Permission Not Required for Assemble Detroit, Michigan’s Own SXSW Event

Kevin Krease and Garrett Koehler recently lost the ESPN X Games bid for Detroit, but turned this failure into Michigan’s own and very first SXSW-like event. The event called Assemble will be hosted in Detroit during the Summer of 2014, and will combine tech, music, art and extreme sports.

The duo who attracted national media attention for the ESPN bid shared with us at last night’s Fifty Founders event how they got started and what they aim to do with Assemble Detroit. It was a great turnout at Bamboo Detroit where the community gathered to network and hear this young startup speak.

When Kevin Krease and Garret Koehler started the X Games bid in Detroit, it was because they wanted to make a positive impact in the city that had always fascinated them. Krease worked in publishing and Kohler had experience teaching art, traveling through Palestine, and eventually working at Groupon in Chicago. Koehler left to join Krease in Detroit this past year.

During the bid, their team raised national awareness, launched a viral video, and created a social media movement around the event. Along the way they setup strategic partnerships. The loss of the bid helped them garner enough support for Assemble Detroit.

Here’s what the duo says they learned along the way:

No Permission Required. This is the internal motto for the Assemble Detroit team. Why? Because they learned that to make something like a large scale event happen you need to take your own initiative. The duo said the resources are always there, and that there are plenty of startup resources in Detroit. You just need the idea to get started and inspire others to believe. For events, they said it’s about the idea and the brand. Then, you hire local talent to help make it happen.

Build relationships and trust. To get excitement for the ESPN bid going the team had to create a video. They had little budget to work with, and partnered with another startup to create their video that eventually went viral. The startup trusted them and covered the costs until the group received funding. What did they learn? It’s about building relationships and trust with others to get an idea off the ground. The video was a huge success in building momentum for the team. They were able to pay the other business back when funding came in.

Always add value. The team used this piece of advice to help maneuver how they would build up momentum for their extreme sports event. Every time they went to make a decision that may have seemed like a leap, they asked themselves if it added value to their goal. If the answer was yes, they found a way to make it happen.

It’s about perception, not risk. The duo said that they did hear some negative feedback on their journey. Others called hosting a large event with extreme sports in the city risky. They pointed out that risk is all about your perception on the place and the people. Risk to extreme sports is falling down during a dangerous jump. Risk in Detroit isn’t that risky as others might see it. The duo said:

“Detroit isn’t a liability. Its grit and resources are a bonus. Risky is believing that Detroit won’t turn around. It’s thinking you can move and make it in New York City.”

Failure can be fun. When the bid was lost, they realized how fun it could be to build their own large scale event that included sports. The idea for Assemble was to create a similar event to SXSW, but one that included extreme sports too. They’re aiming to bring 100,000 people to Detroit for the event next summer.

Remember the community. Both Krease and Koehler remarked that Detroit has a a strong sense of place. The name “Assemble” reminds us of coming together as an assembly line, to work, and to innovate in the city. It also brings together a larger community into the current narrative of a city that’s often described as rebuilding. They are aware of the sense of community, bringing up the X Games bid through grassroots marketing strategies. They expressed the importance for including the community, but also doing great work that isn’t tied to only Detroit.

Next Fifty Founders Event: The next Fifty Founder’s event which will feature Ryan Blair in September. Fifty Founder’s is a fireside chat series hosted in Detroit, bringing successful entrepreneurs in Michigan and around the country to Detroit. The series goes in-depth to share details about startup lessons learned. Sign up now here: https://ryanblair.eventbrite.com/

This event was sponsored by Start Garden and TechTown Detroit. Learn more about Fifty Founders and stay tuned for the next event.

From our content partner michipreneur.com! Written by: Amanda Lewan. Blogger. Marketer. Cupcake baker. I like helping startups with marketing. I also blog on digital storytelling Amandalewan.com. Follow Amanda at @Amanda_Jenn

Detroit Startup To Make The Dinner Decision Easier Beginning Thursday

Many of you know that for a long time in a previous life I was involved in top 40 radio in medium and major markets. As a music director and program director at several stations, I had access to very expensive, all-consuming research tools. Focus groups, call out research trade reports, and more were designed to make “picking the hits” much easier. What I found, though. was a little concept a few of us had come up with called “3 favorite songs.” Go to events, go to the mall, and ask the people, what are your three favorite songs.

