Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: Best Buy (Page 1 of 2)

A.I. Startups of Several Flavors Pitch Passionately in Minneapolis

It was my pleasure to host an awesome group of founders at a conference on June 7, 2024 — all of them focused in data and AI. The conference attracted more than 1200 attendees. It was the seventh edition of the MinneAnalytics DATA TECH Conference, which took place at the Best Buy HQ Campus in Richfield, MN.

As a board member of MinneAnalytics, I again organized and hosted  a “Startup Showcase”  that morning. It was the 16th such session over the past decade that I’ve had the privilege of putting together. All told, MinneAnalytics has given a platform to a total of 139 startups in these showcases, which collectively have raised hundreds of millions in capital and created thousands of jobs. Already, a dozen of these startups have had successful exits via acquisition.

view of the crowded room at the Startup Showcase

Our startup session this time continued the strong attendance we had at our last event, the April 19 Healthcare Conference (which I wrote about in my previous post). Attendance was again standing room during most of this session, and even more crowded for the VC Panel at the end.

Please do click on the links below to learn about each of these promising startups! They’re representative of the wide array of data & AI startups that are popping up all over these days. After the event, I asked each presenter, What was one good thing that happened to you because of your participation in this session, or one interesting contact you made?

STARTUP PRESENTERS’ FEEDBACK

Luke Roquet, Datavolo (Minnesota & Arizona): “We met some really interesting people from across town, but hearing what Philips Healthcare is doing and how we might be able to help them with their image processing pipelines was my top takeaway from the event.”Datavolo pitching

Kristopher Purens, Uroboros Innovations (Chicago): “We made several great connections with new people and reconnected with old contacts. Really valuable event for us. Panel discussion was very helpful, too.”Uroboros pitching

Dan Feehan, Code4pro (Minnesota): “Fantastic event. Loved the organization and straightforwardness of it all and the complement of the panel and timely AI discussion. I also loved how easy it was to connect with folks and understand their part of the ecosystem. I even ran into my best friend from 7th grade that I haven’t seen in 30 years! Great job by all presenters!”Code4pro pitching

Michael Petersen, Raise a Hood (Minnesota): “We came away from the event with a dozen new connections — potential investors, potential customers, and even potential partners. It was a day very well invested!”Raise a Hood pitching

Jeremy Vaughan, Start Left Security (Jacksonville FL): “Great event, great community! MinneAnalytics provides an example of what other cities can do for their tech folks and startups. Start Left Security made great connections with new partners and even have some investors chasing us down now!”Start Left Security pitching

Toriano Sanzone, Dot Dog (New Orleans): “The Startup Showcase was truly impressive. I do wish I had brought more business cards and USB drives with my pitch deck, as the networking opportunities were exceptional. Presenting my company DOT DOG and Dog Training AI has boosted my confidence in the direction I am heading. Attending MinneAnalytics events is a priority for the rest of 2024, and I look forward to the possibility of presenting again in 2025.”Dot Dog pitching

Jolly Nanda, Altheia (Minnesota): “It was a great event. I liked the opportunity to connect with my fellow startups, VCs, and supporters. I enjoyed the networking between sessions as well.”Altheia pitching

George Asante, Affine Health Intelligence (Evanston IL): “It was great to be included in such a remarkable event.”Affine Health Intelligence pitching

My sincere thanks to these amazing founders! They pitched their hearts out and captivated our audience.

PANELISTS’ COMMENTS

The panel following the startup pitches packed the room even further. The topic was, “How Are Investors Evaluating Startups in the Age of Data and AI?” After the event, I asked each panelist, What was the single best insight or comment you would cite from the discussion?

headshots of panel participants

Ryan Weber, Great North Ventures (Minnesota): “I loved hearing from John about Piper’s cautious adoption given security concerns and protecting their clients — and from Ryan Broshar about how one of their portfolio companies is addressing it. Also loved Nick’s comment on the due diligence “BS call,” where they bring in an expert to chat with [a startup pitching them] to ensure they aren’t just big talkers. We do that, too, but I never thought of it so bluntly. It makes very clear the intention of that call. With all the hype and new jargon, [such a step] makes a lot of sense in this age of AI.”

Nick Moran, New Stack Ventures  (Chicago): “I believe it was Ryan Weber that emphasized the importance of data in an AI strategy. This is an area we’ve been spending on a lot of time in as we think about defensibility and long-term moats. The comments really resonated and made me think about how that applies to our investments.”

