It’s an improving but still perennial issue for the “flyover states”: finding funding for your business. Different types of tech companies require different types of funding, but it never hurts to know who is out there. With this in mind, the Michigan Venture Capital Association has created the Michigan Entrepreneurial & Investment Landscape Map, which includes not only local and regional VCs and angels but also economic development corporations, university partners, funds of funds, and more.
On Main Street in Ann Arbor, right next to the wedding dress shop and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tearoom, Workantile co-working space is celebrating its tenth anniversary. It’s a simple concept: professionals can rent a desk or drop in and use the space’s private conference rooms and phone rooms, or utilize the space for group meetups.
Workantile hosts the Festifool luminary workshops, parties, and get-togethers of various kinds, but it’s a pretty low-key place during the day. There are two rows of desks around a conference table up front on the first floor. Then a kitchen stocked with coffee and snacks, several private rooms including a private conference room, and up the open staircase is another set of desks. Workantile has just opened the options for dedicated work stations, so people can leave their things longer in the space.
If you’re looking to get connected to Ann Arbor tech, one group you might overlook is the A2B3 lunch networking group, which has been around for 13 years now. It’s mostly tech folks but is a nice way to meet professionals around town because it includes people from all walks. A2B3 is run by long-time Ann Arbor tech guy Ed Vielmetti (whom you really should be following on Twitter) and 2 other organizers, and meets at various rotating restaurants around downtown Ann Arbor after its original meetup location at Eastern Accents closed down several years back.
The Third Space. Community. It’s a topic that has rolled around communities lately because of the growth of online education and the disconnected social structure of modern society. Some companies are now doing more than starting meetups. Ray Batra, founder of ShiftUp, is a new community builder in the online education space surrounding technology. The company is brand new, Detroit-based, and plans to expand to other topics but has started in coding because it’s one of the learning spaces that most benefits from support and peer learning.
Every other month on the third Thursday of the month, the New Enterprise Forum meets in the Lower Level of SPARK Central on Liberty at 5:00 pm for Pitch Pit, where new entrepreneurs come and give short investor pitches on business ideas of all kinds. Pitch Pit doesn’t meet in August and December, and alternates…
It’s a monthly networking breakfast at Zingerman’s Roadhouse frequented by speakers including Michigan entrepreneurs, local business leaders, Governor Snyder, and more. Dr. Robert Pasick, PhD, known affectionately to many around the University of Michigan as “Dr. Rob,” has been running Leaders Connect events monthly for over two decades. Leaders Connect brings together Ann Arbor leaders…
Even undergrad students at the University of Michigan now have access to amazing mentorship from experienced tech leadership in Ann Arbor and Detroit. One such mentor working with student Scarlett Ong Rui Chern, whose startup Peerstachio we just featured on Cronicle Press was interviewed in Newsweek last week, is Gerry Roston. Gerry Roston served as…
The problem with growing Ann Arbor tech faster than it’s already growing, according to Databricks Solutions Architect and Partner Jordan Martz, is that, like him, we travel to Silicon Valley and come back here to work with diffuse teams, but we don’t open offices or reinvest here. We have to find back channels to support…
Of all the people you should meet if you are interested in meeting new people in Ann Arbor, particularly in tech, the one you will hear the most about is Brooke Boyle. Boyle is the founder and CEO of professional networking organization Engage, which helps connect not just people in tech but professionals across several…
