Day Two of the 2008 GLITR Spring Tech Tour covered Michigan's second largest metropolitan area, Grand Rapids.
And there's just no better way to start it than at the Van Andel Institute, Michigan's most impressive home of groundbreaking research into cancer -- and soon, much more research.
Joe Gavan, vice president of communications and development, took me on a quick tour of the massive 240,000-square-foot addition being built onto the original 160,000-square-foot institute's offices and labs.
The long winter means the addition will likely open on the original schedule of late fall 2009. The real goal is to get the addition closed up to the weather by winter 2008, so interior work can continue through the winter.
The six-story addition is virtually all lab space -- most of the big public spaces like auditoriums were in the original -- so it will triple the VAI's lab space and allow it to grow to 800 employees from the current 250. The addition will also include a glassed "demo lab" so tour group can watch scientists at work without disturbing them.
The institute has also doubled its lab sspace in Singapore, and is looking at other satellite labs in Australia and Sweden.
More at www.vai.org.
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After the VAI, I met with Catherine Ettinger, partner and president of IT consultants Foxbright, at an incredibly cool little downtown Grand Rapids restaurant called Sundance.
Foxbright is the merger of two companies -- Cordestech, of which Ettinger was part owner, which did custom database software and back-end applications, and H2ML, owned by Rob Huisingh, which worked in Web development.
Ettinger was originally an economics major from Northwestern University but began working as a database analyst while still in school, which led to a software and database career.
The two companies got together, Ettinger said, because "Rob was doing front end work, and we were doing back end work -- but all of the front end projects started requiring back end work, and all of the back end required front end."
Today's Foxbright is evolving further, with more than 50 percent of its sales now coming from products. The primary product is a content management system tailored to K-12 education and nonprofits. The company also markets an online payroll product through an Indiana reseller, and does product development for other companies as well, mostly medical.
Ettinger said the nine-employee company is looking to hire project managers who know technology.
More at www.foxbright.com.
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I then spoke to Keith Brophy, former owner of Cascade Township-based Sagestone, which was purchased by Troy-based NuSoft Solutions in 2004. NuSoft was in turn purchased earlier this year by Pennsauken, N.J.-based RCM Technologies.
Brophy said RCM was interested in NuSoft because RCM lacked expertise in Microsoft technologies, and NuSoft was interested in the purchase because "we were a privately held company that had grown by bootstrapping, and we were running into increasing issues of scalability with larger client projects."
Brophy said RCM plans to continue adding to NuSoft's staff, and that the company is adding creative design staff in Grand Rapids.
Mor at www.nusoftsolutions.com.
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From there I moseyed over to 15 Ionia St. NW, home of an honest-to-goodness independent technology consultant, C/D/H.
"We love Novell, we love Microsoft, and we love Cisco, and we are as agnostic as we possibly can be, and it drives those guys nuts," said Doug Lindhout, an employee at C/D/H the past 13 years and a partner the past three.
C/D/H was born in 1990 from two former BDO Seidman veterans, Mike Conway and Keith Dierking, with current partner Paul Hillman joining shortly thereafter -- hence the name.
Conway has since retired and Dierking is now a non-executive board chairman.
But "so many of the original operating philosophies have not changed" since 1990, Lindhout said. "We literally sit on the same side of the table as the clients and help them solve their technology problems."
While 2007 was an up-and-down year for C/D/H, Lindhout said the company has been "swamped" with work so far in 2007. "We feel there is now pent up demand," he said.
Lindhout said the 27-employee firm is "looking for consultants rather than administrative or business development staff ... the people who deliver the joy to the client. People who understand technology, who can speak English around technology."
C/D/H also now has a Royal Oak office, but for now that's the extent of the company's geographic aspirations. "We have a vision that takes us out to 2012, and the plan by then is for Royal Oak office to be about the size as the Grand Rapids office, a couple dozen. We don't have a need to be big. We do want to be great. So we don't have Toledo or Milwaukee or LA or anything else in our sights right now."
More at www.cdh.com.
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From downtown Grand Rapids I moved out to the suburban home of OtterBase, an IT staffing company founded in February 1998 by brothers Jeffrey and William Bennett, who remain 50-50 partners in the business.
