RiskMetrics adds jobs in Ann Arbor during acquisition
Source: Concentrate, 4/28/2010
RiskMetrics Group continues to hire people
for its Ann Arbor office even though the New York-based firm is in the
midst of being acquired.
MSCI is acquiring RiskMetrics for $1.55
billion in a cash-and-stock deal. That corporate event hasn't stopped
the RiskMetrics from hiring in Ann Arbor. It has hired two new people
since we checked
in last spring, growing its staff to 20 people and one intern. It
expects to hire another person and bring on up to another four interns
later this year. Any growth beyond that is unclear at this point.
"It
is currently unclear what the effect, if any, of this will be for the
Ann Arbor office," Paul Schmitter, manager of the Ann Arbor office for RiskMetrics,
wrote in an email.
RiskMetrics creates software that determines
and tests financial risk. Often this means it runs simulations on
investment portfolios. The Ann Arbor office creates much of that
software.
RiskMetrics, which employs 1,200 people around the
world, opened its Ann Arbor office a decade ago with six people. It has
since moved into new office space on North Main Street, signing a
six-year lease with local developer Peter Allen for about half the space
in his Limestone
building overlooking Argo Pond.
Source: Paul Schmitter,
manager of the Ann Arbor office for RiskMetrics
Writer: Jon
Zemke
A2Fiber initiative moves forward, selects video winner
Source: Concentrate, 4/28/2010
Just because the Google Fiber application
is in doesn't mean the A2Fiber team can go home. The combination of
officials from the city of Ann Arbor and University of Michigan are
still working both on the public stage and behind the scenes to make it
to the next round of the selection process.
"We'd like to have an
ongoing public conversation," says Tom Crawford, CFO for the city of Ann
Arbor and the project manager for A2Fiber. "We're still very excited
about this."
The latest part of that public conversation is the
recent announcement of the A2Fiber's YouTube contest winner. Jeff Hayner
won a 32 Gig Apple iPad for producing a 1:42 short film staring Lego
characters extolling the virtues of what Google's Fiber community
project could do for Ann Arbor and what Ann Arbor can do for it. Watch
the video here.
Google
plans to build and test ultra-high speed broadband networks in a small
number of communities across the country. These lines will stream data
at 1 gigabit per second, about 100 times faster than most Americans get
through their current cable and DSL providers.
A number of
communities across Metro Detroit followed Ann
Arbor's lead and made an application, including Royal
Oak, Birmingham, Rochester and Detroit,
among others. Ann Arbor's application included a large public rally, a Facebook
fan page and the YouTube
contest. Local officials are still brainstorming ways to keep its
momentum going this spring, summer and until Google makes an
announcement about the contest.
Local officials are also working
behind the scenes to streamline the city's bureaucracy to fit the Google
Fiber project. That includes everything from reforming the city's
permit process, right-of-way and other city policies that could
potentially impact the project.
"It's just the inner workings of
government and the permit process we're going through," Crawford says.
Source:
Tom Crawford, CFO for the city of Ann Arbor and the project manager for
A2Fiber
Writer: Jon Zemke
Women’s Exchange of Washtenaw wins SBA champion award
Source: Concentrate, 4/28/2010
Women's Exchange of Washtenaw is making
room on its shelf for a new award and room in its ranks for a new
chapter or two.
The U.S. Small Business Administration will
present the non-profit's co-founders, Carrie Hensel and Debra Power,
with the "U.S. Small Business Administration’s Michigan Women in
Business Champion of the Year for 2010" award later this week. That will
come as the duo make preparations to grow the organization across the
state in the near future.
"We think we have found something very
unique and special and we want to share it," Power says.
Women's Exchange of
Washtenaw was founded two years ago as a place for businesswomen to
network and create new business opportunities, generate referrals and
find work. It now has a database of 800 women who partake in the
organization. Women's Exchange of Washtenaw is not a membership
organization, which allows participants the freedom to pay as they go.
Hensel
and Powers have enjoyed quite a bit of success with this model,
creating an open and engaging environment for entrepreneurs without a Y
chromosome. They expect to try and spread this model into the Lansing
market later this year.
Women's Exchange of Washtenaw will host
the Women's Exchange of Washtenaw Forum 10 on May 21 at Kensington
Court, 610 Hilton Blvd in Ann Arbor. The all-day event will feature
regional speakers, workshops, breakout sessions and networking
activities to engage the business community and work through the common
issues women business leaders face in their efforts to grow and improve
their companies. The event costs $75 before May 1 and $95 after. For
information, click here.
Source:
Debra Power, co-founder of Women's Exchange of Washtenaw
Writer:
Jon Zemke
Arbor Teas goes green, expands staff to 6 people
Source: Concentrate, 4/28/2010
Ann Arbor residents Aubrey and Jeremy
Lopatin wanted to start a business to go with their day jobs a little
more than six years ago. Today they have a sustainable, web-based
start-up that revolves around tea called Arbor Teas.
