The three-night event on May 29-31 features one-on-one coaching from NewME experts, and a two-part workshop titled “The Art of the Pitch” that will provide the secrets to a perfect pitch and standing out among other founders. The weekend culminates with “Demo Day,” a night where startups will network with key players in Detroit’s tech scene, special guests from Silicon Valley, and ultimately pitch their idea to a panel of judges that consists of local and Silicon Valley investors.

The NewME Detroit PopUp will be hosted at TechTown Detroit, a collaborative workspace that fosters business and seeks to accelerate the entrepreneurial community in Detroit.

Founders will network and pitch their ideas on Demo Day at Wayne State’s Welcome Center Auditorium, just blocks from where they will spend the weekend perfecting their idea.

PopUp participants will pitch to win a potential slot a future session of NewME Accelerator in San Francisco and a prize pack valued at approximately $45,000 from partners like Google, Rackspace, Microsoft, ZenDesk and more.

The NewME Detroit PopUp accelerator is $99 per participant, but we want to ensure young local entrepreneurs take advantage of this amazing opportunity. Interested entrepreneurs can register here and use the code “IAmYoung” to receive a 20% off discount!

About NewME: Launched in June 2011, NewME is an immersive entrepreneurial experience that takes startup founders to the next level. We have supported and accelerated 31 companies that have raised over $5.9 million in capital funding. We accelerate risk-taking, game-changing, and troublemaking entrepreneurs around the world through our 12-week program based in San Francisco and PopUp series among additional programs and products. NewME’s mission is to be a catalyst to inclusiveness for technology entrepreneurs by changing the status quo and making Silicon Valley accessible.

The post Last Chance To Apply For NewMe Accelerator’s Detroit PopUp! (discount inside) appeared first on I Am Young Detroit 2.0.

“Detroit Pop’s old stomping grounds is the latest venue to offer Pop-up retail space and services for emerging entrepreneurs.

D: hive describes Pilot as “an ongoing retail pop-up project that seeks to bring creative and engaging businesses to D:hive’s interior white-box space. Pilot will provide selected retail and service entrepreneurs with two months of rent-free space within D:hive’s welcome center at 1253 Woodward. This is an exciting opportunity open to all entrepreneurs to test their brick and mortar potential in a prime location downtown”.

Program participants get two months of free space, marketing and graphic design support, mentorship, and build out and event planning support.

The first pop-up kicks off with Pot & Box. Interested applicants can find more info here“.

 

A few weeks ago we shared Livernois Community Storefront’s pop-up plans on Detroit’s Westside. We’re seeing a trend here!

The post D:hive Announces “Pilot” Pop-Up Retail Program appeared first on I Am Young Detroit 2.0.

I can’t thank you enough for all of the support that we’ve received over the past four years, and am excited to share some exciting new projects I Am Young America/Detroit is working on. It’s taken us about that long, but we finally have a clear vision of what we’d like to accomplish long-term and how we’ll do it…

Read the full Spring 2013 Quarterly Newsletter here.

I Am Young America

“I Am Young America is a social venture that promotes entrepreneurship as a means to combat youth unemployment and boost economic impact in cities. Our mission is to help revitalize American cities by empowering young entrepreneurs to launch businesses, and mobilize citizens everywhere to champion them.”

…and we’re growing! Building off the success of our work in Detroit, I Am Young America is announcing an expansion to three new cities. We’ll kick off the expansion with Chicago this year. The new city sites will launch in beta, featuring stories of young entrepreneurs, an active blog, and localized IAY Labs (see below). We’re currently looking for a community manager so tell your Chi-town friends!

IAY Labs

Our mission of empowering young entrepreneurs/mobilizing citizens to champion them combined with our goal of becoming a self-sustaining venture has led us to develop some promising experimental applications. IAY Labs is our new umbrella that will cover them.

We began last summer with Cityspotters, our next-gen nomination process where users ‘spot’ young citizen entrepreneurs and are rewarded with local rewards that support them.

Next, we’ll launch Urbassist beta, a digital concierge service (our “questions” feature reimagined) that matches users with local influencers/experts (entrepreneurs!) to help answer their toughest questions.

You can learn more about the concept by watching our video on StartGarden and leave your feedback/endorsement if you feel so inclined! Vote/Endorse us by noon on Thursday, May 2nd to help increase our chances of taking home 5k. We hope to raise the startup funds for beta by this summer and launch shortly after.

Press

Last but not least, we made the pages of a national publication this month! I Am Young Detroit has a brief mention in the May issue of Fast Company! You can view the story online.

More excitement to come this summer, can’t wait to hear from you.

Have a fantastic week!

Margarita, Founder
I Am Young America

The post I Am Young Detroit Announces Expansion appeared first on I Am Young Detroit 2.0.