What the heck does this have to do with a startup in Detroit? Well our best research, the research that led to great ratings was just asking what are your three favorite songs, without clutter and all this excess meat and fat.

Clutter, and fat, are what clogs up the arteries of what would be good recommendation engines and apps for discovering things like restaurants. On our sneaker strapped road trip a few weeks ago, I got invited to a brain picking. A funded startup wanted to bounce some ideas off me and offered to take me to any restaurant in Chicago at any cost for the time. I started Googling, yelping, urban spooning and every other -ing I could think of to pick a restaurant. I came across the restaurant I ultimately picked, but this was maybe 2 hours after I got the invitation call in the first place. It was also after I had read a review that would have taken up 10 written pages. What a time suck.

The team at Detroit startup myfab5 takes that simple, clutter free way of asking or recommending, to help people navigate a restaurant decision. Users just rate their 5 favorite restaurants in any food related category and voila, the magic happens. The app takes all of that data and serves up good recommendations.

Startups in Detroit are looking to help the city make a comeback sweeter than Twinkies. myfab5 is one of those startups. The company has residence in both the TechArb accelerator in Ann Arbor and the Launch Detroit accelerator in Detroit. We got a chance to interview co-founder Calvin Schemanski. Check out the interview below.

What does your company do?

myfab5 is a platform that reinvents the restaurant review. Designed to mimic offline human behavior, myfab5’s platform let’s people recommend restaurants by talking about their favorite. On myfab5 you can rank up to five of your favorite restaurants in any food related category (e.g. my favorite places for #DeepDishPizza in Chicago). myfab5 instantly aggregates everyone’s rankings to power dynamic search results that tell you how popular each restaurant is for different types of food (e.g. how a pizza place ranks in the #DeepDishPizza and #ThinCrustPizza categories).

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

Omeid Seirafi-Pour is the Co-Founder and CEO of myfab5 and has previously worked in consulting where he helped fortune 500 companies develop winning growth strategies. He gained experience with online reviews when helping a big box retailer understand how consumers use reviews/recommendations when going about the multi-channel shopping experience. Omeid and his Co-Founders are passionate entrepreneurs and are members of the University of Michigan startup accelerator known as TechArb.

myfab5 Co-Founder Calvin Schemanski paid his way through college when he owned and operated a pedicab business for three years. Through this, he gained experience working with local businesses managing the growth of a venture, and managing a small workforce.

myfab5 technical Co-Founder John Gulbronson has a diverse software development background and previously worked at the University of Michigan Pathology department, developing algorithms that identify gene fusion pairs found in the genomes of cancer patients.

All three co-founders are graduates of the University of Michigan. John and Omeid graduated in 2011 and Calvin graduated in 2012.

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

The startup scene in Ann Arbor and Detroit is small but quite energized. There is a big movement to revitalize Detroit; and entrepreneurship is at the heart of it. Several large corporations have relocated their headquarters to downtown Detroit and some venture capital firms and business accelerators have set up shop downtown as well. Even the State of Michigan is getting involved through economic development programs targeted at launching and growing startups in Michigan.

45 minutes to the west, Ann Arbor’s entrepreneurship scene is also developing. The University of Michigan is alma mater of some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs. Many are now getting involved in educating and mentoring UM’s next entrepreneurial generation. The university is also churning out thousands of highly qualified engineers and other professionals every year. More and more of these talented individuals are choosing to stay in Michigan to either start a company or join a young startup.

What problem do you solve?

Star ratings and long reviews make finding and recommending restaurants time consuming and frustrating. Imagine searching for a pizza place on a site like Yelp; you will see a list of places between 3.5-4.5 stars, but will not be able to tell which of those places is popular for deep dish pizza, thin crust pizza or cheesy bread. To find out you’ll have to read a bunch of long reviews that bury the useful information. It’s bad enough having to read those reviews, it’s even more time consuming to write them.

