Foundry’s Jason Mendelson, Now Bullish On Michigan Startup Scene

The Michigan Growth Capital Symposium was held this past Tuesday and Wednesday in Ypsilanti. Xconomy’s Sarah Schmid reports that over 450 founders, entrepreneurs, VCs, and others in the Michigan startup community showed out for the event.

Among them was the managing director and co-founder of Foundry Group, Jason Mendelson who gave a keynote address entitled: “The Velocity of the Midwest Venture Capital Ecosystem: Sleeping Giants or Momentary Blips?”

During his speech he was very positive about the current startup scene in Michigan. Mendelson is no stranger to the state of Michigan. He was born in Detroit and graduated from the university of Michigan.  While this weeks talk was all positive, it wasn’t always that way for Mendelson and his native state.

After graduating from law school at the University of Michigan, Mendelson wanted to stay in Michigan but he quickly found that the state, so deep rooted in the auto industry, didn’t care if someone had the next million dollar idea. At that time no one cared about anything except seniority.

So like any aspiring entrepreneur Mendelson made a pilgrimage to Silicon Valley, an experience he doesn’t speak to highly of.

Mendelson said that the competition in Silicon Valley was so harsh that the only pleasure in life came from relishing in others’ failure. Mendelson described Silicon Valley to Schmid as “toxic” ultimately causing him to leave in 2006 and head for Boulder Colorado.

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Michigan Startup: Credentialock Is A Cloud Vault For All Your Credentials

Do you have any certifications? What about your college and high school diploma? Where are your high school and college transcripts? What about that real estate license? All of these questions could probably be answered in one place if Credentialock was around 20 years ago.

Credentialock is a new Michigan startup that just launched their free web based version this past week. It is essentially a cloud based vault for all of your important credentials, transcripts and licenses.

More and more people are turning to cloud based storage for their important computer files. Even more people are turning to digital storage for things like receipts,important papers, even back up copies of drivers license, credit card and passport information. While some may already have some kind of digital record of their “credentials” Credentialock makes it easy to store all of your important papers in one spot.

“My wife is in the insurance industry and she has over 100 documents of certification from 20 different states to keep track of, so we always use her as the benchmark,” Credentialock CEO Scott Slyfield CEO told Sara Schmid of Xconomy. “Instead of having our employers keep track of this stuff, we need to be able to own and manage it ourselves. It’s really empowering.”

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Detroit Startup: Picket Report Let’s Home Buyers Dive Into A Neighborhood

While some may dispute the fact that “home buying season” is among us, it is. With that there’s a new startup in Detroit that’s hoping to make shopping for the right neighborhood a little easier.

Imagine before you even leave the comfort of your home and computer you could see more in depth information about schools, favorite restaurants, what kids of cars your neighbors drive and more. That’s just some of the in-depth analytical information you can get from Picket Report a new map based real estate tool launching out of Detroit.

This may not be the tool for real estate owners with all the fair housing laws around these days, but if you as the buyer want more thorough analysis of important demographics this tool could be for you. After all you wouldn’t want to live next to someone that drove an 82 Chevy Citation would you?

“People looking for their dream home can now make sure it’s also in their dream neighborhood even before driving through,” said Bryan Kunka, Co- Founder and CEO of Picket Report said in a statement. “We’re right at the beginning of home buying season, so house hunters looking to buy their first home or relocate to a new area can use Picket Report to make sure they are choosing the best neighborhood for themselves and their family.”

While it doesn’t say how they vet their information, the data is aggregated from over 300 sources. Kunka insists that home owners will now be able to judge the safety of their perspective neighborhood with the data provided.

PicketReport was born out of the Bizdom entrepreneurial accelerator in Detroit. Bizdom was founded by Dan Gilbert the founder and former chairman of Quicken Loans.

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Source: GrowDetroit.com

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Michigan Startup: FetchNotes Brings StickyNotes To Your Mobile Phone

Ann Arbor Michigan based FetchNotes is a new note taking mobile app. However they aren’t looking to challenge the likes of Evernote or Catchnotes. Co-Founder Alex Schiff says that they are looking to bring sticky notes to the mobile phone. Think more along the lines of three to four word notes not three to four page notes.

“We see ourselves as competing more with a phone’s native notepad than Evernote,” Schiff explained to Xconomy. “The problem with most of the note-taking software is that it focuses on long-form note taking. Ours is geared toward three-to-four-word notes, not three-to-four-page notes.”

Schiff and co-founder Chase Lee met at a entrepreneurship practicum at the University of Michigan. Their first idea was for an ideas marketplace startup. Schiff says he quickly learned that his idea “really sucked” and then he and Lee started looking at how people capture notes and to do items.

Fetchnotes has a variety of ways to jot down your note. Users can text, call and email notes on the fly from their mobile phone and then quickly recall them from the mobile app. Schiff admits to texting his own ideas to himself and then later putting them in a word doc.

“One day, my Blackberry’s notepad erased a year’s worth of ideas. I was very distraught.” Schiff said

Like Evernote and Catch Notes you can tag your notes and keep them organized using a hashtag system. With Fetchnotes emphasis on short notes the hashtag would be much more effective than it is on Evernote.  The different ways to input a note definitely set Fetchnotes apart from the rest of the pack.

Fetchnotes is currently bootstrapped and working on a seed round at the moment. They do have a staff of 9 right now and Schiff and Lee are still enrolled as Juniors at the University of Michigan. They’re hoping that Fetchnotes will be the goto  app for short notes.

source: Xconomy