Ryan Broshar, Matchstick Ventures (Minneapolis & Boulder) : “I liked the discussion around the adoption of AI by enterprises, and that we know they will be late adopters when it comes to any product they are building — but probably don’t know the extent to which their employees are already using it to improve productivity.”

John Gast, Piper Sandler (Minneapolis): “I enjoyed the discussion and appreciate how you moderated it, Graeme. It struck me that our collective remarks underscored how quickly this market is moving. We didn’t dwell on the fervor around LLMs in the last 12 to 24 months – instead, we had a rational discussion about the application of this technology to real problems.”

Really excellent panel! Thanks again, guys — and to all who attended and asked great questions.

I hope those of you reading this post can join us at our next Startup Showcase. Watch for an announcement in a future MinneAnalytics newsletter. If you aren’t on that list, please do sign up here. Join the almost 20,000 in the amazing MinneAnalytics community!

Hit the comments and let me know what you think, or if you have a question. Thanks!

Blogger Pitch: Wow, Best Buy Is Trying to Buy Me for $100…

Shhh-SecretOkay, not just me — probably hundreds of bloggers got the pitch. I thought my friends from the early days of the BestBuy.com team would especially get a kick out of this.

Let's start a little contest: how many bloggers do you think will do it?  20? 30? 50? 

I won't be one of them.  Well, other than showing you the pitch — here it is, names and contact info redacted:

————–

Hi Graeme,
 
Seeking a faster, easier way to pick out your next favorite mobile tech gadget? And looking to learn all about it?
 
We’d like to invite you to come see how we’re making technology work for you. At Best Buy, customer comes first and convenience is our goal… so much so that we’re creating a whole new shopping experience with you in mind!
 
My name is XXXXXX, and I’m reaching out on behalf of Best Buy to invite you to discover the new shopping experience being launched this Saturday, October 13 at the following locations:
• Eden Prairie 11600 Leona Road  Eden Prairie, MN 55344
• Maplewood  1795 County Road D East  Maplewood, MN 55109
• Coon Rapids  12633 Riverdale Blvd NW  Coon Rapids, MN 55448
• Eagan 1235 Town Centre Drive  Eagan, MN 55123
 
By visiting the store this weekend, you’ll have an opportunity to see the new store layout first-hand, which you can then share with your readers.  A few upgrades you’ll notice with the new layout include:
• An expanded Geek Squad precinct, which can help make understanding your gadgets easier
• Eye-level displays creating more opportunities to play with and discover the technology you love
• Digital registers located throughout the store to streamline the check-out process so you can get in and out faster than ever
• New in-store digital displays that update as often as our products do so you can be in-the-know with the latest information on all your favorite brands


As a thank you for sharing information about the new store experience with your readers, we’d like to offer you a $100 Best Buy gift card, as well as the chance for your readers to win $25 Best Buy gift cards.  In addition, we also ask that you share your experiences on Twitter using the hashtag #NewBestBuy.

Please let me know as soon as possible if you’d be interested in this opportunity, and I’d be happy to provide more details.
 
If you cannot join us this weekend, that’s okay! We’d still love for you to share information about the new store layout and offer your readers the Best Buy gift card giveaway opportunity.
 
Making technology work for you starts with making stores that work for you. Come check out the new store and experience it for yourself!
 
To learn more, click here.
 
I look forward to hearing from you!
 
Thanks,
XXXXXX
On behalf of Best Buy


Find Best Buy on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter @BestBuy
 
                                                
XXXXXX XXXXXXX
Account Coordinator
Zócalo Group| XXX E. Randolph, XXnd Floor | Chicago, IL 60601
Phone: XXX XXX XXXX Email: XXXXXXXXX@zocalogroup.com

——–

So, what's your guess?  How many bloggers will take the $100?  It would be pretty easy for me to find out with a Goggle Search in a few days.  Look for my update to this post.

 

 

Minnebar 2012: Tech Geek-Out Extraordinaire!

(This post first appeared April 8, 2012, on Minnov8.com.)

Minnesota's annual barcamp un-conference, aka Minnebar, returned for a seventh consecutive year on Saturday, April 7, and it was a blockbuster! Held again at Best Buy's corporate headquarters in Richfield, MN, the event attracted some 1300, the most in its history.