Jeffrey Bennett said he's been an entrepreneur all his life -- going all the way back to selling bubble gum on the playground and cars and jet skis through high school and college. His brother Bill was a scientist -- a chemist at Alticor.
Jeffrey Bennett said he fell into working for a staffing company after college, "and I realized this business was dynamic, with huge potential, and like all entrepreneurs I felt like I could do it better. Whether or not that was true, at that point, was yet to be seen."
He said he thought his brother's methodical, analytical scientific nature would lend itself to running the business, while he handled sales and recruiting.
Today, OtterBase has 50 internal employees, business development managers and recruiters, and branch offices in Livonia, Boston, Nashville, Grand Rapids, Chicago and Minneapolis. The company has achieved an annual compound growth rate of 40 percent since inception.
Bennett said the hottest IT skills in demand for his customers are C#, Java and .Net, and unfortunately, most of the folks OtterBase brings in are from outside Michigan. Bennett called for state incentives for IT staffing firms to find people in Michigan with those skills.
OtterBase's strategic plan calls for growth to $100 million a year in revenue by 2013 through organic growth, and that the company is considering adding acquisitions to its strategy -- "but the biggest challenge would be cultural integration issues," Bennett said.
More at www.otterbase.com.
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Over lunch I met with Paul F. Doyle, founder and CEO of ProofSpace, and Steven C. Lassig, the company's vice president of vertical sales.
ProofSpace's core product -- ProofMark -- was actually developed before the dot-bomb in 2000, but was shelved for years by an inability to attract sufficient capital to bring it to market.
Doyle said he makes presentations to groups writing on a MagnaDoodle, asking them why they would take a contract seriously if it was presented to them on that screen.
He then informs them that electronic storage is basically the same thing as a MagnaDoodle -- magnets moving metal around -- and that their electronic documents can't be taken any more seriously, since existing metadata schemes for those documents can be defeated easily.
ProofSpace's core technology, called a "Transient Key," got a United States patent in 2002, and Doyle has spent the years since building the business and a staff.
Doyle likens the technology to the tamper seals found on drugs, plainly displaying unauthorized changes in documents and conclusively proving authenticity and the lack of changes to regulators, auditors, clients and courts.
It turns out, Doyle said, that the best way to prove the authenticity of documents is to use algorithms involving time, since "time is the one thing we can't control."
Doyle said he's selling the technology as a way to defeat the massive problem of business check fraud, in which organized crime makes mechanically authentic counterfeit checks and uses them in social engineering fraud schemes.
More at www.proofspace.com.
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I wrapped up my Grand Rapids visit by talking to Mark Bauer, whose Wayland-based company, Bauer Power Inc., offers solar and wind power from a variety of suppliers.
"Prior to this I was in construction, and as we did construction work people would ask us about alternative energy systems and how they could put them in," Bauer said.
And then, Bauer said, he grew sick and tired of the construction business, with its frequent emphasis on money and aesthetics instead of quality and energy efficiency.
So since 2002, Bauer Power has been installing renewable energy systems for residential and commercial clients.
"We represent a myriad of products, and we put in what we believe to be the best products for the installation and the site, not what we happen to sell," Bauer said.
Bauer spoke passionately about America's energy problem, repeating several time that "we just use way too much energy -- we must use less energy." He also said that generating electricity from fossil fuels is only 30 percent efficient, while solar photovoltaics are 90 percent efficient in terms of the materials they use.
Bauer said that at his home, he's cut his usage from 800 to 1,000 kilowatt hours a month to 300 -- of which 200 will soon be supplied by a new solar photovoltaic system. How has he cut his use? Flourescent bulbs, energy-efficient appliances, motion detecting light switches and other efficiency measures.
There are also big projects -- like the largest solar and geothermal heat project in the Midwest, which is heating four acres of greenhouses in Portage.
More at www.bauerpower.com.
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Late in the afternoon I headed for Traverse City, where I'm meeting with companies Friday. I'm staying at the downtown Holiday Inn, with a spectacular beach (yay! and it's 77 degrees!) but a remarkably poky wireless Internet system (boo! just 170k download on speedtest.net!).
I'm also continuing to love the Chevy Tahoe Hybrid -- 21 mpg on the trip so far in this beautiful behemoth. A few minor quibbles, and I'll get to those later. Talk to you Monday!
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