Entrepreneurship : Innovation & Job News

Last year, myfab5 spent its time launching the prototype of its social media software and figuring out its viability. This spring, the start-up is launching a more comprehensive Beta version with the aim of spreading its use across the region.

The Ann Arbor-based start-up is creating an Internet/mobile platform that helps people rate and find eateries and retail businesses. Its secret sauce is it lets users name their top five businesses according to category, such as best pizza places or Chinese food.

"All the signs (from last year's prototype) were good," says Omeid Seirafi-Pour, co-founder & CEO of myfab5. "This could work. All of the evidence supported the idea that the ranking system would work."

The Beta version is more comprehensive that it includes a better web presence and a recently released iPhone app. The new app is focusing on the Ann Arbor and Metro Detroit markets. "We want to know what markets will be the best markets for myfab5 and it can best serve them," Seirafi-Pour says.

The 1-year-old company employs a team of three co-founders and a half dozen of independent contractors. It calls the University of Michigan student small business incubator TechArb home. Seirafi-Pour expects to hire two or three people later this year.

Source: Omeid Seirafi-Pour, co-founder & CEO of myfab5
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Protean Payment landed a big fish in Michigan's mobile technology pond last week when the mobile payment start-up announced that Detroit Labs co-founder Henry Balanon is joining Protean Payment's executive ranks as its chief technology officer.

Detroit Labs has emerged as one of the biggest mobile app companies in Michigan since it was launched in 2011, handling mobile work for Quicken Loans, Stryker and Domino's among other larger corporate clients. It is now one of the fastest-growing companies based in the M@dison Building in downtown Detroit.

Enticing the likes of Balanon, one of Metro Detroit's early mobile app developers, is not a new thing for Protean Payment. The Ann Arbor-based start-up also has Dug Song serving as a key advisor. Song is a serial tech entrepreneur and current co-founder of Duo Security, a venture-backed Internet security start-up based in Ann Arbor.

Protean Payment is developing technology called "Echo" that will serve as a "skeleton key for the wallet" by combining all of the user's credit, debit, loyalty and ID cards into the Echo card. Echo comes equipped with a tiny computer that syncs with the user's mobile phone. The accompanying mobile app allows the user to convert Echo into the card of his or her choice, allowing them to swipe it as they would their normal credit card.

"It is in essence a virtual wallet," says Chris Bartenstein, co-founder of Protean Payment. "The card can become any of your cards for payment."

Barnestein co-founded Protean Payment with Thiago Olson a year ago. The original technology was developed by the pair when they went to school in Vanderbilt University. Olson was working at TARDEC in Warren when he and Barnestein, who had a brother attending the University of Michigan School of Law, moved to Ann Arbor and launched Protean Payment out of the Tech Brewery. It is now looking at moving into space at the former home of Bay Design in Kerrytown, which is the home of Duo Security and a couple of other start-ups that launched out of the Tech Brewery.

Protean Payment has begun raising angel investment money. Bartenstein declined to say how much specifically but said it has raised six-figures so far and plans to put together a formal seed-round of funding later this year.

Source: Chris Bartenstein, co-founder of Protean Payment
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

An Ann Arbor-based start-up believes it has the developed the next generation of technology for grow lights.

Grow lights are large lights that are used for a number of purposes, ranging from providing artificial light for growing organic vegetables year round to medical marijuana. Those lights have traditionally used incandescent lights.

Michigrow's technology utilizes LED lights, which consume far less energy than incandescent bulbs and run much cooler. The use of LED lights and Michigrow's technology allows for not only more energy-efficient operations but helps accelerate the grow cycle of the plants it provides light for by altering its night-and-day biorhythm.

"Think of it as a factory that needs to be shut off 12 hours a day," says Jim Beyer, president of Michigrow. "If you can make the factory run 24 hours a day it is much more efficient."

Beyer works as a software engineer for his day job but has already begun selling some of the prototypes of his patent-pending technology. He acknowledges that selling his technology to medical marijuana growers would allow for most direct path for rapid start-up. However, he adds that Michigrow's has a number of different potential revenue stream, especially for people in traditional agriculture.

"It would allow people to do more of their own food growing in a more economical way," Beyer says.