MinnebarPost.pngc1 MinnebarPost.pngc2It just keeps getting bigger and bigger — and better!  A pre-party the night before was a new, fun twist this year, held at Vic's, across the river from Downtown Minneapolis.  On Saturday, some 60 breakout sessions provided a wide array of learning and sharing experiences, along with awesome hallway discussions that were in full swing all day long — from 8:00 am all the way through the closing reception well after 6:00 pm.

Kudos to organizers Ben Edwards, Luke Francl, and Adrienne Peirce of Minnestar.org, and their many volunteers who work so hard to make this event successful. And thanks to all the great sponsors: Code42 Software, Fredrikson & Byron, 8th Bridge, W3i, ipHouse, August Ash, Bloom Health, Barcamp Tour, Split Rock Partners, ChowGirls, and Ech03.

MinnebarPost.pngc3 MinnebarPost.pngc4It seems I say this every year, but it's true (I've attended the last six annual events in their entirety):  the level of energy and enthusiasm about Minnesota Tech was more than I've ever experienced!  You can just sense the growth and excitement in our tech community. And, if you're like me, you keep meeting so many more new and amazing people — technology and business professionals who are contributing to great new startups here in Minnesota, as well as to the broader technology industry in our state.  It was a pleasure to behold.  I had so many excellent conversations, trust me — there isn't enough room in this blog post to tell you about them all <haha>.

But I can show you pics I shot Friday night and all day Saturday, which I posted on Instagram. Here's a selection of those pics that I put into a Minnebar 2012 Flickr set.

My Top 10 Blog Posts of 2011

As the year comes to a close, I decided to humor myself by taking a look back and choosing my favorite blog posts for 2011.  (It's New Year's Eve and I'm home sick, so no partying for me.)  Here's the list — in chronological order, the first one from February, and the last from early December. I'm just showing the first paragraph or two of each of these posts below (or, for some of the video interview posts, just a screen grab of the subject), then a link to read the full post.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Blogging Gone Wild

People who've been reading this blog for a while may know I started it in 2005. That's a long time in blog years, and it's resulted in a monstrous archive of what people now call "long-form blogging" — at least it is for me, as one, lone writer.BlogServices-logos(6)  My quick tally is about 400,000-500,000 words (several books' worth), and I can't even begin to guess the *time* I have into it. Let's just say it's been countless thousands of hours that I've spent filling this space — planning, thinking, writing, editing, covering events, managing comments, and, not the least, all the time spent in the behind-the-scenes (pain in the ass)  administration of the site.  That last part is especially a challenge with Typepad, the platform I chose way back when. Unfortunately, it hasn't kept up with bloggers' needs, especially from a UI/ease-of-use standpoint. (But the time to convert my blog to WordPress, as I might like, has just been way too much of a time hurdle to consider if I want to keep paying the bills with the income I have to generate in the non-blogging part of my business life.) The whole notion of "micro" blogging wasn't even in our minds back in 2005. But, of course, those of you who follow me regularly know I've been posting the majority of my online content for the past few years on a certain site that starts with a "T".  ….  Read the rest of the post here.

Live Blog: DEMO Spring 2011

I'm back at DEMO doing another live-blog. This is the 12th time I've reported on DEMO, and I've been doing the last few by using the "Cover It Live" app (see window below). Produced by the IDG Enterprise events group in conjunction with VentureBeat, the DEMO conferences in the United States and China focus on emerging technologies and new product innovations, which are hand selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. DEMOspring2011_bannerThe DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow's cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launchpad events for companies such as Palm, E*Trade, Handspring, and U.S. Robotics, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. For more information on the DEMO conferences, visit DEMO.com.  The conference kicks off officially at 9:15 am Pacific today, when my live-blogging will begin in earnest.  Here's the agenda.  ….  Read the rest of the post here.

Glue Conference: A Chat With Mark Suster, GRP Partners

MarkSuster-videoframe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Watch the video here.

Glue Conference: Listen In On a Great Chat Between Terry Jones/FluidInfo and Seth Levine/Foundry Group

TerryJonesOne of the things I love most SethLevineabout attending great events like Glue is getting to be a fly on the wall in some awesome conversations. Except, for this one, I had my brand-new review unit Olympus LS-20M at the ready (having been recording interviews all day), so was able to capture this chat literally on the spur of the moment in HD video and high-quality audio, just by unobtrusively aiming the recorder.  Terry and Seth went on and on in a really interesting exhange about Terry's big-data startup FluidInfo (investors include Esther Dyson and Tim O'Reilly), so I just kept shooting and taking it all in.  Give a listen. …. Watch the video here.