To celebrate the group is holding a “Light Up Livernois” event scheduled to take place Friday May 31st, 6pm-10pm and Saturday, June 1st, 1am-6pm at 19410 Livernois Avenue.  The event will feature music, theater, fashion, art, food and more. For more info on the project and the event check out the official facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/LivernoisCommunityStorefront

The post Pop-up Hub ‘Livernois Community Storefront’ to Open on Detroit’s Avenue of Fashion appeared first on I Am Young Detroit 2.0.

Written by Chuck Salters, we hear from IAYD regulars Andy Didorosi & Jerry Paffendorf, Motor City Java House’s Alica and Jon George, and I Am Young Detroit’s own Margarita Barry.

“For people in neighborhoods like Brightmoor, a long-neglected area on the city’s outer edge plagued by high crime and poverty, where humble single-family houses sit alongside graffiti-covered, burned-out shells, the entrepreneurially flush downtown can seem more like a mirage than a real hope. In Brightmoor, just about the best thing that can happen is that a huge hole in the ground appears on your block. The hole means that an abandoned building has been scrapped, demolished–often by the not-for-profit Motor City Blight Busters, a fixture run by the enterprising John George. When Dave Bing became mayor, he vowed to tear down 10,000 empty houses within four years. To date, the city has taken down nearly 7,000. About 45,000 remain.”

Read the full story here.

Source: Fast Company

The post Fast Company Covers Detroit’s Young Entrepreneurial Community appeared first on I Am Young Detroit 2.0.

Upon visiting the site, you’ll see a large spreadsheet filled with grocery stores, number of registers, and the prices of common products. The point of this data and the entire project, is to bring the Detroit food community together in hopes of informing organizations aimed at improving access to healthy foods in the city.

To find out if the city really is a food desert, and to test the ability to find nutritional and healthy food options, the Detroit Food Map will be recording their findings.  Using  Nutrition Environment Measures Study in Stores (NEMS-S), as well as a Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis, the project will specifically focus on healthy food.

If your head is swirling, we’ll explain. NEMS-S observes and measures the availability of nutritional foods based on the number of healthy options, price, and quality. These findings can be seen on the data chart which is available on the site for anyone to check out. GIS is used to study and analyze the areas that this food is available in, hence the map on the website’s homepage and the title of the project.

Who’s behind the project? Alex B. Hill, a self-described “suburban american middle class ‘white’ man in [his] third decade of life,” also behind Detroitography. He obviously loves his maps.

So far, the Detroit Food Map has determined that grocery stores have healthier foods compared to convenience stores (duh!) and that there are more convenience stores near schools than there are grocery stores. As the project continues and more conclusions are compiled, the Detroit Food Map will attempt to shed some light on Detroit’s food access situation.

If you’d like to participate in the project you can apply on their website.

Spotted by: I Am Young Detroit

Sarah Linn

Sarah is a Freelance Writer based out of the Metro Detroit area. She grew up in Detroit before it was considered cool.

  

The post Detroit Food Map Helps Answer the Question: Is Detroit A Food Desert? appeared first on I Am Young Detroit 2.0.

Inquiring minds want to know.

Check it out here.

The post A City So Cool, Even Crate & Barrel Had To Get In On It appeared first on I Am Young Detroit 2.0.

To qualify for this program, you have to be a full-time college student, or a recent graduate from a Michigan university, who’s willing to relocate to Southeast Michigan for the duration of the boot camp. Interested applicants can apply alone, but Launch Detroit highly encourages teams.

During the 10-week boot camp, participants will learn about the ideation phase, acquiring resources, getting first customers, and developing funding strategies.  The curriculum is based off of The Startup Owner’s Manual, a business development guide by serial entrepreneurs Steve Blank and Bob Dorf. In addition to book work, participants will also get a chance to go out and test their hypotheses and ideas on potential customers.

Participants will also have the benefit of business coaches and mentors who will be available to help them during the process.  In addition, there will be weekly workshops led by experienced entrepreneurs and a guest speaker in the technology field.

All of the training and seminars will lead up to a pitch day at the end of the program where individuals and teams will pitch their ideas to experts.  The startups will then be assessed by viability and possibility for additional funding.  At the end of the program, all participants will receive an entrepreneurial stipend of up to $2,500 per individual or $7,500 per team.

The point of Launch Detroit is to create new technology-based companies and to connect talented young people to the city in hopes of retaining them.

Anyone interested can apply here until April 19th.

Sarah Linn

Sarah is a Freelance Writer based out of the Metro Detroit area. She grew up in Detroit before it was considered cool.

  

The post College Students And Recent Grads, Launch Detroit Wants You! appeared first on I Am Young Detroit 2.0.

