Innovation & Job News

Ann Arbor medical device firms share $61K in microloans

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Ann Arbor

Ann Arbor-based start-ups continue to take the lion's share of financing from the Michigan Microloan Fund, with two of the four firms taking loans in the latest round of financing hailing from Tree Town.

Akervall Technologies and Blaze Medical Devices are both from Ann Arbor and old enough to count their age on one hand. The companies took two of the four microloans worth a combined $122,000. The other loans went to Ellison Corp (Detroit) and Waste Water Heat Transfers Systems (West Bloomfield).

These loans are designed to help young companies meet a milestone, such as finishing a prototype or adding staff. The firms will use the money to pay for the first phase of clinical trials and to develop a marketing campaign. The latter is the strategy for Akervall Technologies, which is trying to make a high-end mouth guard called Protect Dent market ready.

"We realized that if we wanted to make it retail we needed to be visible," says Sassa Akervall, COO of Akervall Technologies, which employs three people and is planning to hire a fourth. "We need to stand out."

Blaze Medical Devices created a system that focuses on quality control and optimization for the blood banking and transfusion industry. It is used to analyze stored blood that will allow clinicians to predict the effectiveness of transfusions by assessing the levels and rates of quality loss during storage for individual units. The microloan will help the company pay for the first clinical trial and hire its first employee on top of its three founding partners.

"This is very important to us," says Michael Tarasev, founder of Blaze Medical Devices.

The state created the microloan fund last year to provide financing to growing start-ups starving for it in the wake of the financial crisis. The $1.2 million fund, which is run by Ann Arbor SPARK, has made dozens of loans to small businesses creating jobs rooted in the new economy. Its success has helped inspire the creation of similar microloan funds across Metro Detroit, including the First Step Fund in TechTown and others in Oakland County as well as the OU INCubator.

Source: Ann Arbor SPARK, Sassa Akervall, COO of Akervall and Michael Tarasev, founder of Blaze Medical Devices
Writer: Jon Zemke

Innovation & Job News

Ann Arbor medical device firms share $61K in microloans

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