Ann Arbor New Tech Meetup: November 2009
November 18, 2009
In honor of Global Entrepreneurship Week, we were proud to have 4 University of Michigan student startups present (and the fifth, also a young entrepreneur) at this month’s Ann Arbor New Tech Meetup:
- Adrian Fortino, Shepard Intelligent Systems - real-time transit information systems (e.g. MagicBus)
- Alan Shreve, YouCompete - social competition platform
- Royce Channey, VOI! - hardshell designer iPhone case - with a strap!
- Jeremy Canfield, Phonagle - location-based iPhone word game
- Steve Fentriss, SmallerPage - simple websites for any screen size
(select timeline marks to view specific presentations)
As always, thanks to MC David Bloom and videographer Roger Rayle (and son)!
Ann Arbor New Tech Meetup: September 2009
September 19, 2009
Video of our September Ann Arbor New Tech Meetup, courtesy of Roger Rayle! #a2newtech
Current Motor Company - plug-in electric scooters
Mobiata - best-selling iPhone travel applications
TherapyCharts - small-office electronic medical records management
Audiallo - fabless semiconductor company making low-power acoustic processing chips
May 19: Ann Arbor New Tech May Meetup, with Rick Snyder
May 18, 2009
We have a very special meetup this month - following our regular program, we’ll welcome Rick Snyder, CEO of Ann Arbor venture capital firm Ardesta and former COO of Gateway Computer, for a town hall session as he considers his gubernatorial bid in Michigan!
Leading into the town hall session, we’ll have 4 companies take the stage for 10 minutes each, 5 minutes to demo and 5 minutes to answer questions. We’ll close the event with community announcements and open networking in the atrium.
- John Barrie, Appropriate Technology Collaborative
- Jim Deakins, Lyfe
- Drew Leahy & Bobby Matson, MyBandStock
- Tim Stephens, Speedraft
Please RSVP if you can join us!
May 12-13: Michigan Growth Capital Symposium
May 9, 2009
David Brophy and the UM Center for Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance are again hosting the most important venture capital event in the Midwest - the 28th annual Michigan Growth Capital Symposium.
It was a rough Q1 across the board for VC firms, and Michigan has been particularly challenged with only a handful of operating funds remaining in the state. But last month’s announcement of a $36M Series A for Lycera in Ann Arbor reaffirms that the nearly $3M spent every day on UM research translates into excellent venture opportunities.
MGCS will feature over 65 investment firms, 32 presenting companies, and two solid days of panels, discussions, and high-level networking. If you’re currently raising money in Michigan, you need to be at MGCS!
May 4, 5: Social Entrepreneurship on Facebook, and Non-Dilutive Early-Stage Startup Finance
April 30, 2009
Two back-to-back events next week to kick off the month of May:
- Monday, May 4: (Lil) Green Patch: Social Entrepreneurship and Virtual Economies on Facebook
- Tuesday, May 5: Non-Dilutive Finance for Early Stage Startups
The former will be held in the conference center of the beautiful Michigan Information Technology Center (housing Merit and Internet2). We’ve also invited a number of environmental nonprofits and related organizations to join us.
The latter will be held in Blau Auditorium in the amazing new Ross Business School building at UM with students from David Brophy’s Entrepreneurial Finance course, as well as the CEO of Lycera, who most recently closed a $36M round of venture capital after receiving a number of grants, tax credits, and equipment through various state programs. We’ll also have time for networking afterwards with a Co-founders’ Corner of the room where folks looking for potential business or engineering co-founders can meet.
Please RSVP at http://a2newtech.org if you can join us!
TechNow 09: Apr 23, Royal Oak Music Theater
April 22, 2009
Join us tomorrow night at the Royal Oak Music Theater for what promises to be an amazing startup event / party in celebration of Michigan’s future - TechNow 09!
Jordan, Mason, and Zach have put together, for a single night, what looks like the best of the all the tech startup events we’ve done in Ann Arbor over the last few months - and then added a band on top, in a 1k+ capacity venue!
Five Michigan startups will be presenting, including two Ann Arbor Startup Drinks regulars – ShopFiber (by Detroit Startup Blog author Jake Lumetta) and Hab.la (a company out of the TechBrewery in Ann Arbor).
Don’t miss out - RSVP now!
Ann Arbor Startup Drinks - Thurs Apr 16 at Grizzly Peak
April 16, 2009
from Brandon Dimcheff and Matt Pizzimenti:
Startup Drinks is happening again tonight, this time at Grizzly Peak in downtown Ann Arbor between 8 and 10pm. If you haven’t heard of Startup Drinks before, this little blurb from our website (http://annarbor.startupdrinks.com/) explains it: ”A simple concept: startup culture in cities around the world gathers around a bar to have a pint and discuss what they are working on, what they need help with and what they can do for each other.”
