Detroit Creative Corridor Center is waving goodbye to its most recent graduating class of startups from its Creative Ventures program and welcoming the newest class of aspiring entrepreneurs.
The New Center-based small business accelerator is working to create a critical mass of creative-based companies, such as design firms or video-editing companies, and creative-class startups. Forty seven companies and entrepreneurs have gone through the accelerator's Creative Ventures programs, including seven companies that have just graduated this summer and 16 firms that just started the program.
"This is probably the most sophisticated class we have had thus far," says Matt Clayson, director of
Detroit Creative Corridor Center.
The Detroit Creative Corridor Center launched in 2011 in the
College for Creative Studies' A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education. It focuses on helping build businesses that employ creatives that will stay in the greater downtown Detroit area. Creative Ventures is its lead program, which is a year-long business development program for creative sector entrepreneurs.
The seven companies employ 21 people. Of those businesses that just graduated include
Order & Other, a video production firm. That company is now comprised of its two principals and its first hire.
"They have had some impressive revenue growth," Clayson says. "They're doing work for nationals brands across the country."
The 17 companies that are currently going through the Creative Ventures program employ 44 people. The Detroit Creative Corridor Center will help these aspiring entrepreneurs take their business from dreams to reality.
"We take the businesses from a concept to something paying the bills," Clayson says.
Source: Matt Clayson, director of the Detroit Creative Corridor Center
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
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