ANN ARBOR – The Great Lakes Chapter of the MIT Enterprise Forum, UM Dearborn, and Great Lakes Entrepreneur Quest will debut the Savvy Entrepreneur Series Sept. 13, which includes a five-minute Michigan entrepreneur update from MITechNews.Com Editor Mike Brennan.

The series is co-produced with, and hosted by, a number of the region?s leading innovation accelerators and research institutions, the series provides early to mid-stage technology entrepreneurs with guidance on key topics that all start ups must navigate to realize success. Includes great networking opportunities across Dearborn, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Flint, Detroit, Houghton, Traverse City, Midland, and more sites in the future.

Sales: Selling is awfully hard, but everyone has to do it. The anatomy of the first sale, how to position your service/product amongst the competition, how to structure the deal and the hidden risk of the ?trial program.?

We will also have a key note speaker, Minesh Baxi, author of ?30 Day Total Business Makeover,? to share ideas on how small companies can claim leadership positions via low cost social media outlets and early in your business development journey. This will help B2B and B2C opportunities. Nearly everyone is connected to some social media and marketing portal that you should better understand how to leverage.

We will also have a panel of Active Early Stage Investor and Successful Entrepreneur to help answer your hard questions to support your journey. We will also showcase a Michigan entrepreneur on their growth journey.

Our goal is to continually share best practices, best teams, best entrepreneurs, and frequent critical mass networking on key topics that helps high growth entrepreneurs and innovators thrive and accelerate success. We want to help connect many more people interested in the new technology space every month, so we can all help each other FASTER.

Students are free with pre-registration and there are special early registration and membership options across the state ($30 or less depending on your location and membership affiliation). $40 for walk in registration. And special full series pricing. This is a great value for sharing best practices on your business concept and getting the best connections across the state. Pick one of 10 sites around Michigan to attend.

From 5:15PM to 5:30PM there will be a multi-site speed introduction opportunity hosted by the Director of the State?s Largest and Longest Running Business Plan Competition, GLEQ, and an Active Angel Investor. Each participant will be able to introduce your business idea and help needed in 60 seconds or less, then there will be a little Q&A. We will also be sharing the attendee contact info, so you can have follow up discussions. Please arrive around 5PM to help get pointed at this opportunity at each site.

Other sessions in the series include:

October 11 Tuesday –

Intellectual Property: How to protect your precious IP without bankrupting your fledgling enterprise and how to navigate the dreaded NDA with prospective customers and partners.

November 8 Tuesday – Building Great Team: A winning organization is more than the sum of its parts, and a losing one far less. How to recruit, retain, incentivize and inspire employees, advisors, board members and key leaders.

January 31 Tuesday –

ACE 2012: 12th gathering of over 500 active and new entrepreneurs to celebrate and connect

February 21 Tuesday – Angel Investors: What are they looking for, how are they different from venture capitalists and why use them? How do they think about valuation?

April 10 Tuesday – Cash Flow: What is it and how can you maximize it and best practices on how to compensate the executive team to sustain it. Even if you have no cash yet, this is a top priority to understand early and manage well.

May 8 Tuesday – Developing a Milestone Based Capital Raising Plan: Learn how to develop a milestone based realistic fundraising plan that is critical to success for technology-based high growth companies.

June 5 Tuesday ? All Day Program

GLEQ $100K Business Plan Competition Finals and MITEF-MIVCA Entrepreneur-Investor Golf Scramble.

To register, click on:

Click on AlumWeb.MIT.EDU

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