While this year’s Twin Cities Startup Week has come to an end, the many participating founders and entrepreneurs are just getting started.
The annual event included online and in-person panels and workshops at the Science Museum of Minnesota and Finnegans Brewery. Organizers this year expanded the startup-themed festivities to include entrepreneurship beyond just the tech sector.
Several marquee events took place throughout the week’s programming, including the Minnesota Cup, the gener8tor St. Thomas Showcase, the Beta Showcase, Minnedemo37 and the Minnesota Startup Awards ceremony.
Though there are many companies that shined, here are six Minnesota companies that made particularly big wins at this year’s Twin Cities Startup Week:
BKB Floral Foam
Founded in 2015, BKB Floral Foam Inc. develops sustainable alternatives to foams now made from fossil fuels. Its technology was developed at the University of Minnesota in partnership with the university’s National Science Foundation Center for Sustainable Polymers. The company spun off from the university in 2018.
The research and development team, based in Minneapolis, is actively working toward commercialization of its floral foam products, which have already been patented, according to BKB’s website.
CEO and Co-founder Dundee Butcher thought of the idea for compostable floral foam while working as a florist in London, according to the competition’s website.
BKB won the grand prize of the Minnesota Cup, the university’s statewide startup competition, earning $50,000. The competition’s Grand Prize Review Board selected BKB as the winner out of the nine divisional winners of the Minnesota Cup (and out of the largest number of applicants the competition has ever seen). The company had already earned $25,000 due to its win in the energy/cleantech/water division, and $10,000 for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s Green Chemistry Prize.
TurnSignl
TurnSignl is a Minneapolis-based startup providing on-demand legal help through its app to drivers who have been stopped by police. Launched in 2021, the app is currently available in seven states, including Minnesota, with plans to expand to the rest of the country by the end of 2023, CEO Jazz Hampton told the Business Journal in August.
The company was selected for Google's startup accelerator for Black founders late last month.
This year, TurnSignl won Startup of the Year Award, the Inclusion Evolution Award and the Company Culture Award. It also received $25,000 for winning the impact ventures division of the Minnesota Cup, and won specialty awards from MEDA and JP Morgan Chase.
Babbl
Babbl is a Minneapolis-based website that tracks stock market news, attitudes and trends in conversation. Founded in mid-2020 by Ramsey Shaffer and Sam Cartford, the startup is part of Beta’s fall 2022 accelerator program. Through the five-month program, Babbl will receive training, resources and relationship building opportunities, Beta said.
Babbl is currently working to build out its beta version of its website, Shaffer told the Business Journal.
The company won this year's Beta Showcase’s Golden iPod Trophy; the award is a sort of people's choice honor, with Startup Week attendees using tokens to vote for their selection.
Carbon Origins
Initially gaining footing in California, Carbon Origins Inc. moved to the Twin Cities after being selected for the Techstars Farm to Fork Accelerator. Backed by several investment firms, the Minneapolis-based company has developed a delivery robot, named Skippy, that is operated by a person wearing a virtual reality headset. The robots have already been deployed in neighborhoods in Minneapolis.
The company, led by CEO Amogha Srirangarajan, recently hired a Techstars mentor as its chief operating officer earlier this year, according to a press release by Techstars.
Carbon Origins secured $10,000 for winning second place in this year’s Minnesota Cup, behind BKB. It had previously won $25,000 for winning the competition’s high-tech division.
Cadre
Cadre is a St. Paul-based live wellness and coaching platform, founded in 2021 to help people grow in and balance their professional and personal lives, according to its LinkedIn page.
The app, released earlier this year, offers messaging capabilities, group interactions, live videos, wellness courses, and coaching for employees and individuals, according to its website. It was founded by Luke Wendlandt and Katie Donovan, who both also serve as executive coaches for Cadre.
At this year’s Minnesota Startup Awards ceremony, Cadre won two awards: the Emerging Startup Award for a new startup in the local ecosystem and the Bootstrapper Award for successfully using its resources to scale.
Pneumeric
Rochester, Minn.-based Pneumeric Inc. offers a device called Capnospot, which provides visual detection for needle thoracostomy, a procedure that decompresses tension pneumothorax, a severe condition caused by trapped air between the lungs and chest wall. Intended to lead to fewer fatalities, the device is lightweight, portable and provides a binary color change confirming the correct placement of the needle during the procedure, according to its website.
The company’s CEO and chief medical officer, John Aho, is a general surgeon and engineer with more than 20 patents and 90 published manuscripts.
The company won a combined $30,000 in dedicated prize awards during the Minnesota Cup: $25,000 from the Carlson Family Foundation and $5,000 from the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation. Pneumeric was the runner-up in the competition’s life science/health division, behind Q-Rounds, an online platform offering a virtual queue for patients, families and care providers in a hospital setting.
