Ann Arbor's Cerenis Therapeutics ropes in $51.7M VC investment
Source: Concentrate, 7/28/2010
Cerenis Therapeutics has landed $51.7
million in venture capital, making it another Ann Arbor company that has
hit an investment home run in an area that is on a hit streak.
The
5-year-old firm, composed mainly of former Pfizer employees, will use
the money to expand its operations here and in France. It employs 26
people that are evenly split between the two locations, with the Ann
Arbor office giving work to another four independent contractors. Three
positions have been added over the last year, with an expected ramp-up
in hiring with this new infusion of capital.
"The funding will
allow us to expand here and in France," says Bill Brinkerhoff, COO of Cerenis Therapeutics.
Cerenis
Therapeutics is working on creating and commercializing the first
synthetic HDL, which is the so-called good cholesterol. The idea is to
create a new way to remove plaque from heart tissue. The product could
be on the market as soon as 2015.
"We're going to see if it can
regress plaque rapidly in patients who have had a heart attack,"
Brinkerhoff says. "We have finished Phase 1 and this will pay for Phase
2, which is proof of concept."
Source:
Bill Brinkerhoff, COO of Cerenis Therapeutics
Writer: Jon Zemke
XanEdu turns electronic publishing into 100 jobs, 10 new hires
Source: Concentrate, 7/28/2010
XanEdu is continuing to stay a step ahead
of the higher education publishing curve, a habit that has helped it to
create 100 jobs in Ann Arbor over the last decade.
The company
started offering course packs over the web and has evolved that to an
electronic publishing empire that now stretches into mobile devices. It
recently launched an iPad app that allows professors and students to
access course packs and share notes on the latest and greatest computing
technology.
"It's really accelerating the delivery of
information to students," says Dan Arbour, CEO of XanEdu. "It started with laptops and has
moved onto the world of the iPad."
XanEdu now employs
100 people on the city's south side after adding 10 more over the last
year. It expects to add another 10 positions in the next year as it
continues to innovate in a rapidly changing market. XanEdu is the
largest custom course pack provider in North America, with over 15,000
titles published annually at over 2,000 institutions. It will relaunch
its website, which will offer enhanced publishing options.
Source: Dan Arbour, CEO of XanEdu
Writer: Jon Zemke
U-M's North Campus Research Center attracts first start-up, BoroPharm
Source: Concentrate, 7/28/2010
Private enterprise is moving back to the
old Pfizer campus in Ann Arbor, albeit in just a small corner of the
complex for now.
BoroPharm, a chemical development and manufacturing start-up from East Lansing, is moving into what
is now called the North Campus Research Center, along with a growing
army of researchers from the University of Michigan. The university
bought the 174-acre campus and its 30 buildings last year.
"We're
a small-but-growing company," says Todd Zahn, president and CEO of BoroPharm. "We are
looking for new hires. The company has been profitable and we're doing
well. That's why we moved to the NCRC, because we can grow without
building or renovating space."
BoroPharm was founded in 2005 by
two Michigan State University professors. It's moving into Building 40, a
specialized free-standing chemical production building.
The
company recently hired an ex-Pfizer employee who worked on the campus
before the drug-maker pulled up stakes in 2007. BoroPharm expects to
hire about 3-5 people over the next year. "We'd also like to bring on
some students as well," Zahn says.
Source: Todd Zahn, president and CEO of BoroPharm
Writer: Jon Zemke
Endra hires 6, expects to double life sciences staff
Source: Concentrate, 7/28/2010
For Endra, moving from Boston to Ann Arbor
made good money sense.
The 3-year-old life sciences start-up set
up shop in Ann Arbor last year with five people. It now employs 11 and
expects to double its staff again in the next year. Ann Arbor's low cost
of doing business is a big reason why that growth is possible.
"Operating
here is less expensive," says Michael Thornton, COO & president of Endra. "Everything
from salaries to office space is cheaper."
And then there is the
talent pool. Endra also choose Ann Arbor because of its proximity to the
University of Michigan and a steady stream of local graduate students.
Endra, which develops a preclinical product for small animal imaging
(think lab rats), plans to expand its office space within the next year
to accommodate its growth.
"We're basically building out the team
here," Thornton says.
Source:
Michael Thornton, COO and president of Endra
Writer: Jon Zemke
EMU becomes first Michigan university to receive DART mass spectrometer
Source: Concentrate, 7/28/2010
The first DART mass spectrometer for a Michigan university is heading to Eastern Michigan University, an addition that is making chemistry researchers green with envy across the Midwest.
