Momentum

Building Momentum: Applicants sought for year two of entrepreneur training

Mark Sanchez, Michigan Business Review

Momentum, the investment and entrepreneur-training venture formed by Rick DeVos — is preparing to groom a new crop of entrepreneurs.

Organizers hope to draw up to 100 applications from startup companies and prospective entrepreneurs involved in Web technologies. They will select up to five companies for year two to go through an intensive 12-week training program this spring and summer. The goal is to position participants to obtain the capital needed to get their product or service to the marketplace and, ultimately, profitability.

As with any new business venture that’s learning as it unfolds, organizers are making changes in Momentum to better prepare participants and are seeking to bring in a broader array of volunteer mentors and advisers to make the program stronger and more well-rounded.

“Like everything else, it was pretty much a startup (last year). We learned and we think it could use some improvements,” said Amanda Chocko, director of entrepreneurial development at the economic development organization Lakeshore Advantage in Zeeland — a partner in Momentum. “This year we have a more rigorous process and a few hurdles for the entrepreneurs to jump through.”

Coming off year one, organizers are elevating their screening process and programming to better identify participants and prepare them to pitch their idea to prospective investors.

“We want to put their ideas through a little more test,” Momentum Program Director Bill Holsinger-Robinson said. “We’re being a little more clear and deliberate in what we’re asking the guys to do.”

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Momentum targets region’s investment culture

Mark Sanchez, Business Review West Michigan

While pursuing potential business opportunities and helping young entrepreneurs get their footing is the primary focus, the backers of the venture firm Momentum say their broader, long-term goal is to drive a change in culture.

Rick DeVos and his partners aim to build business cases for successfully investing in small, startup companies they can use to convince other investors in the region to embrace agile, nontraditional startup companies that “are not making widgets” but are often tech- or Web-based.

“It’s to teach through example,” DeVos said.

As Michigan goes through a painful economic transition, DeVos and his partners echo sentiments that a new age of entrepreneurism is crucial to creating a brighter economic future.

But doing so requires a change in the risk tolerance of investors, they say.

“We just need to embrace a different mindset of how we’re investing in things and accept the failure that accompanies the risk that’s necessary to have vibrant new businesses,” said DeVos, Momentum’s founder and president and CEO of Grand Rapids-based Spout.com, a social networking site for movie enthusiasts.

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West Michigan start-ups seek backers during Momentum ‘Demo Day’ at Hope College

by Myron Kukla | The Grand Rapids Press
Wednesday July 29, 2009, 8:00 AM

HOLLAND — Rijvi Rajib is looking for financial backing for an online venture.

That is the reason the 21-year-old New York resident is taking part in Momentum, an initiative seeking to grow the technology sector locally….

On Monday, Raijb and partners, Nick Schwab, 20, of Middleville, and Benjamin Hutchins, 16, of Waterboro, Maine, lobbied for about $250,000 in venture capital for Revetto.

They made their presentation before about six dozen business leaders — and potential investors — at Hope College’s Martha Miller Center for Global Communications. The sales job was part of “Demo Day” for Momentum, an effort of economic development agency Lakeshore Advantage, a group of West Michigan investors and members of the region’s technology community.

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New Program Aims to Give Young Professionals Rare Opportunity

FOX 17 NEWS, Dan Krauth Staff reporter
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( http://www.fox17online.com/news/fox17-devos-momentum-program-website-creation%2C0%2C6220708.story)”: http://www.fox17online.com/news/fox17-devos-momentum-program-website-creation%2C0%2C6220708.storyVIDE0

July 28, 2009
GRAND RAPIDS – There’s a new program that’s looking to give creativity a chance to become reality. With Michigan holding the highest unemployment rate in the country, a lot of young professionals are leaving the state to find a good job. But a new program is looking to give those people a rare opportunity in order to keep them here.

Amway heir Rick DeVos once had an idea to create an online community for movie buffs. He coupled that with his resources to make Spout.com a reality. Now he’s looking to help others do the same sort of thing.

“From a selfish perspective, liking to start things up myself with my team members, we want to be around other people that are starting things,” said Rick DeVos.

The new program is looking to get high-tech start-up companies off the ground in West Michigan, and those companies will come from the creativity of young entrepreneurs. The program is called ‘Momentum”. It’ll help give three start up businesses get their idea off the ground by giving them three months hands on training to become profitable, along $20,000 worth of funding.

“A twelve week, kind of intensive almost boot camp thing, so you’re living and breathing your start up business everyday,” said DeVos.

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Millennials with momentum: Teen and twentysomething entrepreneurs tackle bootcamp for start-ups

By BEN BEVERSLUIS The Holland Sentinel Posted Jul 29, 2009 @ 11:24 PM Zeeland, MI —

It’s electric. That buzz in Zeeland.

Internet start-ups. Brainstorming. Coworking. New ways of starting and doing business. It’s Momentum — a 90-day project that gave funding and mentorship to young entrepreneurs with Web-based start-ups.

Rick DeVos, who launched Momentum, said it’s all “about creating that network for people to do things,” to grow Web entrepreneurs and keep that talent in West Michigan. The idea is to “build a program, really build a culture of starting things up cheaply and quickly,” he said. “Small teams working quickly, and working relatively cheaply.”

Three of those teams Wednesday pitched business plans for what they expect will be the hot new Web app — two social networking enhancements and a third aimed at online debt-collection. Among those eight young entrepreneurs were Nick Schwab, Rijvi Rajib and Ben Hutchins.
From Middleville, New York City and Maine. Ages 20, 21 and 16.

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West MI’s next high-tech entrepreneurs

‘Momentum’ picks three ideas for support, funding

Updated: Friday, 15 May 2009, 10:29 AM EDT
Published : Thursday, 14 May 2009, 7:05 PM EDT
Tony Tagliavia

HOLLAND, Mich. (WOOD) – A private effort to help a new generation of high-tech entrepreneurs turn big ideas into big business has selected its first three recipients.

“They’ve got some really great ideas, it’s their job over the next few months to execute on it,” said Bill Holsinger-Robinson of Pomegranate Studios, a program adviser for the effort dubbed Momentum. “They mostly won based upon their focus and their ability to solve very very specific customer problems.”

One group of young entrepreneurs couldn’t find a Web site that allows a user to keep track of all of his or her social networks, sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg and YouTube.

So 19-year-old Nick Schwab of the Grand Rapids area, 16-year-old Ben Hutchins of Maine and 21-year-old Rivji Rajib of New York City — who met online — made one. They call it Revetto.

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