Expert Panel: Scaling Marketing with your Startup

Showcase Presentation

Sasha Kolodkin, Founder and CEO of Affirmative and a University of Michigan Ross School of Business MBA candidate, along with Matt Liu, also a University of Michigan MBA candidate and the Co-Founder of Affirmative, will reprise their winning investor presentation (the Seigle Impact Track First Place Award at the 2024 Michigan Business Challenge, hosted and managed by the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies) at the NEF March 2024 forum meeting. The mission of Affirmative is to democratize health care navigation services for every American who wants them, starting with 1.9 million transgender adults. Striving to combine human expertise and trust with automated efficiency, Affirmative is currently offering care navigation directly to members of the public as it develops its product.

One Year After: Claire Smith and Tenera Grains

One year after completing her NEF coaching and making her showcase investor presentation at a NEF forum, Claire Smith, Founder and CEO of Tenera Grains, will return and update us on her journey. She will share that the life of an entrepreneur is never a straight line. There are always twists and turns, where an entrepreneur has to acknowledge what is working and what is not and then make pivots. Claire will talk about the next chapter of Tenera Grains (and of Claire Smith!), which is a book still being written.

Expert Panel: How Does Marketing Scale with Your Startup?

As a startup company evolves over time from its first customers to its first hundreds of customers to having customers at scale, the marketing needs and wants for the company also change. This panel will explore the different objectives and tactics for those various stages of growth. April Christian-Davis, President of Breakout Marketing Group, will be our moderator.

Panelists

MariAnn Apley, Coordinator, Entrepreneurship Center at Washtenaw Community College. MariAnn is a result-oriented marketing strategist and data storyteller with a proven ability to develop and execute impactful campaigns tailored to diverse organizational objectives. She previously served as Vice President of Socratic Technologies, San Francisco, CA, worked in Strategic Planning for General Motors, and recently served as Chief Marketing Officer for a food start-up. MariAnn has a BA from the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University and a MA in advertising research from MSU’s School of Communication Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Nadia Boutaoui, Ph.D., EMBA-H , Founder & CEO at nanonares. Dr. Boutaoui’s resume includes a Ph.D. in genetics, an Executive MBA in healthcare, and specialized training in tech innovation and entrepreneurship, and for over 15 years, she has done research on respiratory diseases at renowned Ivy League institutions like Harvard and led a genomics lab at the University of Pittsburgh. She has authored or co-authored 34 peer-reviewed research publications in top journals, including Nature Genetics.

Bill Taylor, CMO at Reveel. With 30-plus years of innovative marketing results as a CMO and VP of Sales, has held executive positions in marketing, product management, sales, and strategic operations for SaaS information technology companies ranging from early stage to mid-market. Bill also served as a Strategy Executive for the Rational Software brand of IBM.

Dr. Shiri Vivek, Professor, Marketing and Supply Chain Management at Eastern Michigan University. Dr. Vivek has been using her inter-disciplinary education research to help various businesses improve their operational capabilities, identify system inefficiencies and bottlenecks, map business processes, and engage partners in the supply chain. As the Executive Director of EMUiNVENT, Shiri is heavily involved in developing an invention education curriculum, teaching, and researching invention education.

Networking

Come join us in person to enjoy food and drink and conversation with members of the local startup community.

Remote Viewing

Portions of this meeting will also be available for viewing online via Zoom. For remote viewing, select an Online Ticket when registering via Eventbrite once the link becomes available.