"The
Michigan State Police Lab is in the process of purchasing one now,"
says Ruth Ann Armitage, an associate professor of chemistry at Eastern Michigan University who quarterbacked the effort to attain the $200,000 National Science Foundation
grant for the spectrometer. "I have a friend in the U.S. Customs office
in Chicago that said, 'I am so jealous you have one of those."
A DART mass spectrometer
provides the shortcut to discovering the chemical makeup of a
substance. Currently chemists have to go through an extensive,
time-consuming process to learn this. The spectrometer allows them to
put the substance in a chamber and get the chemical makeup within a few
minutes. For instance, the chemists could put a mystery pill into the
spectrometer and know whether it's Vicodin or Viagra or aspirin without
the fuss and muss of physically breaking it down.
EMU plans to
use the spectrometer to research historical artifacts, looking for
chemical clues about life centuries ago. They will be able to put a dish
from a primitive culture into the spectrometer and be able to learn the
composition of not only the dish but any food residue it contains.
"Finding out what these residues are tells us a lot of about life back then," Armitage says.
Source: Ruth Ann Armitage, an associate professor of chemistry at Eastern Michigan University
Writer: Jon Zemke
ICON Creative Technologies Group plans for 20% growth
Source: Concentrate, 7/28/2010
ICON Creative Technologies Group is
literally growing into its new home on the outskirts of downtown Ann
Arbor, hiring four new people over the last year.
The interactive
marketing agency moved to the former second home of the Ann Arbor Art
Center last year. It now has a staff of 25 people and a handful of
independent contractors focusing on Internet marketing for firms in the
bio-tech, automotive, and service industries.
"We're doing well,"
says Rob Cleveland, CEO of ICON Creative Technologies Group.
"The year is going pretty much as planned."
The 15-year-old
company is focusing on a hybrid of 20 percent organic growth and
mergers/acquisitions to expand its business over the next year.
"Our
top priority is people in the business development field," Cleveland
says.
Source: Rob Cleveland, CEO of ICON Creative Technologies
Group
Writer: Jon Zemke
Ypsilanti's Mobile Sign Language takes on web and smart phone apps
Source: Concentrate, 7/28/2010
Combining sign language with smart phone
applications might not seem like the most obvious partnership, but it's
an idea Mobile
Sign Language is capitalizing on to create a new business.
Jason
Gilbert (a sign language interpreter) and Judy Yu (a web developer)
started playing around with the idea of creating a web-based sign
language translator four years ago and have built it into a start-up at Ann
Arbor SPARK's East Incubator in downtown Ypsilanti. The company is a
winner of its recent elevator pitch competition. It recently hired a
programmer to help it get its app to translate speech to sign language
on the market this fall.
"I don't know of anyone else who is
doing it on a phone," Gilbert says. "It's something that is really
needed."
The start-up plans to create a variety of web- and
mobile-based programs that enable sign language translation.
Source:
Jason Gilbert, CEO of Mobile Sign Language
Writer: Jon Zemke
Delphinus moves to Ann Arbor, invests $6.4M, to create 107 jobs
Source: Concentrate, 7/21/2010
Delphinus Medical Solutions continues its
rapid march from research spin-off to high-powered start-up. Last we
heard, it had collected
$8 million in venture capital earlier this year. Within the last
week, it scored six-figures' worth of state tax credits, enabling it to
invest $6.4 million and create 107 jobs over the next five years.
"We
plan on hiring between 10-20 people in the first year," says Bill
Greenway, CEO of Delphinus
Medical Solutions.
The Michigan Economic Development Corp
has agreed to grant the Karmanos Cancer Institute spin-off a
five-year tax credit worth $779,118 to move to the Michigan Life
Science & Innovation Center in Plymouth. That gave the Ann Arbor SPARK-run
wet lab incubator the edge over competing sites in Boston and Chicago.
Delphinus
Medical Solutions' principal product is SoftVue,
an alternative to mammography for breast cancer detection, risk
evaluation, and treatment monitoring. SoftVue can effectively
differentiate benign from malignant masses in breasts, helping eliminate
false positives and reducing unnecessary biopsies. It can also
accurately measure breast density, a known risk factor for developing
breast cancer, as well as detect many early stages of cancer in women
with dense breast tissue, which is often not picked up by mammography.
