News’ Daniel Howes: Next wave entrepreneurs making big impact

It’s always good to get validation in print for something many of us already know and spend a good deal of time advocating. That is, cultivating entrepreneurship in its multiple forms, as a way of driving economic development in Detroit, the region and the state.

Here’s Daniel Howes’ take in his Detroit News column. An excerpt:

And partly it’s because the state’s homegrown entrepreneurs, born from the rubble of Michigan’s economic implosion, are ahead of the capital they need to grow and to prosper. Their success, their stories, would help to change the conversation about a state marked by the traumas of federal bailouts, municipal bankruptcy and the edge of financial collapse.

“None of us were around to remember when GM was just another startup,” said Jeff Helminski, managing director of Blackford Capital LLC in Grand Rapids. “Of what? Two hundred auto companies.”

More than three, anyway. That’s the power of entrepreneurialism — someone wins, big.

Intriguing, yes? Read more here.