Angela Barbash has worked as a financial advisor for a decade. She saw the financial crash in 2008, the recession that followed and how it impacted middle-class investors. She saw how colleagues in her industry pushed their customers toward higher-priced products that were arguably not the best fit for their financial future.
She also saw the rise of social entrepreneurship and how a growing number of people wanted to invest in their local economies. She saw the market shifting a decided she wanted to get ahead of it with her own financial research firm,
Reconsider.
"I saw all of this coalescing and launched Reconsider," Barbash says. She describes the Ypsilanti-based business as a "center for thought leadership, providing services that include research and education about community capital and social entrepreneurship, and investment readiness assessments for companies who are preparing to raise capital." It is also working on helping increase financial literacy with everyday people. The firm and its team of six people are also working to create more avenues for people to invest locally.
Reconsider also launched a sister company called Revalue. Barbash describes Revalue as "a registered investment advisory firm that provides investment advisory services to individuals and organizations who want to feel good about where they have chosen to invest their money."
Reconsider and Revalue recently landed financing from the Michigan Microloan Fund, which provides five-figure microloans to small startups. That money has helped the two companies pay for its legal, accounting, branding and IT needs.
"It's covering all of those expenses," Barbash says. "The legal bill was the biggest by far."
Source: Angela Barbash, CEO of Reconsider and Revalue
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
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