With myfab5 you never have to deal with these problems again. myfab5 makes discovering and recommending fabulous restaurants easy and fun by getting rid of star ratings and long reviews. On myfab5 you can rank up to five of your favorite restaurants in any category (i.e. pizza or thin crust pizza). myfab5 adds up everybody’s votes so that if you search for pizza, not only will we show you the most popular pizza places, we’ll also show you the other categories each pizza place is popular for (i.e. deep dish pizza or cheesy bread).

Why now?

The social era has dawned, and people are tired of review sites that make recommending a business so time consuming that less than 1% of people contribute reviews. Furthermore, people are using mobile devices more than ever and demand content that is concise and consumable on a mobile device. Ratings and reviews go against the social and mobile experiences consumers need and demand

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

In November 2012, we began developing and testing a prototype in Ann Arbor, MI.

In January 2013, myfab5 recruited our technical co-founder.

In March 2013, myfab5 launched an alpha version of myfab5 in Ann Arbor, MI.

In May 2013, myfab5 secured over $20k in startup grants.

On June 27, 2013 myfab5 won the Detroit Technology Exchange pitch competition in Detroit, taking home the grand prize of $15,000 in marketing/branding services.

On August 2nd, 2013 myfab5 graduated from the LaunchDetroit accelerator and received the “MVP” grant for being the best contributor to the program and the “Go” grant for being most commercially-ready company.

myfab5 users have made over 3600 rankings. On average, each ranking includes 3 businesses, resulting in over 11000 business recommendations.

What are your next milestones?

Launch nationally and gain traction in key markets outside of Michigan.

Iterate within food category to increase myfab5 use cases and engagement.

Offer more categories on myfab5 besides “Food & Drinks.”

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

www.myfab5.com

@my_fab5

Check out this amazingly awesome, gigantic hackathon in Michigan.

Michigan’s Newest Accelerator, Coolhouse Labs, Launches Tomorrow

Michigan’s new startup accelerator is launching its first cohort tomorrow. It’s not in Detroit, Pontiac, or even Ann Arbor. The Coolhouse Labs accelerator is based in a resort town off Lake Michigan called Harbor Springs, the hometown of 27-year-old Jordan Breighner, co-founder and Managing Director of Coolhouse Labs.

Harbor Springs is a small town with under 2000 year-round residents. It was once a popular summer destination for autoworkers, the life bread of Michigan’s economy. Like many others, Breighner sees the path to improving an economy is through entrepreneurship and startups.

Although he has no “formal” entrepreneurial experience, Breighner has a diverse background, including a stint working for the Obama administration and going to college in Utah to become a ski racer. His vision, passion, and tenacity to get things done has helped him secure the seed investments for the first five teams in this first cohort. He’s also stocked his team with a Program Director, Resident Designer, and Resident Developer. Breighner has also been able to attract a top notch advisory board.

Now, just four months after launching the idea, the first cohort is ready to move into Coolhouse Labs. Coolhouse has attracted teams from New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Taiwan. 3 out of the 5 teams have a female co-founder, 3 out of the 5 teams have an international co-founder, and the average co-founder is traveling over 2700 miles to be part of Coolhouse Labs.

Here are the five teams.

Every Last Morsel – Every Last Morsel is a community marketplace for locally grown food – like an Etsy for small farms and backyard gardeners. It provides growers with web-based record-keeping tools and easy-to-use sales outlets that allow farms to focus on doing what they love: growing good food.

Lorious – Lorious is an online marketplace for expertise, where users can buy and sell one-on-one live video chat consulting services, at any time and from any location. Lorious empowers people to gain skills, from crafting to accounting, and to take ownership of their professional identities in response to this ever-changing economy.

Novi Times – Novi is aiming to redefine mobile news discovery through search. They have developed an editor-guided algorithm that helps users discover news through topics they want to follow.

QuickFixNow – QuickFixNow delivers fast and reliable home repair, connecting consumers with contractors on-demand through a mobile and web-based platform.

TRNK New York – TRNK New York is the online shopping destination for the discerning male who seeks an inspired and character-filled home.

