Innovation & Job News

Boston entrepreneur impressed by SE Michigan's biz-development unity

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Ann Arbor

Alden Zecha left Ann Arbor this weekend impressed not only with the Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition, but the unity its organizers displayed.

The CFO and strategist made the elevator pitch for Massachusetts-based Sproxil during the finals of the $1 million business plan competition. When all was said and done, Zecha was pleasantly surprised by how well the Business Accelerator Network for Southeast Michigan (Ann Arbor SPARK, Automation Alley, TechTown and the Macomb-OU INCubator) worked together to make it all happen.

"That is fairly unusual," Zecha says. "Usually those competitions are put together by a single entity, frequently an academic institution. (At those competitions) I wouldn't normally see any animosity between organizations. I see a lot of autonomous organizations that are competing with each other."

Sproxil won the $10,000 People's Choice award for its drug-intelligence software. The winners of the grand-prize ($500,000) would have to agree to move to Michigan. Sproxil and its staff of four were ready to do that had they won, but will remain in Massachusetts for now. The $500,000 would have justified the costs of moving, Zecha says.

Source: Alden Zecha, CFO & strategist for Sproxil
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Innovation & Job News

Boston entrepreneur impressed by SE Michigan's biz-development unity

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