“We recently closed on $17 million in funding, reinforcing our commitment to the wind industry,” says Danny Ellis, CEO of SkySpecs, a sustainable energy company in Ann Arbor that uses drones to inspect wind turbines. “We’ve doubled down our focus on the wind industry.”
Joe Affholter of Michigan State Unversity and Michelle Larkin at the University of Michigan have essentially the same job: get academic research in the life sciences from the laboratory where it is discovered in Michigan’s half dozen largest research universities out to industry. Sounds simple, but it’s anything but. That’s because the MEDC’s Life Sciences MTRAC program is tasked with licensing technology invented in the academic system, mentoring new founders who often did not start in industry, and with helping companies get funded through clinical trials and the push out to the commercial market, which can take years to complete.
Little known fact: Ypsilanti, Michigan, has been home to a satellite and remote sensing company now called MAXAR since 1947. Focused on space infrastructure, remote sensing for earth intelligence, and the technology to support self-driving cars, MAXAR and the companies that came before it were originally spun out from the University of Michigan and were hosted at the old Willow Run Labs.
The ladies who run Jottful set out to help very small businesses with fewer than 5 employees create professional websites. “Our clients are often self-employed consultants, or service-oriented businesses,” says Dawn Verbrigghe, founder and CEO. The service is perfect for everything from “life coaches to management consultants to Main Street service businesses such as martial arts studios, beauty salons, and custom cake decorators.” If a business needs more than a build-your-own site but can’t afford the commonly quoted $5k price tag for a custom website from a creative agency, Jottful fills the gap in between. But then, the scope of what Jottful was managing expanded, and in more than one direction.
You’ve started a new company, which was daunting enough, found your first core team, and are building the business. How do you find the right marketer or web designer, and how do you know if your data is at risk if you don’t have someone on staff to advise you? TechStak CEO and founder Nicol Pasuit started her company 2 years ago to address this problem. Because it’s not just about finding the right professional to fill the gap in your growing company’s needs. Sometimes you don’t speak their language and don’t know which questions to ask to find out exactly what you need next.
Russell Schindler is the head of TCNewTech in Traverse City, which at 1600 members averages 200 people per meeting. He’s also the CEO and founder of a company called SampleServe that uses technology to update the antiquated process of environmental sampling, from municipal water supply testing to cannabis. It sounds simple, and some of the technology is, but, Schindler tells us, the state of Michigan updated the standards for environmental sampling of soil, water, and the like, a number of years ago, and all of a sudden, it became much harder for companies to not only purchase specialized equipment required to conduct their sampling, but also to process all the data.
It’s 2020, and as part of Cronicle’s expansion across the unique and natural resource-rich Great Lakes region, we will be covering more technology that helps address climate change. If you have a tech company or tech-enabled startup that is helping to address climate change, please contact the editor to be featured on Cronicle Press Tech News in the coming months.
This spring, I gave a talk at an agile conference about blameless culture. During the presentation, I asked, by a show of hands, how many people work in a culture ruled by fear. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, well over half the crowd raised their hands.
Happy New Year, everyone! We are excited to kick off this new year with expanding interviews and test drives with the coolest new tech coming out of Michigan, but we need your help. Cronicle Press Tech News is supported through sponsorships of various kinds, and now you can become an individual or corporate Patron as well to help fund the work we are doing to cover the historic growth of tech in the Great Lakes area.
It’s New Years Eve, so we’re looking back at the most popular posts on Cronicle Press Tech News out of Ann Arbor-Detroit about the growing Great Lakes tech scene in 2019. Turns out, it was a banner year for Ann Arbor tech and Detroit startups in particular, so we just scratched the surface of all the latest news. First up, the most popular post by far, professor Austin Yarger’s master list of game development studios of Michigan. Also included at the end are some followup interviews with a few of those gaming studios that are either growing in Michigan or started here.
It’s a brand-new year, so we’re highlighting some new groups you might not have found yet going on around Ann Arbor and Detroit. Happy 2020, everyone! Thanks for your support of Cronicle Press Tech News in our first year.
Denise Graves is the University Relations Director for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. She coordinates funding for a number of startup funds around the state, and she works closely with universities to get inventions out into industry. We’ve known the MEDC was supporting revitalizing the Michigan economy for years, but recently we ran into Graves at a university entrepreneurial event and realized we only ever get a partial picture of how startups can connect with the MEDC for business support services, and how all of this really works. We wanted to know more, and thought you might as well. Graves and her colleague, Vice President of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the MEDC Fred Molnar, explained to Cronicle the process they go through to help support new ventures in Michigan.
