At Zelus Analytics, we were selling a sports intelligence platform to some of the world’s most elite teams. These were large contracts in a small, intensely competitive market, where our work influenced player acquisition, trades and game strategy. Getting access to the people making those decisions, oftentimes GMs and Coaches, was a challenge of its own.
Our path to early customers almost always began with a relationship. Those early connections helped us scale the platform and build a reputation that opened more doors. As COO, I saw how those customer wins made fundraising and, ultimately, exit discussions easier. They gave us opportunities to prove ourselves that another company with equally good technology might never have received.
Throughout my career, relationships built at Microsoft, Kellogg, McKinsey and Bridgewater have also opened doors to decision-makers, expertise and candid advice. Those networks have been an enormous advantage, and one that a founder with an equally promising business may not have.
That is why Michigan’s startup strategy cannot stop at a handful of government investment programs. I’d look for five things around a promising idea: founders with the judgment and determination to pursue it, a team that can build and sell, smart capital suited to the business, customers willing to pay, and experienced people who can help navigate what comes next. A grant or investment addresses only part of that picture. I’d organize the wider effort around experienced founders, investors and buyers with real purchasing needs.
Put people who build companies at the center
Michigan startups raised $1.44 billion across 174 venture deals in 2025. That sounds encouraging. But an earlier Startup Genome and Endeavor study found founders describing fragmented support, limited help with scaling and too few investors prepared to take substantial early risks. A later assessment of Detroit found an unusually steep drop between seed and Series A rounds.
Capital is still a real constraint. Different businesses also need different kinds of it. A biotech company cannot finance years of research on the same terms as a software company with revenue. What I want more of is investors who understand those businesses, can lead a round, bring in other investors and help founders recruit or reach customers. A founder who has already scaled and exited a company can often contribute as much through judgment and introductions as through a check.
North Carolina offers a useful lesson over the past few decades. Its Council for Entrepreneurial Development was built by founders and business leaders, with investors and operators involved in connecting emerging companies to what they need. In 2025 it reported 1,032 curated introductions and engagement with 405 investor funds, most from outside North Carolina. Those are measures of access, not proof that every introduction produced a successful company. But they describe a very different emphasis from simply referring founders to another program.
Michigan already has founder-led efforts, including Dug Song’s Michigan Founders Fund, that bring experienced entrepreneurs together to support emerging companies. We should build on efforts like these, emphasizing opening doors to customers, experienced talent and capital.
Turn Michigan’s purchasing power into an advantage
The most underused asset in our startup economy may be sitting inside our established companies. They have budgets, difficult problems and customers of their own. A young Michigan company might have a better solution, but an unfamiliar founder can spend months trying to get through procurement while an incumbent supplier already has the relationship.
Why should an established company take the risk? Because getting early access to a useful technology can be a competitive advantage. A manufacturer that solves a quality problem first benefits before its rivals do. The startup receives an early customer, develops a stronger product and gains the reference that helps it sell again.
BMW’s Startup Garage shows what that can look like. BMW is a customer, not just a mentor: selected startups receive purchase orders and work with engineers on real problems. By its tenth anniversary, BMW said it had worked with more than 220 startups and established 30 as suppliers or service providers. Swiss startup Embotech went from that relationship to automated vehicle movement in BMW plants; by October 2026, the partners reported one million vehicle movements across four sites.
Michigan’s largest employers should see themselves as stewards of our next economy. I’d ask them to commit a meaningful share of their innovation and supplier development spending to paid trials with promising Michigan startups, with executives willing to make a purchasing decision when the technology works. Public support should focus on shared testing or validation that helps multiple companies, not subsidize purchases a buyer has a commercial reason to make anyway.
This wouldn’t be charity. Buyers get access to innovation they need. Founders earn customers and the chance to sell to many more.
Bring Michigan’s experienced people into the work
We also lack enough experienced people for a growing startup economy: those who have built sales teams, recruited exceptional engineers, taken a company through rapid growth or sold a business. We cannot produce all that experience overnight.
But a remarkable number of people with Michigan ties are doing those things elsewhere. They grew up here, went to one of our amazing universities or began their careers here. We should treat that network as an extension of Michigan’s startup talent, rather than waiting for everyone to move home.
I’d ask successful founders, investors and operating leaders to make specific commitments to companies that fit their experience. Someone who has sold technology to insurers could help a Michigan startup reach the right buyer. Someone who has built an engineering organization could help recruit its first technical leader. The relationships could become advisory roles, investments or operating positions when there is a good fit. What matters is having someone involved who knows the problem and cares whether the company gets through it.
That approach has precedent. Endeavor’s research found that successful companies were about twice as likely to have benefited from mentorship, investment or experience with a successful founder. The finding is an association, not a guarantee. It reinforces what I’ve seen: people who have built companies make the next generation more likely to find the right answers and connections.
Hiring also requires a deeper local market. It is a big ask to move a family to Michigan for one startup if failure means leaving the state again. That is why the industry bets in Part 1 matter: several growing employers in related fields give talented people options, and successful companies create the experienced managers and future founders that the next generation needs.
Help Michigan startups reach markets beyond automotive
Michigan’s automotive concentration can help startups find an early customer, but it cannot become their entire market. Once a company proves its product here, the next challenge is reaching buyers in industries where it doesn't yet have relationships.
MEDC already connects Michigan suppliers with domestic and international buyers through Pure Michigan Business Connect, and Michigan LIFT is bringing specific industrial purchasing needs into the process. I'd build on those efforts rather than create another matchmaking program. In a few complementary markets, such as North Carolina's life sciences sector, MEDC and its partners could connect promising Michigan startups to buyers with real problems and budgets. Michigan's industrial buyers could offer reciprocal opportunities to companies from those regions.
The state can't promise anyone a contract, nor should it. But it can help companies reach serious buyers, then measure whether introductions turn into purchases and repeat business. I'd judge the effort by customers won and retained, revenue beyond automotive, and companies able to grow without relocating.
Michigan has spent decades competing to attract companies built elsewhere. We should be just as deliberate about helping companies built here grow into businesses other states would want to attract. Successful companies create experienced leaders, future founders and new opportunities for the next generation. That's how we build a startup ecosystem that compounds its success rather than starting over with each new venture.
