Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.
But if you follow me on Twitter, I guess you, uh, knew that… 🙂 Because it was nonstop, crazy, hair-on-fire tweeting from me Tuesday through Friday!! These back-to-back events were fantastic — I got to see many old friends, make some important new contacts, learn about lots of cool new startups, plus see some amazing new technology — particularly of the human-computer interface variety at the Blur event, Thursday evening and Friday.
The Twitter hashtags for both events were extremely active, to say the very least! Someone even posted a pie chart of the active tweeters towards the end of the first day of Defrag, which I reposted on Google+ here. I didn't get the total count of tweets at that point, but it had to be huuge, with #Defragcon surely a trending topic on Twitter for a while.
For some of my other coverage of both events, listen to these SoundCloud audio interviews I did during the three days, mostly of speakers or exhibitors. In addition, I posted all my photos to this Flicker set, covering both events. You can also see a blog post I did on this site, right before Blur, highlighting the two awesome Minneapolis startups I was instrumental in getting there: Canopy and QFO Labs, both of which made some amazing connections.
It was my sixth consecutive year at Defrag, ever since it began in 2007. It was my first Blur, which had previously been held twice in Orlando. This was the first year it was colocated with Defrag, which I understand will continue. The well known VC firm Foundry Group is a backer of these conferences, run by my longtime colleague and friend Eric Norlin, as well as the Glue conference developer event, held each May at the same location, the Omni Interlocken Resort in Broomfield, CO. Watch for the dates of the 2013 Glue, to be be announced soon on that web site. It will be the fourth annual, and I intend to be there. Join me!
The Blur Conference — all about the human-computer interface — just kicked off. It's taking place November 15th and 16th in Denver, right after the Defrag Conference. It's at the same venue, the Omni Interlocken Resort in Broomfield, CO. Two startups based in Minneapolis are previewing their cool, new products here: Canopy and QFO Labs.
Maybe you caught the talk by the Kickstarter cofounder at the Walker Art Center here in Minneapolis the other night? If so, perhaps you ran into one of the team members of local startup QFO Labs — the latest Minnesota product gurus to launch an ambitious project on Kickstarter. The trio seeks to raise $230,000 on the site by November 13. And it’s off to a great start, with backers including Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of WIRED, and the very successful Kickstarter projects Pebble (which has now raised $10.2M) and SmartThings (our coverage here), along with WIRED’s Geek Dad, who published an awesome post about QFO Labs recently.
What’s it all about? QFO Labs describes its project as “real-life
aerial gaming with a flick of the wrist.” The product combines a
single-handed controller that makes a palm-sized quadcopter mimic your
movements. But this is no ordinary copter. I had the opportunity to meet
one of the team members, COO Jim Fairman, and learned this group has
been developing and perfecting its remote control quadcopters for more than five years.
The three-member team
has skills that include electrical engineering, software development,
estimation and control systems, material science, product management,
and intellectual property management. (In the photo, from left: John Condon, CTO; Brad Pedersen, CEO; Jim Fairman, COO.) The team met through a new
product development course at the University of Minnesota in 2007. “We
have a broad range of experience in areas such as unmanned aircraft
systems, manufacturing process improvement, medical device design, and
even running a science museum,” said Fairman.
The controller, called “Mimix,” was designed to provide an intuitive experience. And what it also means is no more two-handed flying!
As it is tilted forward, back, left, or right, the “NanoQ” copter
responds “just like you think it should, so you feel engaged and in
control,” says the Kickstarter page. QFO Labs says the ergonomic design
of the Mimix controller is based on U.S. Air Force Human Factors data
for aircraft controls. “By using the latest sensors, radios, and
processors, Mimix puts you in command with precise, crisp control … so
simple that flying becomes second nature.” The other cool description
QFO uses is this: “Now you can fly by feeling instead of thinking.”
QFO says its product will enable real-life, multi-player aerial games – indoors or out. Think multi-team
dogfighting. You select your team through the Mimix controller, and the
LEDs then display your team colors on both the NanoQ and the Mimix.
With a pull of the trigger, you unleash a photon burst at your opponent.
If you hit their sensor pod, you score.
Here’s the video the team posted on Kickstarter:
Follow QFO Labs on Twitter here, and Like them on Facebook here.