"We initially
wanted to open a café but we didn't have the capital for that," says
Aubrey Lopatin. "So we looked at what other options were out there. We
both love tea and food. It was a natural match."
The Ann
Arbor-based firm sells different sorts of exotic teas from its website
around the world. Today about 85-90 percent of the company's customers
are from outside of Michigan. It has allowed Aubrey Lopatin to make this
her full-time profession (Jeremy is still an analyst with Pure
Visibility) and now have a staff of four people and an intern. It
hopes to hire again in the near future.
One of its latest
innovations is coming out with a sustainable packing that is
compostable. That means users can take the tea bags, leaves and packing
and put it in their compost pile in their own backyard. That goes with
its ethos of delivering organic, free-trade teas in the most sustainable
way possible.
"That's our niche and our way to move forward,"
Lopatin says.
Source: Aubrey Lopatin, co-owner of Arbor Teas
Writer:
Jon Zemke
Enmark Systems looks to hire in Ann Arbor
Source: Concentrate, 4/28/2010
When the economy went south, Enmark
Systems found a way to swim against the recessionary tide and keep its
business afloat.
The Ann Arbor-based software firm is still
holding stead at about 30 people and expects to hire another person or
two within the next few weeks. The 26-year-old company has managed to do
that by selling its software as a way for businesses to save money in
tough times.
"Our work has not diminished," says John Bilek,
president of Enmark
Systems. "It's stabilized as the company grows. We have definitely
seen an uptick in the last year or two."
Enmark Systems develops
new software products for metal service center distributors, finding a
way to combine the new economy with Michigan's more established
companies. It is moving toward a software-as-a-service model for its
product, allowing it to move more toward supporting its system instead
of focusing on installing it.
"Our growth looks solid around that
platform," Bilek says.
Source: John Bilek, president of
Enmark Systems
Writer: Jon Zemke
Dexter's ReCellular grows into new markets and cultivates new customers
Source: Concentrate, 4/28/2010
The last year or two have not been kind to
General Motors, but the same can't be said for the GM of the cell phone
recycling world - ReCellular.
The Dexter-based firm is still
recycling millions upon millions of cell phones, refurbishing them for a
second life and keeping their toxic chemical innards out of landfills
and water tables. The company recycled in excess of 5 million cell
phones last year and looks to exceed that number again this year.
"We
created this industry and we have remained on top," says Mike Newman,
vice president of marketing for ReCellular. "Even though a vast
majority of cell phones that are retired are left in someone's drawer
and forgotten. We're trying to get them to recycle them."
It is
accomplishing that by reaching out directly to customers to recycle
their phones. Before ReCellular relied on other businesses to collect
them through donation drives. This year it has premiered SecureTradeIn.com,
which offers cash for old cell phones.
ReCellular refurbishes
many of those phones and then sells them on the open market. Sometimes
they end up in North American markets and sometimes they end up in other
markets in the Third World.
"We're selling more phones then we
have ever sold before," Newman says.
That has forced the company
to reconfigure its Dexter manufacturing space to accommodate at least
one year of growth. Today the company employs several hundred people at
its Dexter facilities. It has held its employee count steady over the
last year and expects to next year, too, as the company focuses on
creating efficiency and maximizing profits.
Source: Mike
Newman, vice president of marketing for ReCellular
Writer: Jon
Zemke
VC Web Design graduates from SPARK East, hires 5 in Ypsilanti
Source: Concentrate, 4/21/2010
Meet VC Web Design, the first graduate of Ann
Arbor SPARK's East Incubator in downtown Ypsilanti.
The web
design firm was one of the first tenants in the business incubator when
it opened last spring. Then it was a two-person start-up looking for a
little direction. Today it employs seven people and intern and is moving
into its own commercial space a few doors down from the incubator in
downtown Ypsilanti on Washington Street.
"We wanted to be around
people in a downtown area," says Vince Chmielewski, president of VC Wed Design.
"We couldn't fit at SPARK anymore because we kept adding people. Plus,
we wanted our own storefront for higher visibility."
Chmielewski
caught the entrepreneurial bug when he was attending the University of
Michigan in the mid 1990s. The computer science major always ended up as
a go-to resource among friend interested in creating websites, which
turned into a nice stream of cash on the side.
"People would ask
me questions and I would sell websites to them," Chmielewski says.
It
has remained a nice side income for him ever since. He still maintains
his full-time job at U-M but is also now putting 40 hours a week into VC
Web Design. How long he can keep that up is a little in question. VC
Web Design is set to more than double its revenue this year and
Chmielewski expects to add another person or two this year.
