VC Web Design graduates from SPARK East, hires 5 in Ypsilanti

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 | Source: Concentrate

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