During the reception after Day 1 of the Glue Conference, I stopped at the GM booth to learn more about their big push for apps in cars, and the hackathon they're sponsoring here. Sound quality starts out bad (sorry), but gets better. Watch for announcement about the winners later today, during Day 2 of Glue.
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Sitting in the big room — largest Gluecon ever, and I'm back for my fifth! As you can see from the agenda, it's packed with hot topics… even six-across breakout sessions this year, as event organizer Eric Norlin told me in a brief interview just before the kickoff of Day One. Watch for more from me as the event unfolds today and tomorrow…
UPDATE 5/23: Haven't been able to post a lot here yet — but, in case you didn't know, I've been tweeting my brains out about happenings at #gluecon here.
[Note: This post first appeared earlier today at Minnov8.com.]
Minneapolis-based Spark Devices today launched a new project on Kickstarter in a major reboot of the company. The new Kickstarter comes as the cofounders are about to complete an accelerator program in China called HAXLR8R (“hack-celerator” – get it?). It’s described as “a new kind of accelerator program for people who hack hardware and make things.” (Mentors include Brad Feld, Nolan Bushnell, and a host of others.) The Demo Day for the current class is May 13.
“There’s been a lot of excitement around Internet-connected devices, but the barrier’s always been pretty high because building Wi-Fi into a product is surprisingly expensive and difficult,” said Zach Supalla, cofounder and CEO. “We want to take down that barrier so that people can experiment with Internet-connected products as freely as they do with electronics in general using an Arduino.”
Spark Devices is building an open source development kit for Wi-Fi enabled products. “Spark Core” — it’s first product (and the name of the Kickstarter project) — is an Arduino-compatible, Wi-Fi enabled, cloud-powered development platform that makes creating Internet-connected hardware a breeze. The team confidently state on its new Kickstarter page, “There’s nothing you can’t build with the Core.”
How big is this “Internet of Things” (IoT) thing?
How does 24 billion devices connected by 2020 grab you? How does the notion of “transforming everything” grab you? A recent survey on IoT found 66% of IT professionals actually believe it will play a part in business and consumer technology converging within 3-5 years. (More about that SAP/Harris Interactive study in this post from ReadWrite Cloud.)
As Spark Devices aptly puts it, “we’re entering a world where products listen and communicate.” It notes that, so far, the Internet of Things is being driven by startups — think Pebble Watch, FitBit, the Nest thermostat, and others that are disrupting sleepy old product categories. But the founders rightly see a huge opportunity to help thousands of established companies take advantage of this connected-devices movement. [That's right, so they don't get disrupted .]
Spark Core works like an Arduino with integrated Wi-Fi. It’s powered by the new Texas Instruments CC3000 Wi-Fi module, and can be easily integrated into any circuit board.
How to manage all these devices?
Spark Core isn’t all that’s being debuted in this Kickstarter project. The company is also announcing it will be building a cloud service to manage its Wi-Fi enabled products in the field. The “Spark Cloud” is a
scalable, managed infrastructure for communicating with all Spark-powered devices — an open but secure system, with a developer-friendly REST API. A key point: this cloud will enable over-the-air firmware updates to improve products over time. Read the FAQ on the Kickstarter project. If you’re a hacker, it will blow your mind.
How to back Spark
Spark Core is being sold for $39 on the company’s Kickstarter project page, and later will be sold on its website and through electronics distributors. But if you move fast, 200 Spark Cores are available for $29 each on Kickstarter as an Early-Bird Special. And there are other great options to back the Kickstarter project.
What can you build with Spark Core and Spark Cloud?
Sample products cited on the Kickstarter page include things like a wireless motion detector, a solar-powered security camera, or even, as the Kickstarter video shows, a “pizza orderer.” To say the possibilities are limitless is not exaggerating.
Here’s more on the Spark Devices team:
• Zach Supalla, CEO. Formerly worked at McKinsey (operations and product development) and Groupon. Kellogg (MBA), McCormick (MEM), Dartmouth (BA).
• Zachary Crockett, CTO. Software developer with broad experience across platforms (Ruby, Java, Objective C). U of MN (Ph.D), Vanderbilt (BA).