Source: Jim Beyer, president of Michigrow
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Message Blocks recently took home the Best of Boot Camp award from Ann Arbor SPARK's Entrepreneur Boot Camp, putting another feather in the start-up's cap.

The downtown Ann Arbor-based company is making waves with its comprehensive event-planning software. The online platform streamlines the event-planning process by focusing on the event planner's experience, allowing users to share documents and presenters to use plug-in presentations. It has been used by a number of marquee events, including ACE and Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition.

"I thought there has to be a better way to do this," says Len Gauger, founder & CEO of Message Blocks and a former event planner. "There were a number of tools out there but not an end-to-end comprehensive solution."

Gauger and his two employees recently launched the public Beta version of the software. They are working to launch a Version 1 later this summer. They know they have some hard work to put in to get there after participating in Entrepreneur Boot Camp, a comprehensive course that helps aspiring entrepreneurs learn the ropes of running a business and fine-tuning their business plan.

"It was an eye-opening experience that took us away from the day-to-day stuff we were focusing on," Gauger says. "It helped us focus on the pain conference planners experience."

Source: Len Gauger, founder & CEO of Message Blocks
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Gary Guo thinks finding the best price for an item should be as easy as scanning a bar code. He is making that a reality with his new start-up, SmartBars.

The Ann Arbor-based start-up has created a mobile app for Apple and Andriod devices. The technology allows users to scan barcodes of items while shopping. The app then tells the user what seller is offering the best deal for that item.

"If you have a smart bar you can scan a barcode anywhere and find the best price," says Guo, the owner of SmartBars.

The 1-year-old start-up released the free app earlier this year. The team of three people is working on offering more features to the app and increasing usage. The plan is to have it gain traction in time for this year's holiday shopping season.

"We have a few thousand downloads now," Guo says.

Source: Gary Guo, owner of SmartBars
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Talent retention is one of Michigan's traditional economic development goals. A new report from the University Research Corridor drives home the importance of that goal.

The recently released report shows that 19 percent of graduates from Michigan's three research universities (University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University) go onto start a business.

"It was a larger number than we thought," says Jeff Mason, executive director of the University Research Corridor, a non-profit advocate for Michigan's three research universities. "We were hopeful it would be 10 percent. Nearly 20 percent is pretty significant."

The rate of those graduates from the mid '90s to today that pursue entrepreneurship is about twice the national average of college graduates. More than half of those businesses are in fields different than the graduates' degree.

The good news is that nearly half of those companies are based in Michigan. Also, the success rate of those business hovers around 70 percent, which is significantly higher than the national average of 45 percent.

"It shows the education they are receiving at these institutions is broad," Mason says. "It helps them start companies and do amazing things."

Source: Jeff Mason, executive director of the University Research Corridor
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Venture Investors has a new investment fund, and the venture capital firm is aiming to spread some seed capital across Michigan this year.

Venture Investors' fourth fund was worth $118 million and made 18 investments, including in local companies like Incept BioSystems, HistoSonics, NanoBio and Tissue Regeneration Systems. The venture capital firm is currently fundraising for its fifth fund, which has already made three investments.

"We are currently working on a couple in Michigan," says Jim Adox, managing director of Venture Investors. "One will hopefully be within the next 60 days."

Venture Investors has offices in Madison, Wisc., and Ann Arbor. Adox overseas the Ann Arbor office, which also employs a full-time intern. He is also looking to add an executive in residence.

Venture Investors has traditionally made investments in university spinouts in the bio-technology and life sciences areas. Adox plans to expand that target area to include technology companies with this new fund.

"The investment potential and prospects for tech companies have improved in the last few years," Adox says.

Source: Jim Adox, managing director of Venture Investors
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Eric Kampe has a couple of passions and two are taking priority in his life right now. The Ann Arbor resident is an environmentalist and seed-saving enthusiast.

Seed savers will save and collect seeds for farming. The idea is to keep local ecosystems fresh and diverse through using local, organic and native seeds. That hobby got Kampe started on creating his own business, Ann Arbor Seed Co.

"I am very passionate about growing food in a healthy and organic way," Kampe says. "I am also passionate about seed saving."