A hundred people will be chosen to participate in the Detroit ’13 Institute for Social Innovation, the five-day gateway program to StartingBloc. These lucky 100 will get a chance to learn from industry leaders, participate in activities aimed at leadership growth, and expand their personal network through team projects and workshops.

At the end of the program, participants will have all the resources necessary to launch and manage their own projects. In addition, candidates will get to join and network with the StartingBloc community of 1,900 fellows. These fellows come from over 55 countries and over 221 universities. The benefits of being a part of this community include waived application fees and  scholarship opportunities from top graduate programs, connections to pro bono legal teams, financial services, and access to mentors.

Since its beginning in 2005, StartingBloc has helped thousands of young people pursue their dreams and help create change throughout the world. The program chose Detroit as the 2013 institute location because of it’s “entrepreneurial spirit”. While the news may portray Detroit as a destitute and bankrupt city, there are many people dedicated to revitalizing it. StartingBloc recognized that and felt that it embodied their mission to help people build their businesses from the ground up and use them to create change.

Applications for the program are being accepted online now through April 15.

Sarah Linn

Sarah is a Freelance Writer based out of the Metro Detroit area. She grew up in Detroit before it was considered cool.

  

The post Detroit To Host 2013 StartingBloc Institute for Social Innovation appeared first on I Am Young Detroit 2.0.

Overview:

Do you love Chicago? Are you the go-to person when it comes to knowing what the most innovative developments and events are? As the I Am Young America Chicago Community Manager, you’ll be a part-time employee (working out of your or home or anywhere with WIFI) at the helm of a vibrant community of young entrepreneurs and doers in your city. Our Community Managers are driven, self-motivated, charismatic, and organized as they could be doing anything from blogging to representing IAYA in the media.

I Am Young America’s mission is to mobilize the general public to create an ecosystem of recognizing, connecting with, and supporting America’s youngest innovators and changemakers. Our users are encouraged to spot a promising new business or movement led by young citizen doers for a chance to earn points and redeem them to spend with doers previously spotted. Building off a successful pilot in Detroit, IAYA is expanding to three cities, including yours!

We encourage you to visit www.iamyoungdetroit.com to learn more about the initiative and check out what we’ve done in Detroit.

The Role

Reporting to the Publisher, the Community Manager will be a part of the national team of community managers, and will provide community building and engagement strategies for recognizing and supporting the efforts of young entrepreneurs in their cities.

The Community Manager will lead outreach efforts in local communities to mobilize people to spot young entrepreneurs. We are looking for individuals who are well connected, can hit the ground running, assess, plan, and execute.

Responsibilities include:

• - Working 10-15 flexible hours per week
• -Staying abreast of what’s cool and innovative in the city, especially when it comes to under 30-led entrepreneurship and development
• - Marketing outreach. Connecting with the right local organizations and businesses
• -Direct outreach to solicit submissions of stories, nominations and ideas on our CitySpotters app
• -Writing, Editing, and Uploading content daily, manage social media and promote IAYA throughout Chicago
• -Attending networking events to collect stories and engage young entrepreneurs in the community
• -Managing IAYA-Chicago calendar of activities, events, and outcomes
• -Recruiting and managing city bloggers
• -Managing your city’s social media pages

Requirements

The ideal candidate must reside in Chicago and consider yourself a local expert, especially in the entrepreneurship world. Be a social connector: You know everyone, and everyone knows you. You must have a deep personal connection to the entrepreneurship, Young Professional, and Social Innovation community in Chicago and be a high-energy, results-orientated motivator and leader. The successful candidate will have at least 1 year of demonstrated content management, blogging, and/or editing experience and must be computer proficient and experienced with the integration of media content as well as social media messaging on various platforms, including WordPress, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Other requirements include:

• -Comfort and familiarity with all segments of the entrepreneurial, YP, and Social Innovation community in Chicago
• -Familiarity with local nonprofit and community based organizations
• -Disciplined work ethic with keen attention to detail
• -Strong presentation, public speaking, and meeting facilitation skills
• -Strong project management and event planning skills
• -Strong writing, blogging, and editing skills
• -Familiarity with Google Drive, Google Docs, Calendar, and Groups
• -Strong Social Media & Content Management Skills
• -Graphic Editing Experience helpful but not required
• -Photography Experience helpful but not required
• -Passion, integrity and drive!

Apply Below:

Please submit a cover letter note showcasing your writing skills and general personality and style, resume showcasing your relevant experience, and your blog and/or public twitter profile URLS, three sample blog post topics, and three potential young doer features. Pay is monthly stipend determined by level of experience and expertise. Due to the high volume of responses, we unfortunately cannot respond to everyone.

The post Community Manager – I Am Young America (Chicago) appeared first on I Am Young Detroit 2.0.