Business Incubator Series: Ross Sanders, Bizdom U – Detroit, Michigan and Cleveland, Ohio (Part 7)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Praveen Karoshi

Ross: Dave Bing was in here [at Bizdom U]. He is now the mayor of Detroit, but he is a very successful businessman, founder of Bing Steel [and a retired professional basketball player]. He came in and he talked to our entrepreneurs.

We have angel investors come in and talk to entrepreneurs about things they are looking for. So, we try to involve the entire community in helping us out. While Dan Gilbert gives us a ton of assistance, it is nice that other community members pitch in, and this is a whole community trying to fast-track entrepreneurship in the city of Detroit versus just Bizdom U, versus just Dan Gilbert’s family of companies. We are really try to make it a community experience.

Irina: Do you have any special curriculum that you use to teach entrepreneurs?

Ross: Yes, we do, but it is really not in a lecture format. It is in a format that really involves the entrepreneurs developing their businesses. There is a lot of research and things they have to do, but, yes, there is a structured curriculum.

As far as the training is concerned, we try to stay away from lectures and books. I mean, they do have to read some books, but not that many.

And we try to do as many trainings events as we can, practical training events. For example, in sales, we didn’t have them read a book and take a test about sales. What we did was get coaching in sales. They had coaching from one of the heads of the sales organizations within the Dan Gilbert family of the companies who came in and did the sales training.

Then, we sent them up to a mall over the weekend to sell products in the mall. When they came back, we did more coaching in sales over the phone, and we had them do B2B sales. We try to do these live sales events as much as possible so that they can learn what it means to be on the front lines, selling, so that they can experience it for themselves. We try to do that as much as possible.

We send them to conferences that may have something to do with their businesses and try to get them out there, so that they can understand the business and the market they are going into.

Irina: Conferences outside of Detroit?

Ross: Sure. For example, the training company that I was telling you about, [Launch Learning Group], they went to a conference that was focused on information technology in training environments, on the newest technologies that training companies are using to train adult learners effectively.

[At these conferences], they can learn things, hook up with different people in the industry, and try to understand what they are getting into.

Irina: When you send them to the conferences, do you pay their expenses?

Ross: Yes, we do.

Irina: What are your metrics for success?

Ross: We track how many people have launched businesses. We have 12 businesses launched, 12 or 13 if you take into account people who haven’t taken  funding.

We look at the jobs created from those. We look at outside investments rates.  These businesses are in their early stages. Almost all of them are launched within the past year. So, none of them have huge revenue numbers or huge number of employees. That takes time in the startup world. We are not there yet, but those are the metrics we look at now and will continue to look at.

Irina: So, you launched 12 companies since 2007.

Ross: Yes, we have 12, and the reason for that is, you should know, we have modified the program over time. The program used to be  a two-year program. We shortened it because we thought the entrepreneurs didn’t want to go through the entire two years developing their business ideas; and business ideas get old in those two years. For a variety of reasons we changed the program. The past couple of sessions have been only four months long.

It is really 18 months of training and six months of business launch. But as I said, we tweaked the program. We haven’t made that many revisions to the past couple of sessions. As a startup [ourselves], we had to learn what works and make adjustments and modifications to the program, and that is what we have done.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Business Incubator Series: Ross Sanders, Bizdom U - Detroit, Michigan and Cleveland, Ohio
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