Although it’s been a while since the Techarb blog has been updated, it’s certainly not for lack of progress. The successful completion of the four-month summer experiment has lead to the Techarb becoming a permanent fixture at the University of Michigan. Through the hard work and dedicated assistance of the U-M Center for Entreprenurship, RPM Ventures, McKinley, and many others, we have graduated into the next iteration of the University of Michigan Startup Accelerator: Techarb 2.0.

Techarb in the News:

• What Do Students Think Is Working – Entrepreneurship
• University of Michigan strikes deal to establish permanent student business incubator
• MyBandStock.com aims to help local groups make it big
• TechArb gives young entrepreneurs a leg up
• Student incubator shows strength in numbers
• Geek Weekend: Ann Arbor, Michigan

The TechArb is proud to announce that three of our ventures have been getting some much-deserved attention from the media in the past few days. Mobil33t’s new product DoGood, which uses crowdsourcing to assemble an army of people performing random acts of kindness, has hit the front page of cnet.com. The article can be found here. Additonaly, another TechArb venture that provides music fans an opportunity to invest directly in new bands, MyBandstock.com,  has been featured in an article by the Ann Arbor Business Review. Crowdsourcing market prediction company, CrowdClarity, is also mentioned in the article. The article can be found here.

TechArb \ˈtek-ˈärb\

-noun

: A place where friends, technology and ventures are cultivated for scientific and educational purposes.

In less than a month, the TechArb has seen many exciting developments. What started as an empty office complex has already grown into a vibrant community of developers, engineers, designers and business people – all working together as student entrepreneurs. Through guidance from RPM Ventures and the University of Michigan Center for Entrepreneurship, the TechArb is now home to eight student ventures (and growing), each in different and exciting stages of development. Here’s a short recap of some of the things we’ve accomplished:

Mobil33t launched their newest product, DoGood, just prior to their attendance at WWDC. It’s growing at a rate 800 users a day so far, allowing more than 60 people each hour to add some good to the world.

MyBandStock.com just initiated their new intern program, giving 10 highly talented and motivated students a crash course into the music industry and startup world. Their kickoff party at local food and drink venue, BTB Cantina, was hugely successful – nearly 224 people in attendance!

CrowdClarity launched a much-improved version of their website and is currently gaining the interest of many new customers.

Carrier Mobile, Shepherd Intelligent Systems and Phonagle have each received $5,000 in funding from Ann Arbor SPARK, a local business development organization.

A few new ventures have joined our ranks. One such venture, Backyard Brains, is an exciting new startup developing innovative neuroscience kits to help schoolchildren and amateur scientists better understand the brain.

In addition to Tony Grover, Marc Weiser and Tim Street of RPM Ventures, we’ve gained many valuable mentors such as Doug Neil, serial entrepreneur and former CEO of BoomDash, and Greg Schwartz, founder and CEO of the mobile software company Mobatech. We’ve also had opportunities to visit with and learn from many other local startups and business resources. For example, we’ve had the pleasure of meeting with Menlo Innovations, an Ann Arbor-based software development firm, to better understand their wildly successful development techniques.

The TechArb has been extremely active and is continually gaining momentum every day. Our space is allowing for a level of enthusiasm, knowledge-exchange and networking never before experienced at the University of Michigan – a notion that continually thrills, motivates and empowers all who are involved.

The TechArb is a coworking space for University of Michigan students. Humbly enough, it began with a few students looking for a shared office to work on their start-ups. Through assistance from RPM Ventures and Maize Ventures, the TechArb was born in May 09 as a 4-month experiment to support 30 students as they run nine distinct start-ups.

Our objectives are two-fold:

1) Create a community of like-minded student entrepreneurs, each working on distinct ventures, but collaborating to boost the probability of each venture’s success.

2) Catalogue the entire experiment in the hopes of justifying a University-sponsored “techarb” for years to come.

Our site is in construction, so expect much more content in the weeks to come. Thanks for visiting!