Five Michigan companies are competing for seed funding on Thursday, June 14, as part of the BlueWater Angels Pitch Night. The event takes place at the Holiday Inn in Midland and costs $20 to attend and is sponsored by Midland Tomorrow.
The five companies will be pitching to Saginaw-based angel investment firm BlueWater Angels in hopes of earning that group’s investment funds. The event serves as an opportunity for BlueWater to learn more about the five businesses pitching as well as any attending entrepreneurs to learn more about BlueWater itself.
Mid-Michigan small businesses need more opportunity for seed funding to grow, says BlueWater executive director Ken Kousky.
BlueWater also believes it important for mid-Michigan to have a local angel investment group that invests in local businesses.
"There’s a lot of belief that outside funding pulls companies out of Michigan," Kousky says.
The five companies included in Thursday’s Pitch Night are Greenlancer Energy, an online platform for connecting freelance renewable energy engineers with companies and contractors; Ecovia Renewables, a biopolymer research and development company; Life Magnetics, a carbon-based RNA extraction firm; the virtual reality company Locomotion VR Game Center; and R&R Dialysis, a rural dialysis clinic in Hemlock.
The region is an especially exciting place for the life sciences industries, Kousky says.
"We have a challenge before us. We have all of these great scientific and technological advancements occurring in mid-Michigan, but we’re not seeing new businesses form very quickly," he says. "Financing startups is the biggest challenge facing the tai-cities and BlueWater is trying to change that."
Click here to learn more about BlueWater Angels and Thursday’s Pitch Night.
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