RSVP on the Facebook event and while you’re there, sign up for our Facebook group so we can keep in contact with those that you meet tonight.
Hope to see you all there tonight!
CloudCamp Ann Arbor - April 9 at Google
April 6, 2009
Little puffy clouds in Ann Arbor, by DrHoney
CloudCamp comes to Ann Arbor this Thursday, April 9, from 3 - 8 PM at Google:
CloudCamp is an unconference where early adopters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas. With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a place we can meet to share our experiences, challenges and solutions. At CloudCamp, you are encouraged you to share your thoughts in several open discussions, as we strive for the advancement of Cloud Computing. End users, IT professionals and vendors are all encouraged to participate.
Themes related to the development and use of Open Data are also encouraged. Where to find data feeds, how to encourage organizations to provide data feeds, how to use data feeds to build applications, and where to host these data feeds and applications (in the cloud :-).
In recent years, cloud computing has levelled the playing field for small Internet startups to achieve scale without requiring the typical capital outlay either for production services (e.g. Arbor Networks’ ATLAS service) or on-demand staging and test infrastructure (e.g. Zattoo’s use of Amazon’s EC2 for massively parallel P2P protocol testing).
The ingredients these days for a world-class, capital-efficient software startup: engineering and marketing skills, variable-cost infrastructure, and caffeine - all of which Ann Arbor has in spades!
Sponsored by Google, Microsoft, HiperLogic, and a2geeks.
Building an Entrepreneurial Community: Lessons from Boulder - April 1, 7pm
March 26, 2009
Blau Auditorium, UM Ross School of Business
Provo, Boulder, Madison, Bridgeport-Stamford, Ann Arbor: the top 5 midsize metros in terms of quality of life, according to a recent study based on the latest U.S. Census Bureau data:
Almost 55 percent of Boulder’s adults have bachelor’s degrees, easily leading all midsize metros in that category. Boulder is also noteworthy for its healthy entrepreneurial spirit. Seven percent of its adults are self-employed, twice the national average.
Ann Arbor, site of the University of Michigan, has the nation’s strongest concentration of adults with master’s, doctoral and professional degrees, 27.7 percent.
Anyone who’s witnessed the flurry of activity associated with a2geeks since December has likely seen or heard about our grassroots effort to organize Ann Arbor’s tech community, bridging the gaps we have between various University departments, over 50 geek groups, over 100 tech startups, and the traditional town / gown divide. Some of this has been inspired by a renewed interest by local geeks in the hacker culture that once prevailed here, and some by Boulder’s entrepreneurial renaissance:
In the past 15 years, Boulder has gone from a little hippie college town to a little hippie college town also boasting an impressive and growing congregation of Internet entrepreneurs, early-stage venture capitalists, and bloggers. How did Boulder pull this off? And what can other cities, policymakers, and entrepreneurs who want to boost their own start-up quotient—and overall competiveness at a local level—learn from Boulder’s success?
Next week, Jason Mendelson, co-founder and Managing Director of Foundry Group, a Boulder-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage information technology companies, will be here to speak at the new Blau Auditorium at UM’s Ross Business School on Building an Entrepreneurial Community: Lessons from Boulder, CO on Wednesday April 1, at 7 PM hosted by Professor David Brophy, Director of UM’s Center for Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance, as part of his Finance 325 (Entrepreneurial Finance) class.
Jason will also be holding office hours on entrepreneurship and venture capital on Friday April 3 from 3 - 5 PM in Lorch Hall (Economics Building) Room 171, 611 Tappan St.
Anyone with an interest in growing Ann Arbor’s startup community should come out!
Ann Arbor TECH Cocktail - Friday March 27, 6 PM at Live at PJ’s
March 24, 2009
In the midst of the 47th Ann Arbor Film Festival, Entreprelliance, and Detroit Startup Weekend, we’re getting together for our monthly Ann Arbor New Tech meetup in a different venue and format - a TECH Cocktail event at Live at PJ’s this Friday from 6 - 9 PM.
Join us for an evening of fun mingling with other technology enthusiasts, investors, marketers, bloggers and entrepreneurs, generously sponsored by GLEQ (apply for their $58k purse by March 30!), SPARK, and Safford & Baker. Seven local startups will have demo tables at the event:
- CADCorporation - Customizable 3D virtual worlds
- GiftZip - Instant gift cards from the web’s top retailers
- Hab.la - Chat with visitors to your website for free
- HiperLogic - Virtualization and High Performance Computing
- Myine - Commercial-Free FM Radio, WiFi Internet Radio
- Peekok - Digital music distribution and sales
- VeoProject - Online project management
And we’ll cover a first round of drinks for everyone who RSVP’d online ($2/$4 draft/cocktail specials beyond that).