SoftVue
works by surrounding a breast submerged in warm water with an
ultrasound ring that captures detailed, three-dimensional images with
sound waves. The results are similar to an MRI, but the procedure takes
only a few minutes and costs much less. The procedure was the
inspiration for the company's name, which is Latin for dolphins.
"Because
our system uses sound waves and happens in water we thought it was a
neat name," Greenway says.
Source:
Bill Greenway, CEO of Delphinus Medical Technologies
Writer: Jon Zemke
Quantum Signal invests $1.29M, plans 47 hires
Source: Concentrate, 7/21/2010
Quantum Signal is sending all of the right
messages these days - hiring half a dozen people, about to hire another
47, and making a $1.29 million investment in the Ann Arbor community.
The
10-year-old firm recently added six people, rounding out its staff
to 35 with another 2-3 interns. That's up from a headcount of just under
30 when we checked in with the company in January. The Ann Arbor-based
firm plans to hire 9-10 people per year over the next five years so it
can hit its target of 47 new employees in that same time period.
"We're
very much in growth mode right now," says Mitch Rohde, COO of Quantum Signal. "We
have a lot of projects in the pipeline so we have to expand our
facilities. We're constantly understaffed."
Quantum
Signal uses high-end engineering mathematics and algorithms to
extract information from visual data. Think the type of software used in
face-recognition devices. It also develops military training
simulations and commercial video games under its Reactor Zero
subsidiary. It took a lot of these algorithms from the likes of the
University of Michigan.
"We wanted to take something out of the
ivory tower and apply it worldwide," Rohde says.
The Michigan Economic Development
Corp gave Quantum Signal a $206,083 tax credit over five years, helping it make
the choice to expand in Michigan instead of Washington, D.C. The firm
also plans to move to Saline as part of its expansion.
Source: Mitch Rohde, COO of Quantum Signal
Writer: Jon Zemke
Accuri Cytometers locks down $6M in financing, adds 25 positions
Source: Concentrate, 7/21/2010
Accuri Cytometers, an A-list start-up from Ann Arbor, is pulling in
seven figures' worth of seed
capital this month.
The company is bringing in $6 million in
financing to be used to take its Accuri C6 Flow Cytometer into clinical
trials and push it towards commercialization. That should allow it to
continue growing at a rapid clip. The company has hired about 25 people
over the last year, expanding its staff to 87 employees and a few
independent contractors and interns.
"Our revenue is growing
rapidly," says Jeff Williams, CEO of Accuri Cytometers. "Our sales are
growing rapidly."
Accuri
Cytometers, a University of Michigan spin-off, specializes in
making the cytometer systems that measure T-cell counts (among other
things), which is an instrumental tool in tracking and treating diseases
like AIDS and cancer. It is a research field with lots of room to grow
in both the near and long term.
The firm has been on a tear in
recent months, selling its products worldwide. It has attracted a number
of new customers.
"We expects our growth rate to continue,"
Williams says.
Source: Jeff
Williams, CEO of Accuri Cytometers
Writer: Jon Zemke
Tech Brewery's uwemp plans to add 10-15 jobs
Source: Concentrate, 7/21/2010
Ann Arbor-based Tech Brewery isn't just a
place for local techies/entrepreneurs to congregate and create. It's now
a place for techies/entrepreneurs from across Metro Detroit.
One-year-old
uwemp is a prime example of Tech Brewery's growing reach across
southeast Michigan. The firm's CEO is out of Bloomfield Hills, but he
choose to set up shop for his start-up in Ann Arbor because of
infrastructure like the Tech
Brewery.
"My view is that technology is what it's all about
and I want to be near the people who know about technology," says Jordan
Wolfe, CEO of uwemp.
"Plus, Ann Arbor SPARK helped
a lot, too."
The main product from ewemp is Confidence-Based
Learning, a web-based learning engine that uses a Google Analytics-style
method that gives educators a better handle on how their students are
and are not learning. The program can show when a student is beginning
to catch on to a lesson, when the student masters it, and even when he
or she wanders off. The idea is to provide educators with the pertinent
information to best reach their students.
The Michigan Microloan
Fund program gave
uwemp a five-figure loan earlier this summer. It plans to use that
money to create the Beta version of its software and begin testing it
with its first customers. The company hopes to hire 10-15 employees over
the next year. It currently employs two people full-time and another
three independent contractors.