Ann Arbor Seed Co. sells 10 varieties of fruits and vegetables, such as an heirloom tomato called Cherokee Purple and a sunflower called Tigers Eye. The 1-year-old business sells its seeds at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, Growing Hope in Ypsilanti and The Garden Mill in Chelsea. It recently sold out of its line of spinach seeds.

Kampe splits his time between the two full-time jobs of running Ann Arbor Seed Co. and driving a delivery truck. He hopes to make Ann Arbor Seed Co his only job by tripling or even quadrupling his product portfolio this year. It would allow him to follow his passion in agriculture and keep working his hands.

"It's a rewarding lifestyle," Kampe says.

Source: Eric Kampe, owner of Ann Arbor Seed Co
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Enlighten is increasingly becoming more about the software products it puts out than the services it has rendered for the last three decades.

The Ann Arbor-based firm has traditionally focused on digital marketing services. That focus is starting to shift. Last year Enlighten released two photo-oriented software products last year, WhatWasThere.com and YearlyMe.com. This year it plans to release a coupon and marketing software program called OffersNow that's aimed at helping small businesses.

WhatWasThere.com is a mobile app that allows users to upload historic photos of everyday places. The idea is to help show how communities and places evolve over time. YearlyMe.com works in a similar function. Instead of buildings, the users upload pictures of themselves through the years so they can show off their own evolution.

"It's really fun to see people over time," says Steve Glauberman, CEO of Enlighten. "We have had 50 people in the agency do it. You can see that you were a nerd in 1985 and in 1986 and in 1987."

OffersNow will be a subscription-based software service that lets small businesses (think mom-and-pop restaurants) create and manage coupons. The subscription fee pays for an online marketing push to help get out the word about the deals and build that business' online brand. Glauberman says a few local chambers of commerce are interested in it and Enlighten plans to launch a Beta test for 100-150 local businesses in May.

"We think that is going to be a really successful product," Glauberman says.

Enlighten has enjoyed its own overall success over the last year. Its revenue is up 10 percent and the company has hired nine people, expanding its staff to about 100 employees and a few interns. It also has a couple of job openings right now.

Source: Steve Glauberman, CEO of Enlighten
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

What started as a freshman-level engineering project meant to help make the world a better place has become a socially entrepreneurial start-up that aims to do just that.

Centri Cycle is creating a cost-effective and easy-to-use centrifuge that can be used to perform simple medical tests in the Third World. The idea is to make this self-powered technology available in places like India to help combat preventable suffering and death from disease.

"We took the idea and ran with it," says Carolyn Yarina, CEO of Centri Cycle.

Yarina and her co-founder (both University of Michigan students) have gotten the technology to the prototype phase where it is being tested at the University of Michigan Hospital. The TechArb-based start-up hopes to bring its technology to market in the U.S. next year and to India by fall of 2014.

"It should be ready for market in March or April," Yarina says.

Source: Carolyn Yarina, CEO of Centri Cycle
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Omar Hashwi has always thought public performance and music platforms like Youtube were difficult to use and unfriendly to small bands and DJs looking to break out. That's when the University of Michigan student decided to build a better music platform, Stamp.fm.

"We want to make sure every artist can be heard," says Omar Hashwi, founder & president of Stamp.fm. Hashwi is also a local DJ and vice president of the student body at the University of Michigan. "We want this to be a well-known platform where people go to discover new music and artists go to kickstart their careers."

The 5-month-old start-up provides a platform for what it calls online music tournaments. Every couple of weeks, Stamp.fm asks artists to audition in places with dynamic music scenes, like Ann Arbor and Detroit. The auditioning acts then square off in a battle-of-the-bands-like contest where a champion of that city's music scene is announced.

The Ann Arbor-based start-up and its team of a few dozen contributors has already held one of these competitions in Ann Arbor and is looking to expand into other nearby markets, such as Detroit and Chicago.

Source: Omar Hashwi, founder & president of Stamp.fm
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

AlertWatch has set some high hopes for its first round of venture capital. The Ann Arbor-based start-up has raised $1 million in seed capital and plans to formally close on its Series A round in 2014.

The 1-year-old star-up is a University of Michigan spinout and calls the Venture Accelerator at the university's North Campus Research Complex home. Its first year has focused on pushing forward the development of its patient-monitoring technology and turning its team of three people's work into full-time jobs.

