The April opening of the specialty market and yoga studio in Depot Town has sparked concerns about gentrification, but Babo owner Sava Lelcaj says she plans to cater to her business' new community.
Want a real-time indicator of a community's economic health? Look for where the construction or, even better, restoration is occurring. Concentrate has put together a list of five Ann Arbor area construction blogs worth following.
After years of ever-dwindling local news coverage, MLive Ann Arbor laid off its only remaining arts and entertainment reporter, Jenn McKee. Their loss is our gain. But how will Ann Arbor-area arts organizations reach new audiences?
When U-M's Dr. Daphne C. Watkins looked into what kind of research was being done on the mental health of young, black men in college she discovered, well, very little. This inspired a social media-based project that seeks to provide support, information and conversation about the issues that affect what Dr. Watkins calls "a minority within a minority."
MyFab5 is hitting a number of cool milestones this year. The social media startup's technology has now helped in the sharing of more than 1 million pictures and its getting ready to launch a designed mobile app later this month. "We have redesigned every feature from head to toe," says Omeid Seirafi-Pour, co-founder & CEO of MyFab5. "It's all the same features but much easier to use and looks much better." The Ann Arbor-based startup allows its users to take pictures of their meals at restaurants and then rank their experience. The company got its start allowing users to rank their top five businesses in certain genres in local areas, but transitioned to a photo-based version when it noticed its users liked using it with Instagram. The 2-year-old company now averages 250,000 users each month. Those users shared their 1 millionth photo earlier this year, helping MyFab5 reach a critical milestone. "That was a pretty big one for us," Seirafi-Pour says. MyFab5 has hired one person (an Andriod developer) to grow its staff to four employees and three interns over the last year. That team has relied on grass roots and viral marketing efforts to build the startup into what it is today. It's now looking at embarking at a national marketing campaign later this year. Source: Omeid Seirafi-Pour, co-founder & CEO of MyFab5 Writer: Jon Zemke
Of the 23 "titans" listed in this compendium of tech giants, more than 20 percent have strong ties to the Mitten. And more than a couple are U-M grads. Excerpt: "... we've profiled 23 tech titans with Midwest roots, whether they earned their degrees here or were born-and-bred. Yes, each founder and executive eventully left for the coast, but if the region continues to build out its individual tech hubs, the surrounding states will start to retain the game-changing innovators - like Marc Andreesen, Larry Page, Jack Dorsey, and more - that it's consistenly seeding. " Read the list here.
Crains offers a step-by-step primer on how local startups used crowd funding to get their businesses off the ground. Excerpt: "Locally, cousins Lucy Carnaghi and Molly Mitchell used Kickstarter last year to raise the final $19,000 they needed to open Rose's Fine Food on East Jefferson Avenue. And Avegant Corp., an Ann Arbor-based startup, raised $1.5 million to produce a video headset called Glyph. But donors don't own any part of the business, and there is little to no recourse for them if a company fails to send the promised rewards. Kickstarter is littered with failures." Read the rest here.
Social media startup Selocial helped bolster its brand earlier this year at the Extreme Tech Challenge in Las Vegas. The Ann Arbor-based company made the semi-finals of the business plan competition, earning an invite to do a live demo on the Monster Product stage of this year's Consumer Electronics Show. It beat out 2,000 other entries to score a Top 25 spot. "This is really big," says David Baird, co-founder & CEO of Selocial. "I didn't expect it." Baird likes to describe Selocial as an Instagram meets Spotify or Pandora. The company’s software allows users to make a "Selomix," which is a 15-minute visual playlist that combines the users preferred music with a photo. The company launched midway through 2014 and is still in Beta. "We would love to come out of Beta in the next six months," Baird says. "We're looking at a couple of partners right now." The 1-year-old startup has expanded its staff to six people. That team is currently working on enhancing the software platform by adding more features and plugins. "Someone could listen to someone else's mix on Facebook without having to go to our site," Baird says. Source: David Baird, co-founder & CEO of Selocial Writer: Jon Zemke
The former Leopold Brothers building on S. Main St. is the kind of space that takes imagination and moxie to make work. Enter New York City-based software firm Hooklogic, which decided to abandon plans to outsource its programming and set up shop in Ann Arbor, turning a light industrial space into a workplace for new economy talent.
Okay, there's us. And we're proud to say we've been around 300+ issues now. But let's share some of the love, okay? There are some damn fine local bloggers out there and we think you should be reading them. So, we've put together a list of five must-read sites.
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