IntelAccount
When David Crane’s BuyingPros’ customers—businesses looking to outsource their purchasing—began to ask for help with their accounts payable, Crane stepped up to the plate. After researching the big players in accounts-payable outsourcing, Crane discovered that none focused on the small- to medium-sized businesses that made up the bulk of his clientele. So he turned Buying Pros into IntelAccount and starting giving customers what they wanted.
“We save our clients up to 70 percent on their internal cost of bill processing,” says Crane, who is CEO of the Minneapolis-based company. "Accounts payable isn't rocket science, but it is messy and time-consuming. We provide a service to our customers that gives them more control of their accounts payables, at a lower cost and in less time, allowing them to focus on their business.”
The company has been operating locally since early-2006 and Crane expects to significantly expand over the next two years. He hopes to move quickly to secure a national market share as the outsourcing trend spreads to small and medium-sized businesses. “Those who are in first and who can capture market share create incredible competitive value.”
For information: www.intelaccount.com
Interrad Medical
As an interventional radiologist in training at the University of Minnesota, Michael Rosenberg often got called in the middle of the night to reinsert a catheter in a child who was already very ill. A toddler might have rolled over in the crib and pulled out the catheter, or the line got caught on something and came out. Then the child would have to go to surgery to get a new catheter inserted. The catheter, which doctors stitch into place, typically doesn’t hold securely on a child’s delicate skin. Rosenberg was convinced there had to be a better way and set about to create it.
He developed that catheter—and in the process a new company. Called Interrad Medical, the St. Paul–based start-up creates minimally invasive medical devices that help patients avoid surgery. Its main product, the SecurAcath, is a catheter that does not require stitches or surgery; instead it gets held in place by minute prongs that attach internally to the fat layer beneath the skin, a more advantageous way, Rosenberg believes, to hold the catheter in place.
“The more we looked at it the more advantages we saw,” says Rosenberg. “We have an opportunity to change our whole standard of medicine on how catheters are held in place. It’s very exciting.”
Interrad is waiting for FDA approval on SecureAcath, anticipated in early 2007, and is in the process of completing a formal round of funding to help bring the device to market. When the company starts selling this one-of-a-kind catheter, the potential is huge: $1 billion in the United States alone.
For information: www.interradmedical.com
