region’s demographics are rapidly shifting,” she says. In Hennepin County, children of color account for about one in two births, and nearly 20 percent of the county’s college grads are people of color.
 
The industry recognizes the need to adapt to this new demographic reality. On April 22, more than 200 advertising professionals, Fortune 500 executives and media types packed into Brand New Workshop for “Moving Beyond Representation to Full Inclusion,” the latest panel discussion in The Brandlab’s Fearless Conversation Series. Panelists from General Mills, Cargill and Minneapolis ad agency Carmichael Lynch offered frank, occasionally uncomfortable answers to MPR host Tom Weber’s questions about racial and ethnic diversity in MSP’s creative industries.
 
Judging by the probing queries and nuanced answers, diversity and multiculturalism clearly weigh on the minds of MSP’s advertisers, marketers and commercial artists. The consensus: Though creative workplaces are slowly becoming more diverse, full inclusion is more elusive than would appear from the increasingly multicultural TV, print and digital ads produced by many local agencies.
 
The BrandLab may have the solution. Founded in 2008 by John Olson, the late principal at the legendary agency Olson, the organization hires professional instructors to teach elective marketing and advertising classes at local high schools, including St. Paul’s Johnson Senior High. Volunteer helpers, who are often creative-industry professionals, share real-world experiences and techniques to add context and perspective.
 
These classes cover industry history, ethics, culture and theory. One highlight: An engaging, if uncomfortable, lesson on “extraordinarily racist and sexist ads from the early 20^th century,” says jabber logic principal Amee Tomlinson McDonald. Along with Emily Ronning, The BrandLab’s curriculum design director, she’s spearheading the organization’s curriculum redesign. By confronting advertising’s ugly past, The BrandLab’s multicultural students gain a visceral understanding of what they’re up against — and why they need to lend their voices and talents to the conversation.
 
These awkward ads are just one example of Tomlinson McDonald and Ronning’s revamp, which shifts the focus from traditional pedagogy (think half-hour lessons) to a more interactive, engaging model.
 
“It sounds cliched, but kids really do have short attention spans,” explains Tomlinson McDonald. “We’re using 30 to 60 second videos, real-world case studies, digital images” and other varied media “to keep kids engaged.” J. Crew’s YouTube page proved a particularly effective teaching tool, she mentions.
 
Students also dive deep into key agency roles: copywriting, graphic design, video production, project management, and even positions like accounting. By the end of the semester, they’re knowledgeable enough to put together mock projects for actual clients, whose employees hear pitches, critique work, and sometimes adopt aspects of a draft campaign.
 
The new curriculum is “in beta” in all of The BrandLab’s classrooms this semester. After some tweaks and improvements, a more finalized version will roll out for the next school year, though Walthour notes that The BrandLab’s curriculum is “always looking for ways to improve and adapt.”
 
The BrandLab doesn’t rely solely on classroom instruction. Throughout the semester, heavily programmed field trips to MSP-area agencies give students the chance to interact with creatives in their natural environments — and, possibly, get a sneak peek at their future workplaces.
 
On an April 21 trip, for example, Carmichael Lynch, Colle+McVoy and Olson each hosted 20+ Johnson Senior High students for two hours of tours, informational videos, Q&A time and — of course — a Pizza Luce-catered lunch. At Carmichael Lynch, students engaged fearlessly with agency staff and appeared genuinely surprised at the creativity that pervaded the building. (After passing by a midday yoga class in the agency’s lobby, one bright-eyed young lady remarked, “I had no idea people would be having fun at the office.”)
 
The BrandLab cultivates and focuses such sentiments in hopes of transforming curious students into the next generation of passionate creative professionals. Each year, the organization places dozens of classroom alums in paid summer internships at local agencies. Whereas other organizations focus on supporting older college students who have already self-selected into creative majors, The BrandLab deals exclusively with high school students and college freshmen. “The goal is to captivate kids early, before they’ve really considered [and potentially dismissed, due to lack of professional support] marketing or advertising as a career,” explains Walthour.
 
After an intense “boot camp” that prepares them for a “real world” workplace, interns work 12 to 20 hours per week during the summer. Every Monday, they pair up with a “coach” — someone with academic or professional experience in marketing and advertising — for debriefing sessions, all held on the University of Minnesota campus. These sessions help the interns process their often intense summer experiences while providing additional instruction in advanced concepts like brand strategy and personal branding.
 
The BrandLab’s model is clearly successful. Many first-time interns return the following summer. The BrandLab alums often major in creative or marketing-related disciplines after heading off to college. As the organization’s first alums graduate from college, they’ll disperse into the creative workforce to build the broad, inclusive networks the industry needs.
 

The U of M’s Carlson School of Business hosted its annual Tech Cities conference on March 27. The event drew hundreds of local innovators, investors and social entrepreneurs to the West Bank on the University of Minnesota campus in search of answers to a simple but vexing question: “How can we strengthen and promote MSP as a source for tech leadership, talent and innovation?”
 