Find out more about Coolhouse Labs here.

See what accelerator Drive Capital’s Mark Kvamme said was “One of the best outside Silicon Valley”

Seelio Among Four Startups That Just Received Funding From Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund

Back in August we interviewed Ann Arbor startup Seelio.. The company helps college students highlight their academic, extra curricular, culture and social lives in conjunction with the job hunt.

Seelio was just announced as one of four Michigan startups that took part in the latest funding round from the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund. The fund is a collaborative effort of Michigan’s smart zones to help support startups. To date the fund has helped 83 startups with 19 million dollars in funding.

“It’s exciting to see how Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund companies use the investments to drive growth; the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund makes a measurable, positive impact on a start-up’s chance of success in the state,” said Skip Simms, manager, Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund and senior vice president of Ann Arbor SPARK. “Early funding recipients, like Compendia Bioscience, have gone on to achieve significant success, including expansion, hiring and attracting marquee clients. The four early stage companies funded this round are using the award to attract additional outside funding and get solidly on that path to success.”

The four companies recently awarded Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund investment are Fusion Coolant Systems, Local Orbit, New Eagle Products, and Seelio. Fusion Coolant Systems is innovating an advanced coolant and lubrication system for use in manufacturing that increases production rates and tool life. Local Orbit provides e-commerce and business management tools for the “new food economy”. New Eagle offers controls system solutions including tools, products, and services. Seelio is commercializing its online platform that empowers college students to showcase their work and skills to startups.

Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund companies have attracted more than $25.5 million in matching grant and equity funds. Combined, Michigan Pre-Seed Fund investments have helped to create more than 43 net new jobs in Michigan.

Shop, Share, Indulge On The Go With Michigan Startup Ozmott

A new Michigan startup called Ozmott has said they’ve just made shopping more fun. They’ve done this by combining a map of local participating merchants that are part of Ozmott’s loyalty program. Once they get into a participating merchant, Ozmott users can decide which offer they want to purchase and use “Pips” or loyalty points, to help pay for the offer. When a user redeems an offer through Ozmott they earn more points which helps them get top tier “Luxe” offers.

The team behind Ozmott had learned first hand from a local merchant how they actually went upside down on a daily deal. This seems to be a trend with mom & pop shops that eagerly joined the Groupon or Living Social model. It’s why it doesn’t work.

It looks like Ozmott merchants won’t have the same problem, especially after throwing the reward points back in the mix.

We got a chance to talk with the team behind Ozmott. Check out the interview below.

Manage Your Personal Web With Michigan Startup: backstitch INTERVIEW

Imagine if HootSuite allowed you to go out of the “social sphere” and customize all the content you wanted across the internet. In a nutshell, that’s exactly what Michigan startup backstitch does. And, they do it well.

Husband and wife co-founders Jordan and Stefanie Warzecha describe BackStitch as a clean and consistent user experience for managing your personal web. Your personal web includes your social media feeds, your favorite news and blog sites and even your favorite daily deals sites. Now with backstitch you can take all of that content and instead of having an unorganized hodge podge of browser tabs open, everything comes together in a nice aggregated dashboard.

Moreso than just organizing all of your favorite web content backstitch actually saves the user a lot of time. Typically everyone has an internet routine. Although most people start their web routine on a smartphone or tablet, once you get to your computer for the day the routine picks up. For me I open up Hootsuite, Google Reader, Nibletz.com, about five other blog sites and a ton of email screens. This is all before 8am. With BackStitch a lot of that content is in one easy to find place.

backstitch comes out of the box with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Appdotnet. They also have a variety of popular new sites baked in along with all of the popular daily deals sites. They’ve also thought about people who read blogs and sites outside of what BackStitch offers, and allows users to add any site with an RSS feed (although they should add nibletz.com to the catalog).

We got a chance to talk with Jordan. Check out our interview below:

Michigan Startup: Meritful, LinkedIn For Students?

One of the hottest spaces for startups these days actually seems to be high school students. Recently we’ve reported on a handful of startups that are geared towards this demographic.

