Fundraising in Minnesota
MinneBar 7 Session
This is a panel session.
Summary: A quantitative look at local investment activity, followed by a panel discussion.
Time: 9:40 to 10:25
Room: Theater
Mike Bollinger is a designer, coder, entrepreneur, and explorer. He is founder of Livefront, a mobile software design & development firm, and co-founder of TECHdotMN, a media group covering technology news in Minnesota. Mike has been designing and building mobile and web software for 14 years with clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups. He is an active member of the Minnesota technology community, a regular speaker at local events, and is on the Board of Directors for two non-profit organizations: Cheerful Givers and BizLounge. In his spare time Mike is an avid world traveler, a musician, a photographer, and a super-fast-sailboat-racer-guy. Jeff Pesek & Mike Bollinger founded TECHdotMN (http://tech.mn) to serve as a resource for Minnesota's high tech industry. With an emphasis on early stage startup ventures and the entrepreneurs behind them, TECHdotMN take a multi-faceted approach to adding value to Minnesota's high tech ecosystem, including: the creation and curation of relevant news and information, the maintenance of a comprehensive calendar of tech events, and the development of the largest Minnesota tech database. Jim Moar is CEO, OptiMine Software, Inc. Optimine solves the complex pricing problems facing advertisers in every channel of online advertising starting with keyword bidding in the world of paid search advertising. OptiMine’s unique ability to automatically model each keyword every day through its more and better math generates consistently better financial results of 25% or more for advertisers when compared to a broad range of incumbent bidding systems.
In late 2012, OptiMine raised $3.6m in a round led by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.
Previously, Jim was President / COO of Identix (sold in 2006 for $775M over 70 times forward EBITDA and over 8 times revenue), COO of Tennant, and COO of DataCard. He is also a founder of the Minnesota Emerging Software Advisory (MESA) whose intent is to help create one of the leading software communities in the U.S. in Minnesota by mentoring startup and emerging growth software companies.
No bio for Troy Kopischke. (create one) No bio for Justin Kaufenberg. (create one) No bio for Tony Abena. (create one) Michael Gorman is a founding Managing Director of Split Rock Partners. Gorman focuses on investments in software and internet services companies based in Minnesota and the surrounding region.
Raising investment capital - whether seed, angel, or venture - can be a necessary ingredient of the startup lifecycle.
This session will open with a quantitative look at local investment activity, followed by an entrepreneur + investor panel discussion, and conclude with a guide to best practices.
Participants can expect to deepen their understanding of the current market conditions as well as learn how to increase the probability of success when fundraising in Minnesota.