QFO Labs says this first product is just the beginning. Ship date is
projected to be March 2013. The company plans to introduce a series of
products for real-life 3D gaming, and wants suggestions from its
Kickstarter backers on what they’d like to see for future games. Beyond
gaming, “our team has many more ideas about what to do with the
technology behind the Mimix and NanoQ,” it says.
Hackers Take Note!
The NanoQ uses an open communications protocol. You can connect your
computer to the Mimix through the USB port or optional USB RF dongle and
communicate wirelessly with the NanoQ to:
• Tweak the control parameters
• Update the NanoQ firmware
• Send control commands directly from a laptop
• Send customized signals out of the IR transmitter
• Receive craft telemetry such as attitude, control commands, and even raw sensor data
You can even connect your own electronics payload, like an Arduino,
camera, or home-brewed project to the auxiliary serial (UART + power)
port on the NanoQ. And QFO promises a Developers Forum on its web site
where everyone can share in their achievements.
How to Back the QFO Labs Project
Just go to the Kickstarter page here and select your Reward Level. I did — I’m a backer! And I encourage all my followers to do the same…
Support innovation — help the
QFO Labs team reach their goal on Kickstarter. Their deadline of
November 13 is only 16 days away!
(Note: This post first appeared earlier today on Minnov8.)
Well, let's say nicely funded, anyway — a fully subscribed seed round that fulfills their near-term capital needs. I wanted to write a post to report the latest update on this amazing Minnesota tech startup: Kidblog. You've seen me write about these guys before: earlier this summer … and almost a year ago when I posted an update from the EduTech Minnesota conference, when the company hit a million users. We also had one of the Kidblog cofounders as our guest on the podcast about that same time: Minnov8 Gang 97: R U Kidding about Kidblog?
The company launched a new website and identity in August. But here's the biggest update of all: it just reported its user count has shot past 1.8 million! Kidblog is a safe blogging platform designed for K-12 teachers, students, and schools — and it stands head-and-shoulders above other solutions out there. It's an amazing "Grown in Minnesota" story that is a testament to the Internet innovation that happens here in our state!
I've known the cofounders, Matt Hardy (left, with admirer) and Dan Flies, for at least three years, and have been closely monitoring their progress. So, I'm especially excited about the success they're achieving. They've now received validation from some very savvy investors, not to speak of even more from their market: the teachers who have loved them for a long time, and continue to support the product with gushing testimonials and positive reviews.
The $400K seed round Kidblog opened in the spring was completed in June, with California investors Scott Banister, 500 Startups, and Maneesh Arora participating, joined by Minnesota angels Peter Schleider (RKB Capital) and Scott Burns (founder of GovDelivery).
Matt and Dan, who met as college buddies at U of M-Morris, have worked really hard to build something great. Kidblog began as a passion for them, and very much continues to be. It's only within the past year that they didn't have to maintain days jobs, too! Matt was a primary school teacher in Eden Prairie for many years, and Dan has worked in IT, most recently at Lawson Software.
Here's how they describe their creation: "Kidblog is built by teachers, for teachers, so students can get the most out of the writing process. Our mission is to empower teachers to embrace the benefits of the coming digital revolution in education. As students become creators – not just consumers – of information, we recognize the crucial role of teachers as discussion moderators and content curators in the classroom. With Kidblog, teachers monitor and control all activity within their classroom blogging community."
See the video interview below for more on their summer in the Valley. The duo participated in a large edutech event in San Diego in late June, where Matt said "they received a lot of love" from educators, and were the envy of other edutech startups that exhibited. The two wrote about that experience in this blog post.
During their last month in Mountain View, on August 20, Kidblog released a massive update to its platform. "We’ve listened to our users and made the world’s best student-publishing platform even better with a plethora of new features for teachers and students," they declared on this blog post: 14 New Kidblog Features You're Guaranteed to Love.
Stay in touch with Kidblog at its company blog here. Get more great updates at their Facebook page (including posts about their summer in CA). And follow the company on Twitter @KidblogDotOrg.
Here's the eight-minute interview I recorded before we had lunch on Wednesday:
I asked a few followup questions of Matt. Here's that exchange:
Graeme: What's your stance now on Minnesota vs. California as far as a base of operations?