Good
thing he has the SPARK East incubator degree and some new space to
accommodate all of that growth.
Source: Vince Chmielewski,
president of VC Wed Design
Writer: Jon Zemke
Tonic purchases U-M student-designed app DoGood
Source: Concentrate, 4/21/2010
The DoGood iPhone application is doing
more than a little bit of good for the University of Michigan students
who designed it last year.
The catchy app has been acquired by
Silicon Valley-based Tonic, creating a profitable exit for the handful
of studentpreneurs that created it at the university's new Web
App Class last summer. Those students created the app under the
Mobil33t start-up banner last year, but have since move onto new
projects since then.
"DoGood got really, really popular," says
Jason Bornhorst, one of the co-founders of Mobil33t
who is now a part-owner with Ann Arbor-based start-up Mobiata. "It
became a full-time job for us over the last summer."
About 70,000
people use DoGood
today to get their daily dose of virtuous deed suggestions. The free
app's suggestions include things like don't criticize today or give
someone a second chance today. They are formulated by a community of
university students who call their group Do Random Acts of Kindness.
Tonic plans to keep the
same group to provide the suggestions. The student creators are also
working with Tonic on the future development of the app, expanding into
other smartphone platforms and perhaps even growing into its own
website. The students also have their own entrepreneurial ventures
cooking they expect to put forward later this year.
"Stay tuned,"
Bornhorst says. "We have some really interesting stuff in the pipeline.
I can't talk about it right now."
Source: Jason Bornhorst,
co-founder of Mobil33t and co-creator of DoGood
Writer: Jon
Zemke
TorranceLearning grows to 7 people in downtown Chelsea
Source: Concentrate, 4/21/2010
Megan Torrance likes to say her start-up,
TorranceLearning, started with her and the spare bedroom in her house in
2006.
Today her training company employs seven people in
downtown Chelsea after hiring three people last year. Her firm is now
shopping for bigger office space in downtown Chelsea to help accommodate
yet more expected growth.
"It's a great walkable community,"
Torrance says. "It's great to walk into stores and be recognized."
Torrance
spent 15 years specializing in process consulting or change management.
It always revolved around some sort of training. Torrance decided to
turn that into her own company as a way of spending less time on the
road and more time making money for herself.
She is seeing more
companies spending money on training now that the economy is starting to
expand a little. The big argument is that it costs much less to hire a
company like TorranceLearning
than building up an in-house department.
"The telephone is
ringing again," Torrance says. "It's ringing from places it hasn't rung
before."
Source: Megan
Torrance, president of TorranceLearning
Writer: Jon Zemke
Ann Arbor's Above the Treeline hires 1, plans to add 2
Source: Concentrate, 4/21/2010
A big piece of the future future was
unwritten for Above the Treeline when we last checked
in with the downtown Ann Arbor-based firm.
Then its product
"Edelweiss" was just getting its foothold in the marketplace. Last year
it accounted for 5-10 percent of the bookseller software firm's revenue.
That number is expected to hit 30-35 percent by next year and even more
after that.
"It's at least a major part of the future for us,"
says John Rubin, president and CEO of Above the Treeline.
Edelweiss
is an Internet-based interactive service that supplements or replaces
traditional hard-copy publisher catalogs. Think of it as an interactive
catalog for publishers.
It complements Above the Treeline's
traditional product of providing software that gives independent
booksellers the same economies scales that major retailers enjoy. It
also helps these little firms streamline their inventory and create
other efficiencies.
That software also works for the big boys,
too. Above the Treeline hopes to nail down the rest of the medium- to
-large-size book retailers this year. That should allow it to continue
its growth.
The nine-person firm, up one from the last time we
checked in, is on track to hire one more person this summer and bring on
a new intern. More hires could be on the horizon, too, if the company
continues to grow.
Source: John Rubin, president and CEO of
Above the Treeline
Writer: Jon Zemke
SRT Solutions hires 2, looks to add 1-2 more
Source: Concentrate, 4/21/2010
SRT Solutions is continuing its
slow-yet-steady march toward growth in downtown Ann Arbor.
The
software firm has recently added a couple more engineers, allowing it to
keep its staff at 18 people. That number includes an intern and
independent contractor, and is the same size as it was when we last checked
in late in 2008. It hopes to hire another person or two later this
year.
"We're continuing with a slower growth," says Bill Wagner,
co-founder of SRT
Solutions. "We're buying into new technologies and services we think
our customers will need in the next few years."
The 10-year-old
company helps businesses get software projects done on time and right
the first time. Its products range from custom technology analysis,
proof of concept development and software development. It's also moving
into things like cloud computing and facilitating more natural use
interfaces for software.