• Stephanie Rich, VP of Biz Dev. Former director of sales and marketing in the film industry (GreeneStreet Films). Cambridge (MBA), Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism (BS).
• Will Hart, Design Engineer. Cook Engineering Design Fellow at Dartmouth College. BE and ME in Mechanical Engineering, Dartmouth.
[Recent photo shows the team in China, minus Steph, who stayed home in Minneapolis to hold down the fort. Left to right: Zach, Zachary, Will.]
The partnership with the aforementioned HAXLR8R hardware-focused incubator, based in Shenzhen, China, provides Spark Devices an extensive ecosystem of mentors, investors, and fellow startups.
For more on Spark Devices, see its latest web site, and follow the company on Twitter and Facebook. Also catch the founders at the upcoming Bay Area Maker Faire, and (I personally hope) at the Glue Conference later in May. Then, soon, the entire team will be back home hard at work at CoCo Minneapolis at the Grain Exchange.
Congrats to Spark Devices: another great example of Minnesota tech innovation — gone global!
They're both coming soon! And they may actually be arriving about the same time. But, no worries, the first-year Midwest Mobile Summit will be held April 28-29 in downtown Fargo ND, which I'm told is a pretty safe area of town from the rising waters that come every spring to this city partially bordered on the Red River.
But if you really want to find out when the floods
might arrive — well, it turns out there's an iOS app for that. Its name? Why, H2O Fargo, of course! And it became available a couple of weeks ago in the App Store, just in time for the inevitable rising waters.
I learned about the app when I met with the guys from Myriad Devices, a mobile app development shop that's the lead sponsor and organizer of the Midwest Mobile Summit. They developed the flood app as a public service for their community, and Jake Joraanstad, CEO, told me the app was approved by Apple in only one day! I guess they understood the urgency of the situation. (Screenshots of the app shown.)
The MIdwest Mobile Summit has big support of the local community, and will draw a large representation of the area's significant technology industry, including angels and VCs, Microsoft and ex-Microsoft managers, NDSU officials, and a
strong mobile development community. Read more about the the schedule, speakers, and sponsors at the event site — and how to obtain tickets. You can purchase Day One, Day Two, or both days. Overnight accommocations for Sunday, April 28, are availabke at the nearby Radisson downtown (info at event site). Several speakers and attendees are coming from the Twin Cities. See you there if you can make it!
(Note: This news appeared earlier this morning on Minnov8.com.)
W3i, one of Minnesota's largest and fastest-growing Internet companies, with headquarters in St. Cloud and offices in Minneapolis and San Francisco, just made a major announcement today. The company has changed its name to NativeX and completely rebranded around a new platform to help developers better monetize their apps. The focus for W3i has long been primarily (though not exclusively) on game apps, so it's no surprise the announcement was timed to hit the wire as the company prepares for the huge Game Developers Conference, which takes place all next week in San Francisco.
With this move, the company is positioning to jump on what is becoming a clear trend toward advertising that is more specific, or native, to various web platforms, as opposed to the old, tired banner advertising, which everyone loves to hate. W3i, now Native X, clearly wants to own the concept for apps, and what better way than to use the term right in their name?
A key part of the announcement today, adding mucho cred with the gaming community, is the addition
of Trip Hawkins as an "advisor to the board." Trip, whom the company rightfully calls an "industry giant," has a history going back to Apple's early days. You can read all about him here on his Wikipedia page.
“Native advertising is the future," Hawkins says in the news announcement. “Every major publisher on mobile and web has their eye on native advertising right now. NativeX is proving that we as an industry can do better than banner ads.”
What many observers would find even more interesting about this new initiative of W3i (now NativeX) is that a guy named Young Sohn is chairman of its board. (More on Young below.)
I conducted an email interview with Rob Weber, cofounder and EVP of NativeX, after I got early word of this news last night:
Why did you decide to rebrand the company?
