Entrepreneurs Key to Sustainable Economic Growth Throughout the City

Throughout the session, “Energizing Entrepreneurship: Growing the Startup Culture” sponsored by EY, key players in Detroit’s entrepreneurship landscape discussed the ways that entrepreneurs can make a major impact on the communities they serve. Panelists highlighted that entrepreneurship is particularly important to ensuring there are opportunities and jobs in the neighborhoods throughout the city and how entrepreneurs are solving problems both with the solutions they create in their business models, but also on a larger scale with the systemic changes that business growth stimulates.

Moderated by Vickie Thomas, city reporter for WWJ Newsradio AM 950, the panel included: Jim Boyle, senior program officer for the New Economy Initiative and Camille Walker-Banks, executive director of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program at Wayne State University. They emphasized supporting entrepreneurs who have been working hard to sustain a business in Detroit and explained how important training and preparation is to capitalizing on business growth.

Additionally, entrepreneurs Andy Didorosi, founder of The Detroit Bus Company and Niles Heron, founder of MichiganFunders.com, spoke about building solutions and finding the needs that can be solved through innovation and commitment.​