Ann Arbor entrepreneur Rick Snyder wants to take start-up vision to governor's mansion

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 | Source: Ann Arbor Business Review

Rick Snyder, one of Ann Arbor's start-up icons, wants to put the innovation lessons he learned from Gateway and Ardesta to use on a state level as Governor.

Excerpt:

An entrepreneurial investor as Michigan gubernatorial candidate?

That's the value proposition that Rick Snyder, who is officially considering a gubernatorial race in 2010, would be offering Michigan.

But Snyder, chairman of Ann Arbor SPARK and former president of Gateway Computers, faces significant challenges related to name recognition and funding competition.

Snyder, also CEO of Ann Arbor-based venture capital firm Ardesta and former chairman of the Michigan Economic Development Corp.'s executive committee, hinted that he may seek to overcome those obstacles by relying on entrepreneurial business skills.

"Fortunately I've been in the startup world for the last 10 years plus. There's a tremendous amount of analogies from doing a startup and running a campaign in the sense that you have to come up with a vision, you have to build a team, you have to raise funds and you have to get something done," said Snyder, who also briefly ran Gateway as interim CEO.

Read the rest of the story here.