Washington DC startup Quad2Quad is a mobile application geared towards high school students and their parents who are going on college visits. The two lady entrepreneurs who founded the startup have over 100 college visits between their two families. A startup in Cleveland OH called CollegeSkinny aims to give high school students applying for college a place to vet their college selections and keep track of them. Back on September 10th we featured Exceleratr, a New York startup that helps high school students select and keep track of extra-curricular activities outside of the school itself.

Meritful founder Azarias Reda (photo: annarbor.com)

Meritful is a new startup based in Ypsilanti Michigan, was founded by Azarias Reda, a former researcher and data analyst for Mountain View based LinkedIn. Meritful is a social network for students. High school students build a profile on the platform that highlights their achievements in high school along with their extracurricular activities.

Reda told Xconomy Detroit that students are creating a lot of content online but it’s not positive content and nowadays it’s starting to take a toll on people down the road when employers and college admissions offices Google these students. “They’re actively generating content, except not a lot of it is useful to their future selves,” Reda explains to Xconomy. “It’s starting to bite them back—employers and school admissions offices Google you. It’s important to build a positive presence on the Web.”

Reda has already planned ahead incase inappropriate predators take to Meritful. “Students have complete control over who they interact with,” he says. “The interactions are public and monitored by teachers and parents.”

Meriful has a few meritful missions. The first of course is to provide a gateway to admissions offices and perspective employers. The second is to promote positivity and achievements in high school to friends, family and peers. The third is to curb some of the content currently being produced online that some may perceive as inappropriate. Reda would like those that use Meritful to have a more positive online graph for their student users.

Linkage:

Find out more about Meritful here

Source: Xconomy

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here’s more startup news from “everywhere else”

What, you don’t have your ticket yet

Ann Arbor Startup: Seelio Is Connects College Students To Jobs In New Ways

Seelio, (connecting see and portfolio) is a new startup based in Ann Arbor Michigan connecting college students with employers and job recruiters. Sure there are plenty of employment connection platforms out there but Seelio is serving a few under-served segments.

First off, Seelio is serving the college student to work category which is filled with competition. One of the other big hindrances for college students competing for work is the fact that they’ve been in school the past four years and don’t have real work, resume items. Seelio solves this problem for students by opening up profile space on the service to post academic papers, computer aided designs, art projects, lesson plans, photos, videos, even pitch decks. Employers can now see a more rounded profile of the applicant and can consider them for positions outside of “entry-level”.

“Instead of sending a stale, black-and-white resume, Seelio lets you bring yourself to life and present yourself in a more holistic way,” said co-founder Moses Lee, assistant director for student ventures at the U-M College of Engineering’s Center for Entrepreneurship to the University of Michigan News Service. “It can help college students get discovered. This is really important, especially in this tough economy, because they don’t have a lot of job experience. But many have done amazing work as a student.”

Seelio is taking an early stage Facebook approach to building scale. They rolled out the platform’s truAPP to students at the University of Michigan, exclusively in January of this year. They quickly saw 1500 students sign up and some big employers as well. Quicken Loans, Teach For America, Compuware, Under Armour and Airtime were all early adopter companies for the platform. They have since opened up the platform to all students with a .edu email address.

One of the early student adopters that used the service, Lydia Muwanga, recently finished her master’s degree. She was able to use Seelio’s truApp to land a job as an information architect at SapientNitro. Muwanga reported that after getting her profile posted she applied for five jobs in ten minutes. Less than 24 hours later she had heard back from three companies.

“It helps us more accurately target candidates, allowing us to differentiate between, say, human-computer interface students who love research, versus those who love wireframing,” Kati Llewellyn, creative recruiter at SapientNitro said.

For college students Seelio is a platform that merges a professional social network like LinkedIn with an actual jobs site like Monster.com, it’s quickly becoming a welcomed tool in the college students job application arsenal.

Linkage:

Check out Seelio here

Source: Univesity of Michigan News Service

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”

Go Shopping Together Online With Ann Arbor Startup: HangTrend INTERVIEW

Leore Avidar has built a new social network/e-commerce hybrid platform immersed with fashion. As he tells us in the interview below, he started HangTrend, an Ann Arbor startup, when he couldn’t easily find a pair of driving moccasins. He had searched all of the usual sites to buy a pair online, but to no avail. Along the way he also realized that there wasn’t an easy way to interact with friends who may be shopping at the same time either.

