Business Incubator Series: Interview With Ken Kousky, CEO, MidMichigan Innovation Center, Midland, Michigan (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Ken: I wish you could interview all of our ribbon partners. We have work going on in Cadillac, Michigan, in Claire, Michigan, in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, in Marlette, Michigan. Some of these are pretty small towns. We’ve got groups supporting small businesses, bringing them what we believe

Read Full Article »

Business Incubator Series: Interview With Ken Kousky, CEO, MidMichigan Innovation Center, Midland, Michigan (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Ken: To me, the concept of saying we’re an incubator is somewhat arrogant. I’ve run two venture-backed companies that have IPO’ed. I’ve run a public company for years, after our IPO. I’ve been through those, and I found that there were lots of people who showed up

Read Full Article »

Business Incubator Series: Interview With Ken Kousky, CEO, MidMichigan Innovation Center, Midland, Michigan (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Ken: Through our center, Chris Moultrup directs a program we call 1,000 Angels, which is a statewide initiative to expand angel investing in the state, whether it’s done by individuals on their own or working with universities in setting up alumni networks. We know that we need

Read Full Article »

Business Incubator Series: Interview With Ken Kousky, CEO, MidMichigan Innovation Center, Midland, Michigan (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold I am talking to Ken Kousky, CEO of MidMichigan Innovation Center, which is a privately funded, nonprofit organization working to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses in central Michigan. MMIC operates a 112,000 square foot business incubator with significant support from The Dow Chemical Company. The center operates

Read Full Article »

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Skip Simms, President And CEO, Ann Arbor SPARK — Ann Arbor, Michigan (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: How many investments has your pre-seed fund made in the past 12 months? Skip: In the past 12 months, we’ve made 12 investments. In the life of the fund, we’ve made 52 investments.

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Skip Simms, President And CEO, Ann Arbor SPARK — Ann Arbor, Michigan (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Can you name some success stories? Skip: Compendia Bioscience is one company that literally took full advantage every program that SPARK offers. It’s a cancer diagnostic. It’s a software product that helps drug manufacturers and developers identify the best course of action in trying to cure

Read Full Article »

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Skip Simms, President And CEO, Ann Arbor SPARK — Ann Arbor, Michigan (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: What are the main reasons that out of the 30 entrepreneurs who apply for your services every month, 25 get rejected? Skip: The main reasons are one, they’re not in the city of Ann Arbor. Our primary stakeholder, which provides a lot of the services, has

Read Full Article »

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Skip Simms, President And CEO, Ann Arbor SPARK — Ann Arbor, Michigan (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Skip: [The entrepreneurs that come to us], everyone’s a little different in their company growth. So, all of our programs are customized. We differ from many incubators in that regard. I think the kind of consulting services that we provide are custom, too; they are specific to

Read Full Article »