"It's the last stage of a very long process before you get to human trials," says Nader Najafi, president & CEO of Integrated Sensing Systems.

The Ypsilanti-based firm, commonly known as ISSYS, designs and develops microelectromechanical systems for medical and scientific sensing applications. Its latest piece of technology is an implant for the heart that allows medical professionals to wirelessly monitor the heart.

"So you can monitor the heart on demand even with home monitoring," Najafi says.

ISSYS, founded in 1995, has been working on this technology for 12 years. It has a staff of 30 and plans to add another 2-3 jobs this year. It will continue clinical trials of the technology for the next two years. After that, Najafi hopes to begin work on human trials, while also receiving FDA approval so it can begin sales.

Source: Nader Najafi, president & CEO of Integrated Sensing Systems
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
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Excerpt:

"Super Bowl advertising can be viewed as a sort of bellwether, Nordhielm says. "The rise in automotive advertising is a signal that the auto industry is back, and quite possibly that the economy is turning around."

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The Ann Arbor-based LED sign manufacturer recently received a $250,000 investment from the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund. So far it has raised $600,000 in this seed capital round, and hopes to close out the round when it gets to $750,000 by the end of the month. The investment is coming on the heels of some rapid growth in the nine-year-old firm's revenues and staff.

"Our revenues have tripled," says Philip Ochtman, president of Estrakon. "The number of staff has gone up substantially. Last year we had eight people full-time and today we have 15. We expect to have 30-35 next year."

The company has a handful of interns today and is looking to bring on another 1-2 interns this summer, he says. The company is also looking to add independent sales people to its team.

Estrakon develops, manufactures and sells LED edge-lit signs for businesses from its base on the south side of Ann Arbor. That energy-efficient technology uses 80-percent less energy than traditional light sources and contains no hazardous materials. It's also a technology that ages well.

"The LED space is growing very quickly," Ochtman says. "People seem to love the products we're putting out."

Source: Philip Ochtman, president of Estrakon
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
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Excerpt:

"“There’s this gap between ‘I have this cool idea,’ which is not a business, but it’s a cool idea, it’s a kernel of a business, but how do you transfer into the framework of a business which you could then go do a feasibility study on to see if it’s worth doing?” said Tim Faley, managing director of the Zell Lurie Institute."

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"Despite all this fame, you’ve had tussles with the city about expanding the deli.

[Laughs] The town is very engaged, with highly educated and opinionated people. They’re good to sell specialty foods to, and it also means they have opinions about the way things should work. That’s the way it is.

We’ve tried a number of times, and this last time [partners Paul Saginaw and Grace Singleton] had enough fortitude for four years of getting permission. The truth is, I’d say most businesses would have taken the money from Saline (a nearby town) or a mall or a developer and gone there and said, ‘forget it.’

I like the community and I don’t like the idea of not being able to know the people I work with and sell to."

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Excerpt:

"The vacancy rate for apartments in Ann Arbor was 3.6 percent at the end of the third quarter, according to information from Washington, D.C.-based REIS Inc.; compared with 5.4 percent for the region.

That trend follows other sectors of real estate in metro Detroit. Ann Arbor enjoys a vacancy rate that is much lower than in other parts of the region. "

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Excerpt:

"This is the president's 10th visit to Michigan since taking office. He was in Michigan in October to visit GM's Orion Assembly plant with the South Korean president and spoke in Detroit on Labor Day.

It will be his second visit to speak at the University of Michigan. In May 2010, he delivered the commencement address at Michigan Stadium, where he urged students to participate in democracy and get all points of view."

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Excerpt:

"To even begin to understand how these slightly unsettling results are arrived at, we need to understand who compiles them and who they are for. The lists are made by well-travelled academics, researchers and journalists for corporate, media and creative executives on generous expense accounts as well as other academics enjoying grants and stipends. And, of course, by Tyler Brûlé.

Most of these people are profoundly concerned with things like well-designed street furniture, a proliferation of eye-wateringly expensive artisanal retail, boutique hotels with good (English-speaking) service and environmentally friendly mayoral policies. Certainly these are all things which help but they skew the polls to a particular type of European or marginal Pacific city. What they also do is to strip out all the complexity, all the friction and buzz that make big cities what they are."

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