Michael Evans is not only the type of entrepreneur Detroit wants to stake a claim here, he's the type of person who won't leave the Motor City.
He was a top employee at a New York City-based start-up that was recently acquired, splitting time between the Big Apple and Detroit. He is now here full-time building his own startup,
PishPosh, in a Boston-Edison mansion he has turned into the latest version of new economy office space.
"It's a tremendous amount of space," Evans says. "We feel safe and people love to come here. Why move to Midtown or downtown when I can stay up here and have a great space?"
Evans ran community projects for
Forrst, an Internet start-up that bills itself as "a community where (software) developers and designers improve their craft through design feedback." Evans became employee No. 1 in late 2010 and oversaw project and community management for the company. Forrst was acquired by
COLOURlovers a year ago and Evans left the company in late February, ending a little more than two years of living in Detroit and flying to New York to work.
"I refused to move. It was too much traveling," Evans says, explaining why he chooses to stay in the Motor City.
During his time at Forrst, Evans was also working on his own startup in his spare time. PishPosh is a podcasting startup that focuses on making its own content (think podcasts and videos) and content for others. Its team of four people have worked with the likes of
Moosejaw and
Model D. It is now getting ready to launch its own software platform that will enable everyday people to make their own podcasts. It's currently in its private Beta and plans to launch it within a few weeks.
That launch will happen from the mansion in Boston-Edison that Evans currently calls home. His parents recently decided to move downtown into a high-rise apartment so they didn't have to deal with as much upkeep. Evans stayed in his childhood home, where he currently lives on the second floor. He is turned the third floor into the home base for PishPosh.
"We have multi-media setups, multi-lighting and isolation booths," Evans says. "We have the whole deal."
Source: Michael Evans, founder of PishPosh
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
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