Safford & Baker is a proud sponsor of Igniting Innovation In Michigan – Entrepreneurs In Action, a special one day business conference for entrepreneurs hosted by WWJ Newsradio 950.  The event takes place on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at the Ford Conference and Event Center in Dearborn.  If you are in business for yourself, or you want to be, this conference is packed with startup resources.  Plus, you’ll also have the chance to network with other entrepreneurs…and you can receive free one-on-one business coaching to prepare you to launch your business or to take it to the next level.

This event will also mark the initial presentation of the GLITR awards from the Greak Lakes Innovation and Technology Report.  An expert panel of judges have selected winners from a broad field of nominees in the following categories — Reinvented Company Of The Year; Breakaway Company Of The Year; Green Company Of The Year; and Michigan Champion Of The Year (an individual award).

Here is the event info:

Tickets are only $50 (plus handling fees) and must be purchased in advance.  More information about the conference and how to register can be found here.

–Matt

Our very own Don Baker has an article on LLC capital accounting in the Summer 2010 edition of the Michigan Business Law Journal.  Here’s the intro:

With the widespread adoption of the limited liability company as a preferred entity format for non-public entities, business practitioners are forced to grapple with provisions in operating agreements that adopt detailed accounting and tax treatments generally beyond the traditional expertise of non-tax lawyers. These accounting and tax issues are not present in forming a standard corporation, but are thrust on the practitioner anytime even the most basic multi-member LLC is formed. While the “standard” LLC operating agreement approaches to these matters are at this point generally familiar (though perhaps less well understood), they are not simply “boilerplate.” I fear that we (and of course our clients) are often insufficiently aware that these provisions mandate specific economic relationships and results among the members, i.e., who gets what money. It is entirely possible that use of these standard approaches can unknowingly mandate results that are inconsistent with the client’s business “deal.”

The Journal can be found here, and the rest of the article here.

–Matt

A client pointed me to this New York Times article profiling Boulder, Colorado’s high-tech startup scene.  So, what makes Boulder so great?  From the article:

The recipes of other cities for creating the next Silicon Valley usually leave out a few main ingredients. Richard Florida, who wrote “The Rise of the Creative Class” and studies why certain cities foster creativity, cites three crucial factors: talented people and a high quality of life that keeps them around, technological expertise, and an open-mindedness about new ways of doing things, which often comes from a strong counterculture.

“Boulder has reached this beautiful sweet spot, where it has many advantages of a university town — tech and talent and openness — but without many of the costs and traffic and congestion that may disadvantage incumbent centers of innovation,” Mr. Florida said.

Does this sound like another Midwest university town we know?  Come see for yourself at A2 New Tech on Tuesday.

–Matt

Ann Arbor New Tech, brought to you by a2geeks, is a group of people from various industries and backgrounds (e.g., entrepreneurs, technologists, investors, lawyers, marketers, students, etc.) interested in fostering local technology startups by organizing events, sharing resources, and building a supportive community.

Ann Arbor New Tech’s signature event takes place on the third Tuesday of each month, at 6:30 p.m., at Blau Auditorium, UM Ross School of Business, 701 Tappan Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104.  The monthly event features three to five companies who are each given five minutes to demo and five minutes to answer questions.  Open announcements and networking follows.

This month’s meetup (Tuesday, May 18th) features:

• Allen Kim & Luis Calderon, Gugued – the “Netflix” of baby clothes
• Jimmy Tomczak, paper-feet – better-than-barefoot recycled sandals
• Susan Hardin, MediaOnion – online conference management services
• Thanh Tran, MentalNote – psychiatric documentation software
• Mark Shalinsky, Jove – Journal of Visualized Experiments

A2 New Tech is taking June off, so come get your startup fix before the summer break.  Hope to see you there.

–Matt

I missed this article on lean startups in the The New York Times a couple of weeks ago but a client was good enough to pass it along.  Here’s a excerpt:

ERIC RIES and Steven Blank think they have a better way to build a start-up, one that takes less time and money to try new ideas and find paying customers. They are leading proponents of the “lean start-up” — a fresh approach to creating companies that has attracted much attention in the last year or so among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, technologists and investors.

….

The term “lean start-up” was coined by Mr. Ries, 31, an engineer, entrepreneur and blogger. His inspiration, he says, was the lean manufacturing process, fine-tuned in Japanese factories decades ago and focused on eliminating any work or investment that doesn’t produce value for customers.

But my favorite quote is this one: “A start-up is a temporary organization designed to discover a profitable, scalable business model.”  I highly recommend reading the whole article here.

–Matt