The Entrepreneurs

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Adam Ferris moved to Dubai when he was two. He was disappointed when he came back to the United States a few years ago, when he was 17. He imagined returning to a nation full of entrepreneurs, new ideas and creativity. But at the University of Michigan, he didn’t see that ambition.

Until he came across Mpowered.

MPowered began a few years ago when two students had a dream to make Ann Arbor the Silicon Valley of the Midwest. Today, it’s a student group at the University of Michigan that gives members the skills they need to become entrepreneurs. It has almost 100 members and is growing fast.

For the past two years, Mpowered has run an entrepreneurial competition called 1,000 pitches. It’s aimed at generating business and product ideas from University of Michigan students. This year, they received a record 2,165 pitches.

Ferris, who’s now the Vice President of MPowered, says there is more passion for entrepreneurship on Michigan’s campus than at other campuses because of the state’s struggling economy.

“The average person is into it and says, ‘I want to be an entrepreneur.’ You hear a lot of professors saying that students are demanding more entrepreneurial courses and that’s great,” Ferris said.

Learning to start your own business is one way to prepare for a lackluster job market. And if you open that business in Michigan, you could have a positive impact on the state’s economy. This year, the leaders of Mpowered added a new category specifically for business ideas to revive the Michigan economy.

Lauren Leland is the president of MPowered. She helped create this new category. It’s called “Michigan Matters”.

“Which is a call to students to think of innovative ways to help the Michigan economy,” Leland said. “So one example that we gave is the tax incentive for filming movies here. What are other creative ways that can bring the economy back? That’s doing a great job but what are other ways?”

There were more than 100 entries. And not all of them are winners. Some of them just sound plain silly.

Chris Chan is a peer mentor at MPowered. He described one “Michigan Matters” pitch that was – well, you decide.

“One of the students loves imagery so he was envisioning this house where the walls were made out of glass and there were some way to put images on the glass,” Chan said. “So with the push of the button you might surround your house with the ocean for example, or you could show the Brazilian rainforests.”

It’s hard to imagine a glass house business saving Michigan. But that pitch has just as good of a chance as the proposal for a new I-pod application for counting your pushups.

Adam Ferris is a finalist for the Michigan Matters category. His goal is to jumpstart the video game industry in Michigan.

“And the video game industry is actually huge, it’s booming. Here in the University of Michigan for example has a whole major dedicated to video gaming and designing and so forth. Where do these people go, they go to other developers in other places. So why not have something that’s cool interesting that people will be excited for that could be started here,” Ferris said.

The judges will announce the winner of the Michigan Matters Category tomorrow. The winner will get $1,000 dollars and the opportunity to work with the Michigan Student Assembly to pursue their proposal.

Chris Chan says those who don’t win will still walk away with something valuable for themselves and the Michigan economy.

“So it doesn’t matter if people want to start their own business or go into finance or go into engineering or become a musician, people always need leader. People need that creative mindset, people who actually can lead and make that first step. We feel that we are actually instilling that unique quality into students and I feel like that is really invaluable,” Chan said.

And if these students stay in Michigan and start a business here, that’s a double win for the state.

| Share More