Technology and Innovation

Amplifinity closes on $1.5 million worth of venture capital

U-M grads turn shopping into a social media experience, launch HangTrend.com

A group of recent University of Michigan graduates have come together to create an Internet start-up that combines both shopping and social media called HangTrend.com. "We think that shopping in general is social," says Valentin Gui, co-founder & director of business development for HangTrend.com. "A lot of people still go to the mall. They go with their friends because they want to get a better idea of how a whole outfit will look." HangTrend.com aims to make online shopping a social experience. Think of the site as being a combination of Facebook and visit to the mall. It allows users to look at clothes, make virtual outfits and share them with your friends to get recommendations and ideas. The site has lined up thousands of brands and millions of items. The 7-month old start-up went live in July and has experienced 100 percent growth in users every week since it launched. "I want to have a national scale to the company," Gui says. "I want to be in all the universities in the U.S." Gui (who graduated U-M in 2010 with a bachelors in economics) co-founded HangTrend.com with Leore Avidar (2011, bachelors of business administration), Enea Gjoka (2011, bachelors in chemical and molecular biology) and Zubair Ahsan (2012, masters in pharmaceutical engineering). The company currently employs the four co-founders and four interns. Source: Valentin Gui, co-founder & director of business development for HangTrend.com Writer: Jon Zemke Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Electric Field Solutions sees broad applications for its tech

Nilton Renno never intended to start a business. The University of Michigan professor of engineering had helped develop a technology that detects and measures electric fields and took it to an industry conference. The technology proved to be so popular with his peers that Renno began to commercialize it as its own start-up, Electric Field Solutions. "I was surprised about the reaction to our technology," Renno says. "They said it has a wide variety of applications in industry." The University of Michigan spin out has spent its first year developing its technology at the university's Venture Accelerator. The technology, which is being branded as Charge Tracker, locates electric charge buildup on objects located tens of feet away from it. This sort of technology is usually used by the consumer electronics industry to prevent the electric charges from harming their products, but Renno sees a broader application. "After talking to many different companies most don't realize there is a problem," Renno says. "They don't know about it because there isn't a product to measure it. Our technology allows them to detect and measure the problem." The Ann Arbor-based start-up recently received a microloan from the Michigan Microloan Fund Program that will help modify its electric field sensor to be used in industrial applications. It is currently used for research. The redesigned sensor will be used in customer visits in an effort to identify the most attractive market segment to pursue. Electric Field Solutions currently employs two people and a couple of independent contractors. The company is also looking to hire a mechanical engineer. Source: Nilton Renno, CTO & co-inventor of Electric Field Solutions Writer: Jon Zemke Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Ann Arbor company takes some sting out of debt collection

Debt settlement has gone high-tech with HealPay, an A2 company that decreases the stigma of colection repayment by taking it online. Excerpt: "The venture came together after co-founder Lancelot Carlson, who had been consulting for a collection agency, started to talk with Bzovi, who had previously worked in advertising technology — where he said he became “enthralled” with ad server technology — about the possibilities of online bill payment. Struck by how behavioral targeting can yield higher click-through and conversation rates, they decided to see if the same techniques would work with billing – and even debt collection." Read the rest here.

Terumo Cardiovascular Systems invests $4.9M in Ann Arbor facility

Terumo Cardiovascular Systems is augmenting its 45-plus year lifespan in Ann Arbor with a new $4.9 million capital investment project. With the help of Ann Arbor SPARK, Terumo CVS, a maker and global exporter of heart and lung machines and other devices used in cardiac surgery, has secured a tax abatement from Scio Township of up to 12 years for the project. Included in the investment are a manufacturing execution system to automate the collection and reporting of manufacturing and quality data in real time, an expanded and improved recycling center, the deployment of compact florescent lighting technology on an industrial scale, a new service training room, and a new HVAC system for the chemistry lab, according to Barbara Schmid, the company's communications director. The 600-employee firm purchased over $20 million worth of products and services from Michigan-based suppliers last year, according to Schmid. "The improvements are making possible continued business expansion and investment," Schmid says. We are still hiring...We have about 30 open positions right now." Schmid says the project is expected to be complete by April of 2013. Source:  Barbara Schmid, corporate communications director, Terumo CVS Writer: Tanya Muzumdar

Venture-backed DeepField set to launch out of Tech Brewery

It's easy to see all of the change taking place on the Internet from everyday use. The change taking place on the backend is expensive, a trend a new venture-capital-based start-up DeepField plans to take advantage of. "There are huge changes going on behind the scenes," says Craig Labovitz, president & founder of DeepField. "Billions of dollars are being spent to build complex infrastructure around the world." The Ann Arbor-based start-up, which calls Tech Brewery home, is developing software that will help large corporations deal with adapting to these infrastructure changes. That software provides them "the toolset to compete," Labovitz says. The software went public on Tuesday and there are already customers signed up. "There is a strong demand," Labovitz says. DeepField has raised $1.6 in venture capital to develop its technology over the last year. That has allowed it to hire about a dozen people and it has five openings now for positions in sales, engineering and software development. Source: Craig Labovitz, president & founder of DeepField Writer: Jon Zemke Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

U-M’s Institute for Social Research to get new $29M wing

As the interdisciplinary field of social science research stretches into new areas, the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research (ISR) is embarking on a $29 million expansion and renovation project. The 56,700-square-foot addition will accommodate more hires and provide data archiving capacity and biospecimen laboratory and storage space. The five-story wing equates to a one-third increase in floor space at the Thompson Street building. Another 12,800 square feet of the existing facility will be reconfigured to blend with the addition. The ISR also has a 123,632 square-foot building on Perry Street. The above-ground floors will contain more research offices, collaborative work areas, and a meeting room for up to 220 people. Data archiving and lab space are planned for the basement level. "There's going to be the ability to hold specimens and conduct assays on the specimens that we don't currently have the capacity for," says Anna Schork, assistant director of the institute. The project will commence in August and is estimated to be complete by the summer of 2014. It is being funded through U-M's Office of the Provost, ISR resources, and a $14.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. "We're fortunate from a funding environment that we're continuing on the upward trend, but we're also being mindful not to overbuild," Schork says. Source: Anna Schork, assistant director of the Institute for Social Research Writer: Tanya Muzumdar

Meritful aims to help make student online presence presentable

Azarias Reda decided to combine two key aspects of his adult life when creating his new start-up, Meritful. The PhD candidate in computer science at the University of Michigan once worked at LinkedIn and has spent a fair amount of his time in Ann Arbor teaching at local high schools. While teaching he noticed every one of his students produced some sort of online content, usually through social media outlets. So last spring he began building a start-up that helped students in high school and college create a professional online presence that would make potential employers happy and their parents smile. "We want to help high school students present themselves better on the web," Reda says. "That's our underlying goal." The Ypsilanti-based start-up plans to conduct a private launch in mid August at a U-M summer camp and fully open up the site in the fall. Reda and his team of four people plan to focus on students in Michigan in the first year and then move onto a national presence in year two. "We want Meritful to become the de facto location if you want to learn the merit of high school students," Reda says. Source: Azarias Reda, founder of Meritful Writer: Jon Zemke

Merit Network continues fiber-optic expansion in Ann Arbor