Technology

U-M student start-up, Are You a Human, wins $115K in Rice University Business Plan Competition

By Newsroom

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April 27, 2011

Are You a Human is feeling a little superhuman these days after the Ann Arbor-based start-up recently won six figures' worth of prize money from the Rice University Business Plan Competition, the world's largest such graduate-level competition.The nearly 1-year-old start-up specializes in creating software that gives humans the upper hand over computer programs when it comes to ordering things like concert tickets online. The company won $115,000, taking second place overall and winning the Most Promising Start-Up award."It's all basically going to go toward development," says Reid Tatoris, co-founder of Are You a Human. "Over the next 3-4 months we're going to take our website, which is at an Alpha stage, and take it to a production release stage."Are You a Human is the brain child of Tatoris and Tyler Paxton, both students at the University of Michigan. The duo created a game-based human authentication tool (think Duck Hunt) that replaces the distorted text images known as CAPTCHAs that websites use to authentic a user is actually a person. Tatoris and Paxton now oversee a team of nine, mostly U-M students who work out of the TechArb. They hope to add 2-3 more developers and coders over the next few months as they prepare to commercialize their product later this year. They hope to grow their team to up to 15 people in a year and have 200-300 websites using their technology.Source: Reid Tatoris, co-founder of Are You a HumanWriter: Jon ZemkeRead more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Latest in Technology

The future of libraries is in the hands of geeks

By Newsroom

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Economic Development

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April 27, 2011

Reference is dead. All hail the IT staff! At a recent librarian symposium, Ann Arbor District Library associate director Eli Neiburger delivered the news that the way of the future for libraries across the nation involves data storage and distribution - which means big servers and the geeks who service them. Needless to say the message made some ripples. Excerpt: "We need big servers and the geeks to take care of them," Neiburger said. "What are we going to cut to be able to hire a geek? We are going to cut reference staff. Reference is dead," he said. Despite the fact that a trained librarian can bring value to a reference interaction, the patron today, acclimated to Google searches, does not feel that way, and librarians cannot change their mind, Neiburger said. "Travel agents were outmoded because people felt they had better access to the information than they could get from the travel agents. We're in a similar sort of spot," he said." Rad the rest of the story here.

Wolverine Energy Solutions & Technology receives federal funding, triples staff

By Newsroom

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Community Development

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April 20, 2011

Wolverine Energy Solutions & Technology is a green energy company that doesn't dabble in things like wind, solar or biofuels. The University of Michigan spin-out is developing an organic material for super capacitors that will make them more energy efficient and bio-degradable."The material allows it to handle really intense energy, and it can do it over a long period of time," says Stephanie Goodson, president of Wolverine Energy Solutions & Technology. She is also the wife of Theodore Goodson III, a U-M chemistry professor who first discovered the technology.Wolverine Energy Solutions & Technology has already developed a prototype and is using funding from federal agencies, such as the U.S. Dept of Defense, to further development of the organic material in real-life scenarios. This has allowed the company to expand its staff from two people from its inception in 2009 to six today."We'd like to see our employee number double over the next year, and have a good business plan to market our technology to a major corporation," Goodson says.Source: Stephanie Goodson, president of Wolverine Energy Solutions & TechnologyWriter: Jon ZemkeRead more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Pixel Velocity has triple digit growth on strength of gov’t contracts, expects to add positions

By Newsroom

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Community Development

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April 20, 2011

All this talk of federal budget balancing and project slashing hasn't scared Pixel Velocity or its executive team. The Ann Arbor-based firm continues to grow at a triple-digit rate thanks mainly to federal and local government contracts for its digital image processing products.The 10-year-old company clocked a 400 percent revenue increase over the last year with contracts for its products at Wayne County Port Authority and Midway Airport in Chicago. "It's better than ever in regards to federal sales," says Eric Sieczka, president and CEO of Pixel Velocity. "This is a significant year for us. We're doing some significant roll-outs. We see a pretty prosperous horizon."Pixel Velocity creates high-speed digital image processing products for the surveillance and medical imaging markets. One of its biggest markets is installing this technology at points of entry throughout the country, such as ports, airports, and border crossings. Sieczka also expects his company to expand into the petrochemical (oil and gas) market.He expects to add about two new hires to the company's staff of 15 people later this year, depending on Velocity's business.Source: Eric Sieczka, president and CEO of Pixel Velocity Writer: Jon ZemkeRead more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

RollingEdge strategy consultancy stabilizes clients

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Community Development

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April 6, 2011

If experience is the best teacher, then it can also serve as a decent business model. That's how Rangarajan Tirumala's second business, Rolling Edge, got started.The techie and partner at InfoSoft hung on when the company recently went through a number of ups and downs thanks to the local and national economies. He and his partners steadied the tech firm, putting it on a profitable footing once again. Now Tirumala is turning that experience into a business consultancy based in downtown Ann Arbor.Rolling Edge provides software applications that help a business get its basics back under control. That includes work flow, supply chain management, and price analysis and simulation. The 5-year-old company's team of about half a dozen people also advises companies about when they should outsource and how to do it properly and within cost limits."I wanted to build a model that instills stability in an organization," Tirumala says. Rolling Edge focuses on small-to-medium-sized businesses and is based in Ann Arbor to avail itself to the area's vibrant ecosystem of tech firms. Tirumala is shooting for his company to hit $2 million in revenue within the next year and to add a few more people to his team in that time. He is looking for experienced candidates who have been through the ups and downs of the economy."If they have seen the ups and downs then they will bring an ocean of experience," Tirumala says.Source: Rangarajan Tirumala, owner & founder of Rolling EdgeWriter: Jon ZemkeRead more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Ghostly International moves to Tech Brewery, inks new deals