"As we reviewed our marketing strategy, it became clear to us that the name 'W3i' didn't convey what we are all about. In the digital media world, most industry experts would agree that display advertising is broken. Even the largest banner ad units result in CPMs for publishers only in the $2.00 range, max. The reason for the low performance is display ads don't drive engagement, and ultimately value, for marketers. This is why Google invented a more 'native' ad unit for its business (paid search), Facebook created new ad units built for the news feed, Twitter launched sponsored tweets, and, locally, DoApp introduced 'RSS news ads.' We are focused on solving this problem for consumer app developers, and we felt like the name 'nativeX' speaks directly to where we are headed — creating new, native ad units for developers that bring strong monetization to their business."
How did you get connected to Trip? What role will he play?
"I was first introduced to Trip about a year ago by a mutual friend on a trip to San Francisco. We stayed in touch, and it became clear he could help us in a number of ways. Trip will provide a strategic perspective to our board with respect to what is going on in mobile and in the app space, which is dominated by game apps. Trip will help us build even stronger ties and awareness within the broader app world, and specifically in the Bay Area. On a personal level, Trip has also been helpful as a mentor to me."
How long have you been planning this? Who drove the rebranding?
"Plans have been in the works for a few months, and the rebranding effort has been led by our new VP of
Marketing, Diana LaGattuta, based in San Francisco." [Ed.: Her photo at right, and her bio appears on the NatixeX web site.]
What changes will result to the organization locally, if any?
"In terms of local changes, we expect a clearer message to our target clients, along with the new technology we're launching, will enable us to continue to increase the value of our company, which will result in us ontinuing to hire even more folks locally."
How will this affect your SF organization? Will you be expanding it?
"We are looking to grow additional headcount in all three of our offices — St. Cloud, Minneapolis, and San Francisco. The Bay Area has a lot of relevant talent for a business like ours, and we plan to add significant headcount there. We've seen that the Bay Area talent we already have gives us the opportunity to increase our perspective, which helps the rest of the team grow faster."
Does it mean any significant new hiring plans right away?
"We have lots of hiring plans immediately. Check out our career page for specifics." [Ed.: That would be here. No specific jobs listed there as I publish this, but there sure is some enticing copy. And an email link to apply.]
What new partnerships, if any, will become a part of this new initiative?
"We will continue to ramp partnerships with mobile and desktop app developers. For example, in October we announced a new partnership with one of the globally most popular mobile app developers in the world, Imangi Studios, maker of the smash hit Temple Run. We have some other new partnerships that will be similar, but taking advantage of our new native technology."
What are the long-term implications in this for your company?
"We think the rebranding and new technology will help us create further differentiation in the market. We think we can own 'native advertising' within the app space. Expect to see more specifics in terms of new products, technology, partnerships, and more tied to this 'native' approach."
What if anything can we read into this because you have the Chief Strategy Officer of Samsung on your board?
"Young was 100% supportive of our rebranding."
Rob Weber and his company have long been champions of developers, not only helping them make money with their apps, but even helping them get funding to launch or expand. He wrote a guest post on VentureBeat earlier this month, Six ways the Five Horsemen of Tech can build better app ecosystems, in which he spoke about that. (The "Five Horseman" being Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Samsung.)
#3 Lend a Hand: Create Funding Programs for Developers
This one is also fairly obvious. On one hand, you have large thriving companies generating billions of dollars in revenue every year. On the other hand, you have an app market that gets more cutthroat every day and is filled with bootstrapped developers struggling to stay competitive. All of the horsemen should be creating sizable developer funds to help them build the teams and infrastructure they need to make great apps. Such funds would also encourage developers to leverage the horsemen’s technology and make something innovative on their platform. Samsung is a great example of this. With their recently announced $100 million Samsung Catalyst Fund, Samsung will expand their brand, work with great developers, and help build their app ecosystem as clarified at the recent Dive Into Media conference.
Horseman that does this the best: Samsung*
*Full disclosure, the Chairman of our board at nativeX, Young Sohn, is President and Chief Strategy Officer at Samsung, and is involved in overseeing Samsung’s fund.
Young Sohn will surely play a role in guiding NativeX to even more growth going forward. Stay tuned!
And, by the way, I'll be reporting from GDC next week myself, inlcuding updates about Minneapolis-based startup Canopy, which also will have a big presence there.
——-
(My disclosure: I provided consulting services to W3i in past years, but have no current contractual relationship with the firm.)
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