The packed “Supporting Innovators in the Tech Cities” workshop offered a glimpse of the problems the region faces — and offered hope that workable solutions are within reach.
 
According to Matt Lewis, Greater MSP Strategy Manager and workshop moderator, MSP could produce “tens of thousands of jobs by 2020” that the region currently lacks the talent to fill. This “talent gap” is mostly due to two structural forces.
 
First, the accelerating pace of technological change is dramatically reordering the economy, rewarding highly skilled professionals and tech-savvy innovators while challenging those who don’t acquire new, relevant skills. This shift is happening everywhere, but it’s more pronounced in regional hubs like MSP (i.e., the capital of the North), where much of the tech economy’s most exciting, cutting-edge advances are forged.
 
The second structural force is unique to MSP: Despite a strong economy, reasonable living costs and excellent quality-of-life metrics, the region perennially struggles to attract the country’s — and world’s — best and brightest. The upside is that once transplants find their way here, they tend to stick around.
 
“The cliche that it’s hard to get people to come here and even harder to get them to leave holds true,” Lewis noted at the workshop. “We need to change the conversation and make [MSP] a global destination for people who self-identify as innovators.” Doing so would solve both problems: the technological talent gap and MSP’s “attraction issue.”
 
Four self-identified innovators who already call MSP home piped up to offer their ideas. Scott Cole, co-founder of the local tech cooperative Collectivity, proposed a “comprehensive tech accelerator” that would combine and magnify the efforts of existing local initiatives like the Minnesota High Tech Association, Greater MSP, MN Cup, university-based tech groups and others. The ultimate goal: to create a pervasive culture of innovation wherein cash-strapped innovators with great ideas effortlessly connect with investors, mentors and customers.
 
Melissa Kjolsing, MN Cup director, highlighted the tech world’s persistent gender gap — an issue that has gotten plenty of press in MSP and elsewhere. She noted that while women run 30 percent of all U.S. companies, most are solo operators. The solution: “deeper peer networks for women,” she argued. Women entrepreneurs need positive role models, namely successful female business owners who have made it through the male-dominated startup gauntlet. 
 
Kjolsing noted that though MN Cup has yet to achieve parity, the prestigious tech competition is spearheading the drive to empower women entrepreneurs: In 2014, about one-third of MN Cup entries came from all-women teams, up from 25 percent the previous year; 45 percent of 2014’s teams had at least one woman on the roster.
 
Lee George of the James J. Hill Reference Library argued that MSP must do more to support ambitious people at the two biggest “pinch points”: the moment when the entrepreneur moves from tinkering with an idea in their spare time to quitting their day job and fully plunging into their startup; and the exit strategy, or the point at which the entrepreneur steps away from the company he or she founded to focus on a new project or simply “cash out.”
 
Without support from mentors, investors and talented employees, many entrepreneurs never make it past the first pinch point, and their dream either dies or goes into a long slumber. Meanwhile, those fortunate enough to be able to contemplate an exit strategy often don’t know how to forge the connections with leaders of the established firms that typically buy up successful startups. It’s worth noting, for instance, that though MSP has a deep bench of Fortune 500 firms capable of financing numerous buyouts, one of the region’s most successful startups — SmartThings — turned to a Korean firm (Samsung) for its exit.
 
George advised existing organizations like Greater MSP and MHTA to adjust their programming in two ways: creating better and more numerous mentorship opportunities for soon-to-be-full-time entrepreneurs, and deepening connections between successful startups and major firms.
 
David Berglund, the fourth speaker, exemplifies the power of connections between MSP’s startup community and established business players. He’s UnitedHealth’s “entrepreneur in residence” and co-founder of Hoodstarter, a real-estate crowdfunding app. At UnitedHealth, he’s more or less in charge of “building healthcare startups from the ground up.”
 
“We need to accelerate the pace of innovation in large, sometimes bureaucratic corporations,” he said. “To do that, we need to get off the corporate campus and out of our comfort zone.”
 
Berglund believes that MSP’s major corporations need to communicate better and experiment more, both with one another and with the region’s entrepreneurs. Knowledge — and knowledge sharing — is power, after all. Berglund’s dream: an MSP in which big companies, successful small businesses and fledgling startups “forge partnerships and come together without fear of stealing each other’s ideas.” Such an outcome could accelerate the pace of business formation here and transform MSP into a truly global innovation hub.
 
 

Confluence Capital, the groundbreaking MSP venture capital (VC) fund, is now Matchstick Ventures. The rebrand comes amid a flurry of other changes announced early last month, notably the addition of several high-profile investors and advisors.
 