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Arts and Culture

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March 2, 2011

Ghostly International is moving on up to Ann Arbor's north side, taking space in the Tech Brewery, the business incubator that houses some of the area's most promising technology start-ups.The electronic and ambient music label and long-time Ann Arbor staple is moving four of its employees and a handful of interns into one of Tech Brewery's suites. The building is a combination of office suites of various sizes and a large co-working space where new entrepreneurs work shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Duo Security co-founders Dug Song and John Oberheide. "We have always felt we are a technology company," says Jeremy Peters, director of creative licensing & business affairs for Ghostly International. "We felt this is a good community to be around for the label."Ghostly International has grown to seven employees in total after hiring one person over the last year. Three of those employees are based in New York City and the company works with a number of independent contractors across the U.S. The label got its start in Sam Valenti IV's University of Michigan dorm room in 1999, and has established itself as an internationally recognized techno brand since. A number of deals and a few changes to the way it does business spurred its recent growth. For instance, it recently adopted Zingerman's open business model that shares financial and decision-making responsibilities with its employees. It also recently inked deals with Vagrant Records (a bigger music label) and licensed music to Lincoln for a commercial.Source: Jeremy Peters, director of creative licensing & business affairs for Ghostly InternationalWriter: Jon ZemkeRead more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Stout Systems expects 50% growth in tech staffing business

By Newsroom

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Economic Development

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February 23, 2011

The job levees are giving way; you can tell by taking a close look at Stout Systems.The Ann Arbor-based technology staffing firm helped 30-plus highly skilled people transition into new work in 2010. It's also seen a rise in its own core staff to keep up with demand. In 2007, three people held executive and administrative roles. Today the firm has six full-time and one part-time positions to handle those duties. It's also is in the process of hiring another 1-2 people to augment that core staff."There has been an explosive demand for technical people," says John Stout, president and founder of Stout Systems. "There is a lot of pent up demand in the IT and software business. We have more job openings for us and our clients than we have seen in 10 years."Stout Systems either finds technical people or sends its own techies out to its customers to get jobs done. These workers cover all technology aspects, ranging from IT to software development. This year Stout expects a 50-percent sales increase."That represents a real growth in the demand for our services," Stout says.Source: John Stout, president & founder of Stout SystemsWriter: Jon ZemkeRead more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

U-M startups dominate Clean Energy Prize competition

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Economic Development

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February 23, 2011

Start-ups from the University of Michigan swept the top spots in this year's Clean Energy Prize competition, including first-place winner CSquared Innovations.CSquared Innovations plans to take its $50,000 in prize money to help commercialize its lithium-ion battery technology and pump up its staff to 14 people this year. The U-M Dearborn spin-out is working through the U-M Office of Technology Transfer to build a faster, cheaper, laser-based method of making nano-structured materials and coatings for lithium-ion battery electrodes, solar cells, and industrial coatings. The technology could make the manufacturing process much less expensive. Nick Moroz, vice president of engineering and development for CSquared Innovations, says the Clean Energy Prize really helped his team gain confidence in its product and should help speed up the process of bringing it to market."We got a great amount of exposure and networking experience from it," Moroz says "There were a number of venture capital and angel investors there that started conversations with us."Among the focus areas of the start-ups participating were renewable energy, energy efficiency, smart grid technologies, environmental control technologies, plug-in electric vehicles, energy storage, and creating a mechanism to allow organizations to use their self-created biodiesel through fuel purchase agreements. Two-thirds of those 23 start-ups came from Ann Arbor.The other winners include Smart Energy (second place, $25,000) which is creating an innovative financing model to retrofit municipal buildings for energy efficiency savings. Third place ($10,000) went to Impact Card to develop a funding mechanism that aggregates consumer credit card reward points as project financing for renewable energy development. The last two first place finishers include Algal Scientific and Enertia, which are still developing their technology and gathering seed capital to commercialize their products.Source: Nick Moroz, vice president of engineering and development for CSquared InnovationsWriter: Jon ZemkeRead more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Natural Intelligence

By Dennis Archambault

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Economic Development

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February 9, 2011

It's not quite artificial intelligence but it sure comes close. Named one of the ten "World Changing Ideas" of 2010 by Scientific American, swarm intelligence is a biology-inspired computer algorithm that's starting to see commercial application. And most of that development occurred here, in Ann Arbor area research labs.

Civionics capitalizes on new microsensor technology at U-M

By Newsroom

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Economic Development

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February 2, 2011

Civionics is developing technology to monitor things like bridges, ships and infrastructure, but the University of Michigan spin-out's bread and butter is the technology you can't really touch.The 2-year-old start-up is developing technology that utilizes sensors (think Amiq Micro's tiny sensors) to measure the stress on and within an object. That could include everything from bridges to cargo ships. Where Civionics really distinguishes itself, however, is with the specialized software it creates to harness this technology.The Ann Arbor-based company plans to move into U-M's Venture Accelerator in the North Campus Research Complex. There the five-member team plans to continue developing its technology with the goal of commercializing it within the next year or two."2011 is where we're looking to use this space and really accelerate the growth of our company," says Jerry Lynch, executive vice president of Civionics. Source: Jerry Lynch, executive vice president of CivionicsWriter: Jon ZemkeRead more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.