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: Startups (Page 16 of 29)

MN-Based EduTech Startup KidBlog Now Reaching One Million Users

Yesterday, I stopped into the EduTech Minnesota conference at the U of M. I wanted to catch up with my friends Matt Hardy and Dan Flies, cofounders of Kidblog.org, and hear about the latest with their startup. 

KidBlog-logo It turns out, of the 10 startups that were selected to present at the event, none even comes close to the level of adoption these guys have achieved to date, which they announced at the event: 1,000,000 students using the platform, in more than 80,000 classrooms. And all that from a startup that began as just a sideline for Matt to use in his own classroom!

Here's my interview:

The founders describe their creation this way:  Kidblog is a platform that provides students with an authentic, engaging, and interactive learning experience. It's designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with his or her own, unique blog. It has simple but powerful tools that allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over their students' blogs. And a teacher can set up a class with no student email addresses. 

Matt likes to say it's "built by a teacher, for teachers, so students can get the most out of the blogging process." He also points out that teachers who've tried other blogging platforms (perhaps with limited success), such as Blogger, Edublogs, or WordPress.com, "will notice the Kidblog difference immediately."

Best of luck to this emerging, homegrown Minnesota edutech company!

 

DEMO Fall: a chat with Abhi Chauduri, Director-Products & UX, Whodini

Here's what I wrote about these guys on my live blog in real-time, as they presented on-stage…

Whodini (Los Altos, CA) definitely gets one of the coolest name awards. Its software automates the discovery of expert coworkers. It plugs into email clients and reduces important emails to core topics, representing expertise. Topics are then securely uploaded to the cloud and put through algorithms comparing them to the entire company and creating the user's "enterprise work profile." Recently closed a $2 million Series A with angel investors.

DEMO Fall: a chat with Dani Alyamour, CEO/Founder, Looping

Apologies for the sound quality on this one. It seems the FlipHD mic is not the greatest for picking up an interviewee three feet away in an open, noisy showfloor like this. (Note: this is my first conference recording with a Flip.) Also, in the middle of the interview, my subject can't get a network on his cell phone, so he switches to another one. I would have edited that out, but I'm about as good at video editing as I am as Dancing With the Stars. So, hey, this is it!

Here's what I live-blogged about Looping in real-time when Dani was on-stage (my entire live-blog of DEMO Fall is here) ….

Looping.com from Imovation (SF) lets any business build a loyalty program, allowing customers to collect points and redeem awards with only a mobile phone! — and it works with any kind of phone, not just smartphones. No more carrying loyalty cards! There's no NFC, nothing to install, no data plans, no GPS, no camera required…"no problem!" This is very cool, an impressive product — I saw it live-demoed earlier, and the founder did a knock-out job of explaining it inside of six minutes.

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