New investors, according to Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, include Seth Levine, managing director at Boulder-based Foundry Group, a venture capital fund; Lisa Crump, co-founder of Eden Prairie-based digifab giant Stratasys; Scott Burns, CEO of St. Paul-based GovDelivery, a software communication platform that serves government organizations; and Darren Cotter, founder of St. Paul-based online rewards company InboxDollars. Advisors include Levine and Joy Lindsay, principal at Minneapolis-based StarTec Investments.
 
But why “Matchstick”?
 
“The ‘Matchstick’ name rings truer to the entrepreneurs and startups that we exist to serve,” says founder and managing director Ryan Broshar, who also founded beta.mn and Twin Cities Startup Week. “Our goal is to act as a catalyst — not just for the companies we invest in, but for MSP’s startup economy as a whole.”
 
To date, Matchstick/Confluence has invested in 14 early-stage companies. Though most are headquartered in the MSP area, there are a few outliers: Denver, Seattle, Chicago, St. Louis, and Lincoln, Nebraska. Far from diluting Matchstick’s local potency, Broshar sees these wayward investments as central to the fund’s mission: “evangelizing” MSP’s emerging tech ecosystem.
 
“We talk up the region every time we interact with out-of-market clients and prospects,” says Broshar, adding that his company gets at least one inquiry from outside entrepreneurs or VC funds who’ve heard about Matchstick and are excited about what’s happening in MSP. “Interest in the Twin Cities is definitely gaining momentum.”
 
“The writing is on the wall for MSP’s startup scene and capital ecosystem,” he adds.
 
Broshar should know what an up-and-coming tech hub looks like. He lived in the Denver-Boulder area in the late 2000s and early 2010s, when the Front Range’s tech economy was blowing up. Broshar threw himself into the local scene, parlaying a pending MBA at UC-Boulder into a gig as a consulting firm principal. He networked with and advised ambitious Front Range entrepreneurs for a few years, then turned his focus to finding and investing in early-stage companies through partnerships with the Foundry Group and other local VCs.
 
When he moved back to MSP in fall 2012, Broshar found the same entrepreneurial energy he’d grown accustomed to in Denver-Boulder. But with few notable VC firms and a relatively conservative commercial financing ecosystem that eschewed risk, many local startups had to look elsewhere for capital.
 
“We’re blessed with a lot of gritty entrepreneurs who just go to work and get stuff done, rather than talking about what they have yet to do,” says Broshar. “But even the most talented and ambitious entrepreneurs can’t survive without capital,” along with the mentoring and peer support services provided by organizations and initiatives like Broshar’s beta.mn and Twin Cities Startup Week.
 
“The goal was, and still is, to put MSP on the map,” he says.
 

Cologix, one of the country’s most prolific data center operators, recently unveiled a new state-of-the-art facility in Downtown East’s 511 Building, the company’s MSP headquarters. According to a company press release, the 28,000-square-foot hub has space for more than 250 server cabinets and upward of 70 network connections, making it the most connected piece of real estate between Chicago and Seattle — the Internet capital of The North.
 
“People think of the Internet as this ethereal cloud,” says Graham Williams, chief operating officer, Cologix. “But in reality, that cloud is very solid. The world is crisscrossed with untold miles of fiber optic cables and dotted with servers, routers and switches. That physical infrastructure — the Internet’s plumbing — intersects at data hubs like [the 511 Building].”
 
The heart of Cologix’s new facility is the Meet Me Room, the hub where the networks actually intersect. Clients who rent space in the facility can pick and choose which networks to use. The setup is akin to a co-working space: Tenants pay to be there and provide their own equipment, but they get access to most of the service providers operating in MSP.
 
They also enjoy lower latency (faster connection speeds), which is particularly important in the video streaming business. “We enable companies like Netflix to get closer to their end users,” explains Mike Hemphill, general manager of Cologix’s Minneapolis facility. “They’re pushing copies of the shows and movies people want to watch to their servers here in Minneapolis, rather than calling everything up from California and traversing thousands of miles of fiber to get here.”
 
Increased competition for clients in the Meet Me Room reduces’ service providers’ pricing power by as much as 20 to 40 percent, says Williams. But it’s a worthwhile tradeoff. The alternative is an expensive, piecemeal approach wherein providers lay fiber all the way to clients’ offices, wherever they might be located. Depending on the fiber’s final cost per mile, directly connecting to clients could end up being less cost-effective than using a facility like the 511 Building.
 
Cologix’s new data center also houses the Midwest Internet Cooperative Exchange (MICE), a nonprofit, donation-supported network exchange used by smaller Internet service providers and telecoms as well as data-hungry content providers like Netflix. MICE was devised in 2010 to improve MSP-area bandwidth and connection speeds, and to level the playing field for smaller operators. FWR Communications, Cologix’s predecessor in the 511 Building, donated a modest square footage to house MICE’s first servers; with more than 50 participants at last count, MICE is now a major Cologix tenant.
 
“It’s an exciting time to be in this business,” muses Hemphill, whose telecommunications career has spanned nearly a half-century. “I’ve had more fun in the last decade than at any time previously.”