Now a lot of shopping and e-commerce sites allow the user to share an item they like but no shopping site allows you to share a possible purchase online in real time to get feedback on a purchase. Just think about how often this scenario plays out in a brick and mortar world. You go to the mall with your buddies or girl friends and say do you like these shoes? Will this look good on me? Is this too much to pay? All of these questions could easily be asked online on a platform which allowed easy sharing, easy re-call and social feedback.

That’s exactly the concept behind HangTrend works. As more and more people take to the web for shopping on multiple screens, HangTrend is a natural evolution of the e-commerce space. Now only that but HangTrend has access to millions of products by tens of thousands of designers and of course you can ultimately buy the latest fashions, direct.

We got a chance to talk to Avidar in the interview below:

Contest: There’s A New Kid In Town, The TechSlinger And You Can Win One This Summer

At Chicago TechWeek we got to meet the team from Michigan startup TechSlinger. This is a new wearable accessory designed to easily transport your tablet, your phone, your wallet and other small items. You can even hang your keys from it.

At first glance you may not think it’s for you, but it so is. Especially if you carry multiple gadgets with you and one of them is an iPad or Android tablet. You see, when you go out to a meeting or a networking event, or any event for that matter and you bring your tablet you’re putting a device that costs hundreds of dollars at unnecessary risk.

I’ve witnessed first hand people who’ve had their iPads turned conveniently into coasters. I’ve seen people leave them behind and drop them, shattering the screen, trying to hold a beer or other drink. Oh and of course the countless times I’ve seen beer, soda and other liquids poured onto the iPad.

Granted, you want to take your iPad or tablet with you because you undoubtedly have work to do, or you want to show off the latest app you’ve downloaded or pictures and videos of the kids. Well that’s great except most purses can’t fit iPads, no one wants to bring the bulk of a backpack or briefcase out with them, and holding them is risky.

The TechSlinger looks like an under jacket holster and has one pouch designed to hold an iPad or tablet and then the other side has two compartments. One is a secure compartment for your phone the other is a secure compartment for your wallet, credit cards, money, license, etc. I actually hold a 16,000mah portable battery in my extra pocket insuring that not only are my devices with me but backup power is as well.

The TechSlinger fits under any jacket, blazer or suit coat and keeps your gadgets from interfering with important things, like walking.

At the recent TechCrunch meetup in Atlanta over 40 people asked about the TechSlinger. At the airport, TSA folks were asking about the TechSlinger, and of course on three different trips to three different Apple stores, people asked about the TechSlinger.

Well low and behold we’ve got Techslingers to give away.

Here’s how it works. Starting this week at ComiCon 2012 in San Diego, just tweet

“@nibletztweets & @techslinger I need a #techslinger” and if you’re lucky you’ll be randomly selected to win one. We’ll randomly draw winners in San Diego, Washington DC, Memphis, Cincinnati and other places along our sneaker-strapped nationwide startup road trip, and you’ll win. It’s that easy. Then your friends will ask, “where’d you get that”.

Linkage:

Find out more about the TechSlinger here

Here’s more coverage from Chicago’s TechWeek

Oh and we’re on this cool sneaker strapped, nationwide startup roadtrip

Michigan Startup: What’s Shakin Tells You What’s Shakin By Location

While we try to manage our hashtags on Twitter every now and then we find that we deviate to make sure the umpteen hundred hashtags for events, startups and the like are all hit to gather the same news. When we’re at an event, conference or convention, those hash tags get worse.

Take the International Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas every January for instance. At this years CES there were people using #CES #CES2012 #CES12 #EurekaPark #CESLasVegas #CESLV and several other variants. What’s Shakin handles that problem.

What’s Shakin is able to manage the social media throughput at an event, or venue by location. Now it’s not about the tag but rather the location the tag was created in, providing people are using geolocation in conjunction with the tags.