Source:
Bill Wagner, co-founder of SRT Solutions
Writer: Jon Zemke
Michigan Microloan Fund invests in Ann Arbor's Ix Innovations
Source: Concentrate, 4/21/2010
Another Ann Arbor-based firm has scored a
loan from the Michigan
Microloan Fund, becoming one of three firms to indulge in the latest
round of financing.
Ix Innovations received an unspecified
portion of $115,000 from the microloan fund. The other two firms that
split the money were both from Detroit - NextCAT and CYJ Enterprises.
Tech
Brewery-based Ix Innovations will use the money to further the
commercialization of its PocketPico
product. PocketPico is a portable, USB-powered picoammeter that can be
used as a stand-alone instrument or connected to a PC.
The money allows one of the current four people working on the project
to focus on it full time. This new-found focus should allow the start-up
to roll out its product later this year.
"Bringing on an enginer to work full-time was key for us," says Ian
Dailey, CEO of Ix Innovations. "The rest of the money will be spent on
product development."
The microloans provide funding for start-ups so they can either
commercialize their product or accelerate their business growth. The
$1.5 million program will make anywhere from 2-4 loans of a few thousand
dollars each per month for 2010. That's another 24-48 fledgling local
businesses receiving financing during a time when loans for small
businesses have been almost non-existent since the economy crashed.
Source:
Ian Dailey, CEO of Ix
Innovations
Writer: Jon
Zemke
U-M Medical School scores $63M research grant
Source: Concentrate, 4/14/2010
The University of Michigan Medical School
set a new record for research grants, earning $63 million from the
National Cancer Institute.
The cash will go toward the Southwest
Oncology Group over the next six years to fund cancer treatment research
at the clinical research cooperative group, which is based out of the
university's medical school. The annual award represents a little more
than 20 percent of the group's $48 million annual established budget.
"It
lets the group go forward from where it is," says Frank DeSanto,
community manager for the Southwest
Oncology Group. "It maintains the group's jobs."
The group
employs almost 5,000 people at various research centers across North
America, and 20 of those in Ann Arbor. Four of the group's executives,
including its chairman, are faculty members at U-M.
The group
moved its headquarters to Ann Arbor in 2005, bringing 15 jobs with it.
Before that it had been headquartered at the Cancer Treatment Resource
Center in San Antonio where it part of the University of Texas.
The
group designs and conducts large-scale trials of new cancer treatments
and prevention regimens. Its network includes more than 500
institutions, including 19 of the National Cancer Institute-designated
cancer centers.
Source: Frank DeSanto, community manager for
the Southwest Oncology Group
Writer: Jon Zemke
Essen BioScience moves to new HQ in Ann Arbor, adds jobs
Source: Concentrate, 4/14/2010
Essen Instruments has become Essen BioScience and is now housed in a bigger and better
headquarters in Ann Arbor to accommodate its expanded staff.
The
biotech firm recently renovated 25,000-square-foot space on the south
side of Ann Arbor next to the Michigan Research Institute. That new
space now houses a staff that measured at 25 employees when we checked
in with the company last spring. It expects to double that number
in the next few years.
Essen BioScience builds, sells and
services pre-clinical, cell-based research tools, the type of products
used by pharmaceutical companies for research. The company has noticed
that a lot of these firms are now outsourcing a large portion of their
lab work, prompting Essen BioScience to create the Discovery Services
Business Unit Development Project.
The 11-year-old firm recently
received a $490,940 tax credit over seven years from the Michigan
Economic Development Corporation last year. That allowed the life
sciences company to invest $3 million in its Ann Arbor facility. It
expects to create 43 new jobs over five years as part of the tax-break
deal.
Source: Essen BioScience
Writer: Jon Zemke
Ann Arbor-based uRefer hires 4, plans to add 5 more
Source: Concentrate, 4/14/2010
Ann Arbor-based uRefer is starting to gain
traction with its innovative new business model, allowing the start-up
to hire four people since last
fall.
The 2-year-old firm went live with its product last
year and spent all of 2009 establishing it as one of the top
up-and-coming business referral firms. Today it employs a dozen people,
three independent contractors and an intern. It hopes to hire five more
people before this year is out as it continues to grow.
"It's the
business model we have," saus Dick Beedon, founder of uRefer. "We have a
new, innovative way to generate leads and people really like it."
The
main product for uRefer helps companies either set up a referral
program or maximize the one it has in place. This software package has
allowed uRefer to open 30 new accounts and let it plan for expanding
into new markets. Among those new markets is the hospitality industry.
"We
think we can generate a lot of leads for the hospitality industry,"
Beedon says. "We have fun here. We're going to grow like crazy and make
Ann Arbor a place to be."
Source: Dick Beedon, founder of
uRefer
Writer: Jon Zemke