George Reese on "The Cloud's Shining Moment," Four Days Later

Cloud-ShiningThe major Amazon Web Services outage that began this past Thursday morning was unlike anything before it.  Countless AWS customers, big and small, GeorgeReesewent down, many for days. Surprisingly, other biggies like Netflix, SmugMug, and Twilio had little or no disruption.  One hungers to know why…

Over the weekend, George Reese, a cloud expert and author (and CTO of cloud-management tools company enStratus), wrote a fascinating post on O'Reilly about what some would call a cloud disaster — entitling it, ironically enough, "The Cloud's Shining Moment." George has a unique perspective on the cloud, and a large following. …. Read the rest of the post here.

Live Blog: DEMO Fall 2011

DEMOfall2011-lobbyIt's time, gang — for another one of my conference live-blogs, this time for DEMOfall.  Once again, as I have for the last several events I've covered, I'm using the "Cover It Live" app (see window below). With more than 20,000 technologies reviewed and 1,500 companies selected to launch on the DEMO stage over the past 20 years, DEMO has continually searched the globe to find innovation where it lives. The DEMO Team has logged millions of miles to uncover technology '"diamonds in the rough. Some of the companies that have launched at DEMO include Salesforce.com, Netscape, VMware, TiVo, Skype (for mobile handsets), WebEx, Jajah, Boingo Wireless, BuzzLogic, Vringo, and many more. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow's cutting-edge technologies, helping its presenting companies secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. ….  Read the rest of the post here.

Defrag 2011: My Interview of Robert Stephens, CTO, Best Buy

RobertStephensIt was great to catch my friend Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad and now CTO of Best Buy, this morning at breakfast on Day 2 of Defrag. It was right before his opening keynote, and he gave me kind of a sneak peak to his talk.  We covered a lot of topics, and could have gone on even longer. … Here's the 10-minute interview.

 

 

 

Defrag 2011: My Interview of James Altucher

JamesAltucherI had a chance to catch James at breakfast this morning, on Day 1 of Defrag. Could have talked to him for an hour… fascinating guy (he's been an entrepreneur, VC, hedge fund manager, and is a prolific writer — author of several books and a regular TechCrunch contributor). Gonna have him autograph his latest book, "I Was Blind But Now I See," which we got in our Defrag swag bag. … Watch the video here.

 

 

 

 

My Live Blog: Defrag 2011 – the 5th Annual!

Defrag-logo+hotelWow, time flies. Seems like only yesterday we gathered in downtown Denver for the first Defrag conference in the fall of 2007. Now I'm about to experience my fifth, and each has been better than the one before.  A couple years ago, the venue was switched to the OMNI Interlocken Resort in nearby Broomfield, where I arrived today about noon. Why is Defrag special?  Here's how conference organizer Eric Norlin (Twitter name: @defrag) explained it in a recent blog post: "It’s about being passionate about the learning process… that turns out to be what is different about Defrag." …. Read the rest of the post here.

 

 

Why I'm Returning My KindleFire (and Saving My Money for an iPad 3)

KindleFireI picked up a KindleFire last week, a couple days after Amazon started selling them.  I had pre-ordered one at my local Best Buy store.  I didn't really need one, of course — I've been a happy iPad user since Day One.  (And the same for the iPhone since its Day One. It's no secret I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Apple fanboy.)  The iPad has changed my online life. I could not live without it. But, heck, I'm a tech blogger, an analyst, a reviewer, and the KindleFire was cheap.  (Sometimes, as a blogger, a review unit shows up at my door, but not this time.)  For the low, low price, below Amazon's cost, I saw the launch of the Fire as an excuse for me to finally acquire an Android device and see what life is like on the other side. And I liked the idea of the Amazon-curated app store, which would cut down on all the rogue crap-apps and malware in the Android world. Well, the experiment didn't last long. I was not impressed. …. Read the rest of the post here.

That's it — my 10 best posts from 2011.  (Not counting the ones I contribute to Minnov8.com — check those out, too.)  Here's to another good year of banging on the keyboard in 2012.  Happy New Year, everyone!

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