Now if you wanted to keep up with the social activity at the One Direction concert you don’t have to track 20 different hash tags, just one location with What’s Shakin.

We got to talk to Chris Hashley (I know great last name for this right?), about What’s Shakin in the interview below the break.

Michigan Startup: Current Motor, First In Dell’s $100M Startup Fund

An Ann Arbor Michigan based startup called Current Motor, is the first startup to benefit from Dell’s new $100 million dollar Innovator’s Financing Fund. Current Motor is developing electric powered scooters.

The fund, announced Thursday, is entirely funded by Austin based pc powerhouse Dell. Their Entrepreneur in Residence, Ingrid Vandervelt, came up with the idea for the fund, under the supervision of the entrepreneur in residence advisory board.

Current Motor is using the funds from Dell, along with their expertise and “24 hour support” to help them implement an e-commerce system that handles customer service tracking, and also tracks important information on the scooters, such as battery life remaining. They want this entire system to be accessible via mobile app, similar to that of some of the shared bicycle and car apps out there (ZipCar).

“In exchange for a low monthly payment, we get one point of contact and a really comprehensive, scalable technology solution that allowed us to get to market six months ahead of schedule, while conserving our equity capital for sales, marketing, research and development,” Lauren Flanagan, executive chairman and an angel investor in the company told the Austin Statesman.

More after the break
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Michigan Startup: Rippld Get’s $50,000 To Expand Social Network For Creative Professionals

Rippld a social network to promote, collaborate and bring creative together has announced the receipt of a $50,000 micro loan investment to continue working and expanding their network.

This innovative startup for creative professionals is a resident at Wayne State University’s TechTown incubator.

“Friends ask us all the time where to find creative talent,” said co-founder Adrian Walker, who conceived of Rippld with his partner Wilbert Fobbs III when trying to get a fledgling video production company off the ground. “I looked at what was out there in the online landscape and nothing offered the kind of access or information people were looking for. Rippld fills that gap.”

Statewide, Michigan has seen a huge uptick in startups forming in the state or moving into the state. In fact, just this morning we reported on the budding community of 37 startups and innovative companies at Ann Arbor’s TechBrewery, and their newest tenant the team behind PaperDesk.

As for Rippld, Michigan is firmly home of the social startup, in fact, co-founder Lander Cornado-Garcia moved back from Chicago to Detroit to help start Rippld.

“TechTown and its sister incubators have been and continue to be critical to Rippld’s success,” said Coronado-Garcia. “The one-on-one coaching, business plan support and networking capability we accessed through TechTown positioned us to be competitive in our bid for this pre-seed loan and validated the integrity of our business model. We owe this victory in large part to TechTown and its partners.”

More after the break
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Michigan Startup HealPay: Developing Innovative Fintech Web Applications INTERVIEW

When you put together a Ruby on Rails developer with five years of experience working for engine yard, and a serial entrepreneur with two previous successful exits, move them to Ann Arbor Michigan, you’ve got HealPay. HealPay is the latest startup for serial entrepreneur Erick Bzovi, who teamed together with co-founder Lancelot Carlson to bring innovative fintech (Financial Tech) web apps to market.

HealPay currently has two billing applications aimed at enterprise available today. However, they plan on continually producing easy to use, but robust applications to handle financial tasks efficiently.

We got the opportunity to talk with Bzovi about HealPay and their fintech app development startup.

Where are you located?

After receiving some seed capital [http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/after-receiving-an-angel-investment], we opened an office in downtown Ann Arbor. We think this is the best place to start a tech business in Michigan!

Tell us about (and describe) a few of your apps:

We’ve developed two billing applications for the enterprise.

Our SettlementApp helps large businesses, e.g collection agencies, settle with consumers by offering flexible & friendly payment options. People are more willing (& able) to pay their bills when given options to do so. Creating a 3, 6 or 9 month payment plan is a breeze.

Our BillerApp helps small businesses, e.g. sole proprietors & contractors, send out invoices in a matter of minutes. The app is currently free and was considered one of the Best Invoicing Tools amongst Design professionals. [source: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665487/infographic-of-the-day-the-best-design-tools-on-the-market]

More after the break
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