"A lot of it was just the blocking and tackling of getting a company off the ground," says Justin Adams, CEO of AlertWatch.

AlertWatch's technology is a secondary patient monitor for hospital operating rooms. It aggregates data from multiple networks and hospital IT systems and displays them at a central location. It is currently being used in three pilot projects. Adams hopes to have its intensive care unit product ready for commercialization and to be piloting an emergency room product by early 2014.

"We'd like to be in five hospitals and have a term sheet for a Series A round," Adams says.

Source: Justin Adams, CEO of AlertWatch
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Backyard Brains insect neuroscience kits can not only be found across the U.S. this year, but also on the other side of the world. The Ann Arbor-base company is now exporting its products to a number of South American countries, thanks to an entrepreneurship program in Chile.

Chile is going through an economic boom thanks to exports of natural resources. The government is using these good times to help spur more entrepreneurship through things like its StartupChile program, which brings in entrepreneurs from around the world to help inspire more business creation. Backyard Brains won one of the start-up grants and used it as a bridge to help spread its product sales to Chile and several other South American countries.

"It's been great," says Tim Marzullo, co-founder of Backyard Brains. "We have actually received another round of funding from the Startup Chile program. We have been going back and forth from Chile for the last year."

Marzullo and his partner Greg Gage, both neuroscientists, started Backyard Brains three years ago as a way to provide a cost-effective product that teaches grade-school students the workings of neurons in the brain. Its Robo Roach allows them to control insects via antennas. Since then the company has expanded to a team of nine and the occasional intern after adding five new positions in the last year.

Backyard Brains initially received a National Institute of Health grant for start-up funding. It is now angling for a second round grant from the National Institute of Health and otherwise using sales of its products to fund its growth. Backyard Brains' products can now be found in all 50 states and on all seven continents after sales from its Chile distribution made it ways to Antarctica.

"We are pretty well-known as the go-to company in the neuroscience equipment field,"  Marzullo says.

Source: Tim Marzullo, co-founder of Backyard Brains
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

The Pure Michigan Social Entrepreneurship Challenge is taking on one of the toughest challenges of unemployment, the structurally unemployed.

The structurally unemployed are characterized as people who are low-income, have a criminal history, at risk youth, high school drop outs, functionally illiterate or have been unemployed for long periods of time.

"They're people who have difficulty finding a job even when jobs are plentiful," says Jim Durian, director of Community Ventures, which is part of the Michigan Economic Development Corp. "They have barriers to finding employment."

To help solve this conundrum, Community Ventures is sponsoring a $25,000 prize at the Pure Michigan Social Entrepreneurship Challenge for socially entrepreneurial start-ups that help encourage the hiring of structurally unemployed individuals.

The Pure Michigan Social Entrepreneurship Challenge is a statewide competition designed to advance ideas and solutions that address social challenges. The competition is looking for start-ups with an emerging entrepreneurial idea or replicable model from an existing organization for sustainable social change in a wide range of areas including but not limited to urban revitalization, environment, health, and education. It is being organized by the Michigan Corps and Great Lakes Entrepreneur's Quest, two organizations that have roots in the Ann Arbor area.

The deadline to applying to the company is March 27. For information, click here.

Source: Jim Durian, director of Community Ventures
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

A small group of University of Michigan students/recent grads believe they can take what breweries throw away and turn it into a valuable commodity.

Recraft is developing technology that takes the nutrient rich water discharge from breweries, cleans it, uses the byproduct for nutrient supplements. "We are a water reuse product company," says Eric Hsieh, co-founder & CEO of Recraft. We reuse the brewery water for other purposes.

Brewery waste water is biodegradable but so nutrient rich that it requires more energy to clean it. That means breweries have to pay higher municipal fees to facilitate the discharge of the nutrient-rich water into the a municipality's sewer system. Recraft takes that waste water, mixes it with specific strains of algae which, naturally pull out the problem nutrients and clean the water. The nutrient-rich algae is then used in things like bio-diesel. It used this technology to compete in the recent Michigan Clean Energy Venture Challenge.

Recraft is four months old and is working on setting up a wet lab this summer and begin testing the technology. "We're looking at a pilot run after the summer," Hsieh says.

Source: Eric Hsieh, co-founder & CEO of Recraft
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.