Detroit's TechTown

My friend George Azrak has been bugging me to get down to Detroit's Tech Town for months.  I found all kinds of ways to avoid doing this.  Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of Tech Town, but I couldn't see the point of going all the way to Detroit when Spark, GLEQ, and U of M Tech Transfer  were all within a few blocks of my office.  Boy was I wrong.

Last Friday, Anne Marsan  and I packed up the car, made sure we had a full tank of gas, plenty of food and water, and headed for Tech Town.  We ended up parking in the NextEnergy lot.  Within minutes, I realized that I must return to Tech Town if for no other reason than to get a tour of NextEnergy.  The Tech Town building is across the street from NextEnergy.  It's a very cool, old GM design building.  It was built so that cars could drive all the way to the top floor.  Upon entering, you're going to immediately notice all the various businesses housed in Tech Town.  I was pleasantly surprised to see Ann Arbor's own John Stout  among the many businesses that are quickly filling this very large building in downtown Detroit.

Anne and I came to Tech Town to attend a meeting where we volunteered to mentor business startups (I forgot to tell Anne this) and then to attend the First Friday networking event which included Josh Holmes announcing the Microsoft Biz Spark program.

The mentoring meeting was very well coordinated and fun to attend.  We were in a room with 20 to 30 very smart people all of which were volunteering their time to help Michigan startups get off the ground.  As you would expect, lot's of smart, very gregarious  people, tend to talk a lot.  The meeting moderator, Jan Gensheimer, did an excellent job of keeping things moving while at the same time allowing for just the right amount of discussion.  The Tech Town team had created a very specific set of well defined projects for the mentors to participate in.  This made it easy for us to know what projects we could help with and also know how much time was needed.  I volunteered as part of a project which was defined as needing 3 - 5 hours of my time.

After mentoring was a networking event called First Friday.  This was out of control fun.  I talked to so many different people doing so many amazing things that I actually ran out of business cards.  I started giving away Anne's business cards with my name penciled in.  I'm sad and pathetic sometimes.  What I liked most was the excellent mix of startups and non-startups at the First Friday event.  For those of us working in more or less stable businesses, the startups provide a kind of energy we just don't encounter on a day to day bases.  Not only do they have these amazing ideas, they are working their butts off to turn them into something real.  You just can't help but be inspired.

During my time there I encountered a lot of comparisons to Spark and GLEQ.  Tech Town is trying hard to emulate some of the best of both.  I also talked to Dianne Durance  from GLEQ who was there for the First Friday event.  I discovered that she actually needed mentors in Ann Arbor as well and was signed up on the spot.  I'm not sure why I had to go all the way to Detroit to discover that I could actually help out a little more locally, but either way, I'm glad I did.

Josh Holmes announced Microsoft's new initiative to help startups who have software offerings.  Josh's excitement about BizSpark was contagious.  My company, SRT Solutions, is a network partner in the BizSpark program.  Josh introduced me to the Founder and President of a startup that might just be perfect for BizSpark.  Listening to her dream and what she had already done to make it come true, was once again a moment where I felt that if we could help, we definitely should.  

After four hours, Anne and I finally packed it in and headed home.  It turned out that TechTown wasn't as far away as I thought.  

Thanks TechTown, I'll be back soon.