Startup In Grand Rapids

A great conversation pop’ed up in the office the other day about the how we feel like there’s a wave effort and ambition forming around the startup, tech and design scenes in Grand Rapids. Rumblings of sorts powered by enthusiasm and commonality around the idea that the best way to fix our city and state is for each of us to do our part, whatever that may be.

This past week saw a great effort put forth by some incredible people:

Monday brought a kickoff meeting for the organizers of the Grand Rapids Give Camp, a weekend based event aimed at helping out local nonprofits. The event brings together a group of volunteer designers and developers over a weekend to build some sort of application for nonprofits.

Tuesday brought the first meetup around opening a Grand Rapids coworking space. The goal of the space is to bring together the local network of entrepreneurs, engineers, designers and thinkers and give them a place to work, mingle  and help grow entrepreneurship and business.

Wednesday brought two events. The first being a weekly dinner for the startups participating in the Momentum project. I’ve been fortunate enough to be a mentor for these companies and am always excited after these dinners. The invigorating dinner conversation was provided by Dug Song and Zach Steindler from Ann Arbor. Dug and Zach are playing a pivotal role in helping Ann Arbor continue to grow into a neat and stronger community.

The second event was the first meeting of the Grand Rapids Startup Weekend, an event meant to bring together a group of people to think up, develop and design a new company over the course of a weekend.  Even if a company doesn’t make it two days past the event, its still a great time and good exercise to get together with super creative people and learn more about starting businesses.

Events like these are just the little supporting artifacts that there’s something of a ground swell here in Grand Rapids. We have the people with the passion to help GR grow into something new.