Helping start-ups on the road to success

Scientists are smart — about their science.  

They’re innovators by nature and training. But when they come up with a new process or product and decide to market it, most of them don’t know what to do next. An Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Program (AMMP) Accelerator, part of the Michigan Tech Enterprise Corporation SmartZone (MTEC) nonprofit business incubator, is helping some of those innovators learn the ins and outs of moving their innovations from the lab to the marketplace. 

“We’re helping them take the first next step,” says Jason Mack, who is MTEC vice president for business development.

The AMMP Accelerator was launched last year with $1.56 million in funding from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and MTEC.  Five companies participated in the intensive, 14-week program in Houghton, where they worked in person with experts such as entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and scientists who have already established successful companies to market their innovations. 

Jason MackThey’re now recruiting this summer’s fledgling companies. The AMMP Accelerator looks for companies that have not gone to market yet but have a strong founding team and a strong technology base. The innovators may not even know how to build a strong business model, let alone find funding or take their product to market. 

They’ll have a lot of questions, says Grace Hsia Haberl, director of the AMMP Accelerator. “How do I build a team? What are some of the accounting and legal or insurance frameworks that I need to consider? What are the pathways for further funding? How do I find and communicate with customers? How do I find a manufacturer?

“I feel like we're giving the gift of knowledge,” Hsia Haberl says. “This program is giving them that fire hose of information that they need to be knowledgeable, well-spoken and well-educated founders, CEOs (chief executive officer) and CTOs (chief technology officer) in their own right.”

Hsia Haberl was recently hired to head the AMMP Accelerator. She brings more than 13 years of experience in economic development, business management, fundraising, board leadership and executive management to the job.

Grace Hsia HaberlShe is a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Michigan and an award-winning entrepreneur who has founded a company herself.  Her company, Warmilu, makes InstaWarmer, a non-electric, reusable infant warming incubator blanket for resource-scarce hospitals, nonprofits, governments and medical device distributors. Today, InstaWarmer is warming 60,000 babies in 106 hospitals in 23 countries, Hsia Haberl says. 

Accelerating economic development

“Our vision is to forge the Keweenaw into the startup innovation hub for advanced materials and manufacturing in the Upper Midwest region,” Mack says.

Here’s how the AMMP Accelerator is doing that. The key is intensive personal coaching and building a network of advisors they can turn to and rely on. 

In addition to intensive personal coaching from experienced entrepreneurs, Mack and other MTEC specialists work with the program’s participants to help them understand their market space and their customers. They help them build their company brand, learn how to communicate with customers, design a plan to take them to their first sales and prepare them to approach investors.

MTEC also arranges introductions and access to potential investors and nurtures peer support to encourage founders to learn from each other and expand their networks. At the end of the 14 weeks, there’s a public showcase in Houghton and a demo day downstate near Detroit that 50 to 75 investors, manufacturers and other interested parties attended in 2024.

The AMMP Accelerator follows the National Science Foundation’s broad definition of advanced materials: new and improved materials that are designed for commercial and industrial applications. So, a wide range of companies and innovations qualify for the accelerator program. 

2024 participants

AMMP’s first cohort included Flow Shield Nano, Integrated Molecular Innovations, Resurgent Innovations, BioMang and O2 Innovate, a business unit of AIRS.

Flow Shield Nano has developed a platform technology to monitor water contaminants in the beverage and water industries. Integrated Molecular Innovations is building biosensing technology that can monitor hormones and other components of sweat to enable athletes to optimize their workout routines.

Resurgent Innovations hopes to commercialize a new pyrolysis reactor design that aims to better recycle plastic waste. BioMang has created a novel technology using metal-reducing bacteria for low-cost, environmentally sustainable recovery of manganese and other industrially important metals from waste streams.

And woman-owned O2 Innovate has developed a medical device that integrates a higher-flow oxygen concentrator with both user and remote respiratory therapist monitoring for oxygen users. O2 Innovate was founded by Valerie Obenchain with the help of Nate Yenor from Michigan Technological University’s tech transfer office. 

A respiratory therapist herself, Obenchain became motivated to develop the new remote monitoring oxygen concentrator when she watched her own grandmother struggle with her changing needs for oxygen. Sometimes she needed more,
sometimes less. Sometimes she needed a stronger flow, sometimes a lighter one. And her respiratory therapist, located elsewhere, couldn’t easily monitor and adjust her amount or flow of oxygen.

O2 Innovate’s oxygen concentrator will provide easy read-outs for the patient while also allowing the respiratory therapist to monitor the readings remotely in real time and adjust the amount and flow of oxygen. It will also be portable, enabling oxygen users to leave their homes. 

“This will be a game-changer,” Obenchain says. 

O2 Innovate is the only company in last year’s cohort that isn’t located near the MTEC SmartZone. Based in downstate Newaygo, Obenchain was able to attend some sessions in person in Houghton, while Yenor stood in for her at others and shared what he learned.   

Although Obenchain had founded O2 Innovate’s parent company, Advanced Interactive Response Systems, in 2013, she found the AMMP Accelerator extremely helpful. 

“You never know what you don’t know,” she points out. She says she learned about customer discovery and how to change her LLC to a C Corporation, a legal entity separate from its owners. She also got help finding potential manufacturers for her device.
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Obenchain has more than 20 years of respiratory therapy experience, including seven years in management at Spectrum Health and Allcare Healthcare. She acts as an advisor for the American Medical Device Summit.  

The statewide economic development organization MEDC is enthusiastically on board with the AMMP Accelerator. 

“The Michigan Economic Development Corporation is thrilled to support the Michigan Tech Enterprise Corporation’s Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Program Accelerator,” said Ben Marchionne, MEDC’s chief innovation ecosystem officer. “This represents the first of its kind in the Upper Peninsula targeting early-stage companies in need of acceleration on the commercialization pathway. We remain committed to supporting the startup ecosystem in the U.P. to help find paths forward for these risk-taking entrepreneurs to ‘Make it in Michigan’. We are eager to see successes as a result of this partnership.”

Jennifer Donovan is a reporter with more than 40 years of experience on daily newspapers, magazines and university writing and editing. She is retired as director of news and media relations at Michigan Technological University and lives in Houghton.
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