Matt Hardy: We deliberated carefully about these two locales. Silicon Valley is the heart of the startup universe and access to capital is unparalleled. Minneapolis has its own burgeoning startup culture, and there is developer talent here equal to the Bay Area. Cost of operations in Minnesota will be significantly lower. We can fly to San Francisco four times a month with the cash we save by not paying rent there.
Graeme: Did any existing or potential investors in California tell you they thought you should, or would eventually have to, relocate to the Bay Area?
Matt Hardy: None of our current investors has given us an ultimatum. It was suggested that it will be harder to raise funds with a pre-revenue, consumer web, growth model outside of Silicon Valley. We agree, but we also know that savvy investors can identify great companies anywhere. Dave McClure of 500 Startups has indicated that some VCs in the Valley can miss opportunities by limiting investments to their own backyard. (Here's a great recent post Dave wrote that touched on that point — it's long, but filled with insights for startup founders and investors.)
Graeme: What was the attitude of your 500 Startups peers to this question, assuming the vast majority of them are based in the Bay Area?
Matt Hardy: Many founders in the Bay Area are gravitating toward San Francisco specifically. As Google and Facebook absorb talent at the southern end of the Peninsula, the hot place to be is the city. The sheer density of startups and investors creates a climate that drives everyone to build products better, bigger, faster. You definitely feel pushed to keep up with other teams doing awesome things. On the other hand, you can also get so caught up in the "cool kid" scene, attending trendy events and worshiping certain entrepreneurial icons, that you forget to put your head down and build something great that people want. We've spent the last three months in Mountain View working 16-hour days to build just that — the world's best student-publishing platform, beloved by teachers around the world.
Best of luck to Matt and Dan as they grow their business! This is a company I have no doubt will continue to make Minnesota proud.
Unless you were totally off the grid in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area for the past few days, you surely know by now that Yahoo! has named former Google exec Marissa Mayer as its new CEO. But what you may not know is that two of our fellow MInnesota techies have ties to her, going back years — they're both friends of mine, and both have been startup clients of my consulting business.
One is Lief Larson (right), founder of Workface Inc., a venture-backed firm doing cool things to humanize business on the web. The other is Joe Sriver, who in 2008 founded the highly successful mobile app development firm DoApp Inc. (where, in addition to serving as an advisor, I was interim VP of marketing for a time).
Lief went all through school with Marissa in Wausau, Wisconsin, where both of them showed an early interest in programming. He gave me this reaction to the news:
"Yahoo! is ripe for reinvention, and I think Marissa is just the woman for the job. The one piece of news that came as a bit of a surprise is that she's pregnant and will be taking maternity leave in October, just three months after taking the helm. I look forward to seeing what the next several months will hold for Yahoo!"
Joe's connection to Marissa came later — he was hired by her in 2001 as Google employee #198. (She was Google employee #20, its first female engineer.) Joe was Google's first UI designer and worked for Marissa for some years, directly involved in such early products as AdSense and AdWords. Here's what Joe had to say when I asked for his reaction to Marissa's new role:
"I was surprised by the announcement, as it sounds many others were. A pleasant surprise, that is. I feel she's the best person in the Valley to bring Yahoo back — the best pick Yahoo could make. She has a great technical background, superb at driving products, and has a great marketing sense. She's not an outsider, she knows the space well…exactly what Yahoo needs at the top. She will create a buzz around Yahoo. The analysts will be watching her moves closely, but she's prepared."
Of course, the tech community is almost universally supportive of this decision by the Yahoo! board — why wouldn't they like the choice of a technology exec to lead the turnaround? Anything but an exec from the screwed-up media industry, huh?
I'm with Lief and Joe — I think Marissa is bound to bring some mojo back to $YHOO!
After it was launched back in 2005, Graeme Thickins on Tech was named several times to the list of top analyst blogs (last ranked as #119 on the list, under the blog’s previous name).
But if you follow me on Twitter, I guess you, uh, knew that… 🙂 Because it was nonstop, crazy, hair-on-fire tweeting from me Tuesday through Friday!! These back-to-back events were fantastic — I got to see many old friends, make some important new contacts, learn about lots of cool new startups, plus see some amazing new technology — particularly of the human-computer interface variety at the Blur event, Thursday evening and Friday.
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