Source: Jordan Wolfe, CEO of
uwemp
Writer: Jon Zemke
Ann Arbor's Accio Energy scores $250K from Automation Alley
Source: Concentrate, 7/21/2010
Accio Energy is raking in big checks from
some recognizable names now that Automation Alley has invested
$250,000 in the alternative energy start-up.
The 3-year-old firm
has made six hires in the last year, bringing its staff to 10 people. It
hopes to continue expanding by using the $250,000 and other seed
capital it has collected to continue developing its principal product
and readying it for commercialization.
"We will continue to hire
technologically strong individuals to help us develop the technology,"
says Jeff Basch, general manager for Accio Energy.
The Ann
Arbor-based company is building a wind turbine without the rotation. The
new technology, aerovoltaic, harnesses the electrokinetic energy of the
wind. The system doesn't have turbine blades and instead is silent and
stationary.
Source: Jeff
Basch, general manager for Accio Energy
Writer: Jon Zemke
Ann Arbor's EDF Ventures records profitable exit
Source: Concentrate, 7/21/2010
Ann Arbor's EDF Ventures just added
another solid base hit to its scorecard, recording a profitable exit
from the acquisition of Greenplum.
The Silicon
Valley-based firm provides disruptive data warehousing technology, a key
enabler of "big data" clouds and self-service analytics. It is being
acquired by EMC Corp so
it can beef up its information infrastructure business.
This is
the first profitable exit for EDF Ventures since Becton-Dickinson
acquired HandyLab last fall. The downtown-based firm, which employs
seven people, has 15 active companies in its portfolio, including local
star start-up Lycera.
Of those 15 firms, five are based in Michigan.
"We have several
promising companies in our portfolio," says Mary Campbell, managing
director of EDF Ventures.
Source: Mary Campbell, managing
director of EDF Ventures
Writer: Jon Zemke
Jove telecommuter lands in downtown Ann Arbor
Source: Concentrate, 7/21/2010
Jove shouldn't have anything to do with
downtown Ann Arbor, but the Massachusetts-based firm does so because of
the city's high quality of urban life.
Jove stands for Journal of Visualized
Experiments. The start-up creates and hosts video journals for
biological research, meaning it shows how experiments are done in a
peer-reviewed, YouTube-style Internet video. It draws top talent from
across North America to its staff, one of whom landed in Michigan and
choose downtown Ann Arbor.
Mark Shalinsky, one of Jove's first
employees, moved to Ann Arbor with his wife when she took a job at the
University of Michigan. They choose to live in downtown Ann Arbor
because it provided a quality urban experience where they could live
practically car-free. As Mark puts it, "not having a vehicle is
awesome."
"That's why Ann Arbor," Shalinsky says. "We like being
in the center of things."
This also helps him telecommute for his
job from various downtown hotspots. The close proximity to Metro
Airport allows him to be anywhere in the world within a matter of hours,
and also enables him to pitch Jove's products and attributes at a
number of Ann Arbor's entrepreneurial meetings, such as those hosted by
Ann Arbor SPARK. That helps the local entrepreneurial ecosystem make one
more connection to one of the world's hottest economies, and all
because the city created a dense, vibrant city center that new economy
workers wanted to be a part of.
Source:
Mark Shalinsky, Science Editor for Jove
Writer: Jon Zemke
Online Tech hires 4, plans for 50% growth
Source: Concentrate, 7/14/2010
Online Tech is not only cleaning up in its
own backyard, it is now taking on business in other
growth-generating regions. The result? Job creation and new
expansion opportunities for the Ann Arbor-based firm.
"We're
getting about twice the business outside of Michigan as we did a year
ago," says Yan
Ness, CEO of Online
Tech. "We dominate Michigan and now we are dominating the Midwest.
You have to own your own backyard first."
The data storage
company has hired four people since we last checked
on it early last year, rounding out its staff to 20 employees and six
independent contractors. One of those hires includes a former intern.
The company hopes to hire another 2-4 people within the next 6-9 months
as it capitalizes on double-digit growth. Projections peg that growth as
high as 30-50 percent.
Online Tech originally focused on digital information
storage at data centers in Ann Arbor and Flint, but it has been diversifying as of late. It's now
offering cloud computing and fixed-price IT services. The company plans
to build 10 new data centers in the Midwest, including a few in
Michigan.
"That's what's driving the interest and growth of our
industry," Ness says.
Source: Yan Ness, CEO of Online Tech
Writer:
Jon Zemke