U-M alumns look to turn myfab5 into better version of Yelp!

Omeid Seirafi-Pour at first followed a fairly typical path after graduating from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. The freshly minted BBA took a consulting job in Chicago. That lasted about a year before he and some fellow grads came back to Ann Arbor and started walking down the entrepreneurial path with myfab5. "I knew consulting wasn't right for me," Seirafi-Pour says. "I always wanted to do something entrepreneurial." He came to that realization earlier this year and made the move back to Michigan to launch the tech start-up. He now oversees a team of five employees and another five interns. They're all working out of TechArb, a business incubator at the University of Michigan geared toward student entrepreneurs. Ann Arbor-based myfab5 is creating an Internet/mobile platform that helps people rate and find eateries and retail businesses. While popular sites like Yelp! depend on a star system, myfab5 allows its users to name its top five businesses according to category, such as best pizza places or Chinese food. "We found that it is much easier to think this way," Seirafi-Pour says. "People aren't geared to think in regards to star rankings." Seirafi-Pour and his team are working on perfecting the platform now and expect to release a public version focused on Ann Arbor-area businesses within the next few weeks. Source: Omeid Seirafi-Pour, co-founder & CEO of myfab5 Writer: Jon Zemke Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.