Health care startup developing device to help preemies wins Minnesota Cup, along with $100K

Still holding the Minnesota Cup trophy, Dori Jones stepped away from the hubbub of the crowd Monday night to FaceTime her husband and two young sons.

“I won,” she told them after the finals of the state’s largest entrepreneurial competition.

The win is a big deal both for her company, AcQumen Medical, which is developing a blood flow monitor for premature infants, and a milestone in her personal story.

Jones’ youngest son, Evan, spent time in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) after he was born with breathing problems. Four months later, she rushed him back to the emergency department — again, he was struggling to breathe.

“I have seen the gaps in pediatric critical care firsthand,” she said on Monday night during her pitch in the finals.

The community hospital where she sought help “couldn’t handle it,” she said. Evan was transferred by ambulance to an academic medical center 45 minutes away, where he was admitted to the pediatric ICU.

Beyond recognition that could open some doors for her and her AcQumen co-founders, the win came with $50,000 — on top of another $50,000 already won in the competition.

“Just to give a sense of the scale of that funding for us, to date, we’ve accomplished our milestones so far with less than $300,000,” Jones said.

She is co-founder of AcQumen with David Lerner, Mike McCormick, John Erb and Rod Houfburg. The company’s chief scientific officer, Dr. Richard Summers, has 40 years of clinical research experience in emergency medicine.

“UltraTrac is the first device to combine ultrasound and impedance into one hands-free platform to measure hemodynamics like cardiac output,” she said to the crowd. “It’s continuous and completely noninvasive, with just stickers on the skin.”

The size of existing monitoring equipment — a large catheter — is difficult to use on small babies, Jones said.

The startup plans to use the funds to make improvements to its software based on the feedback it receives from the clinical studies.

Jones and eight others gathered at the McNamara Alumni Center on the University of Minnesota campus for the finals — part of the Twin Cities Startup Week. They attracted a standing-room-only crowd of about 650 people.

“I was standing up there and seeing every seat in the entire room filled. ... I was speechless,” said Kailin Oliver, director of the competition that has awarded more than $5.8 million in cash prizes over the years and supported over 26,000 Minnesota entrepreneurs.

The competition’s division winners and nine runners-up also presented pitches on Monday evening. Each of the division winners took home $25,000.

Of the finalists, Swinergy received $15,000 as the runner-up to AcQumen for its technology converting livestock waste into renewable natural gas and fertilizer, on top of the $25,000 for being a division winner.

Alcohol alternative Charm Social Tonic and study tool Xygos, the winner and runner-up in the competition’s student division, each won $1,000 after the audience members voted on who they thought was the best startup.

“It’s so energizing for the companies to stand up there and see that many people like coming to support them,” Oliver said.

The U.S. Small Business Administration reported that in 2025, Minnesota was home to 560,428 small businesses with 1.3 million employees.

Minnesota Cup co-founder Dan Mallin had a challenge Monday night to the companies that didn’t win.