Jordan Eckstein, Ian Sabbag and Brian Shepanek were working in digital marketing five years ago when the trio of recently graduated University of Michigan students stumbled upon a business idea: centralizing happy hour specials on the web. That idea launched DrankBank, an Internet startup that helps people find the best happy hour in their city. It started in Ann Arbor in 2011 and has grown to include major cities across North America from Portland to Chapel Hill. All of these dozens of cities shared one thing in common. "The happy hour information wasn't available," Sabbag says. "It wasn't easy to find." Most of the time people go to happy hours at bars they like to frequent or ones friends mention in passing. There wasn't a real option to find new ones outside of that person's regular orbit. DrankBank does that by collecting and centralizing happy hour information for bars and breweries across several major metropolitan areas. DrankBank has grown about 20-30 percent each year since its launch. The number of visitors has increased each month since its launch. The DrankBank team wants to grow it further by collaborating with some major alcohol brands to expand its reach and sharpen its offerings to users. Despite all of this growth, DrankBank is still an offshoot of the trio's digital marketing firm, Handprint Digital. The downtown Ann Arbor-based company calls an office in Nickels Arcade above Comet Coffee home. However, Eckstein, Sabbag and Shepanek believe they can turn DrankBank into its own standalone business in the not-too-distant future via its current growth curve. "We're profitable because we have a low-cost model," Eckstein says. "We want to make it into an viable business in the long run." Source: Jordan Eckstein and Ian Sabbag, co-founders of DrankBank Writer: Jon Zemke

For a land-locked city in the middle of the continent it may come as some surprise that Ann Arbor has been ranked the top swim city in the U.S. not once, but two years in a row. Concentrate looks into how a college town known for its football is making big waves in the pool.

There is good news for Spencer, a new restaurant in Ann Arbor, and its future customers. The eatery recently surpassed its crowdfunding goal of $30,000 with about a week to spare. The restaurant and cheese bar is also set to open its doors for lunch service on Wednesday. "That gets us going and gets people in the door," says Steven Hall, co-owner of Spencer. Hall and Abby Olitzky, they are recently engaged, started experimenting with restauranting a few years ago. They gained some recognition with a pop-up called Central Provisions. They switched the name to Spencer last year because another restaurant in Maine opened with the name Central Provisions. Spencer is set to open in downtown Ann Arbor at 113 E Liberty in a 1,200 square foot space that sits 50 people. They are opening with lunch service first to start generating some revenue. The liquor license approval is a little ways behind but should be done by the end of this fall. Hall and Olitzky launched a crowdfunding campaign to help put this all together with a goal of raising $30,000. Its now at $32,000 with six days left as of Tuesday afternoon. Hall points out people can still give to help offset the administrative costs Kickstarter charges and other things and still claim the prizes for contributing. More importantly it helps with exposure. "Every person who gives is one more person that is reading about us," Hall says. Source: Steven Hall, co-owner of Spencer Writer: Jon Zemke

Akadeum Life Sciences has landed seven figures worth of seed capital thanks to recently announced $1 million seed round for the Ann Arbor-based life sciences startup. "It will help us build out our team," says Brandon McNaughton, CEO of Akadeum Life Sciences. The 1-year-old startup spun out of the University of Michigan by developing a platform that helps researchers prepare research and diagnostic samples faster and more efficiently. The buoyancy-activated cell sorting technology uses tiny floating spheres, which Akadeum is describing as "microbubbles," to acquire target cells from biological samples. Check out a video describing it here. "Our product goes into biological samples, like blood, and pulls out specific cells to improve research diagnostics," McNaughton says. "We do that using microbubbles." Akadeum Life Sciences raised $150,000 from Michigan eLab, an Ann Arbor-based venture capital firm, last year to kick start development. Michigan eLab led this latest $1 million seed round. Detroit Innovate, Invest Michigan, and University of Michigan MINTS also participated in the round. Akadeum Life Sciences plans to raise a Series A next year. Michigan eLab has pushed Akadeum Life Sciences to adapt lean startup methods, which is not normal practices for life sciences startups. That means Akadeum Life Sciences iteratively built its products to meet the needs of its users, working directly with them to develop products that address their specific problems. The startup is currently selling its technology to pharmaceutical and biotech firms, along with teams from research universities. Akadeum Life Sciences currently employs four people, but McNaughton expects that number to grow over the next year. The startup plans to build out its sales and business development team as it grows. Source: Brandon McNaughton, CEO of Akadeum Life Sciences Writer: Jon Zemke

UM football coach Jim Harbaugh will be paid $7 million this year. Nearly 7000 other UM employees will earn between $30,000 and $40,000 - roughly half the median household income rate for Ann Arbor. Concentrate looks at what those salaries mean in a city that scores high on livability but low on affordability.

There is always a war between what is safe and what is efficient, what is best and what is affordable. So, how does the average citizen confront planning decisions that are skewed in favor of one over the other? Understanding the rhetorical landscape helps. Excerpt: "Engineers commonly play off budget and safety against each other, as if they are two dependent variables on a sliding scale. You can spend more and get more safety or you can spend less and get less safety….the choice is yours. ... The notion that we are not able to design streets that are safe unless we have bloated budgets is false. That it is widely believed within the engineering profession anyway reveals a lack of innovation and a certain level of myopic comfort engineers wrongly enjoy. Read the rest here.

It's pretty well known that Volkswagen tried to pull a fast one with its emissions-cheating software. What's less known is that it wasn't regulators who discovered this massive act of corporate fraud but rather a pair of engineers working at a non-profit lab with local roots. Excerpt: "Peter Mock of Berlin, Germany, and John German of Ann Arbor, Michigan, work for the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT). The organization’s mission as stated at the ICCT website is to “provide first-rate, unbiased research and technical and scientific analysis to environmental regulators.” Mock became suspicious when test results on diesel-powered vehicles in Europe were inconsistent. The tests were intended to convince European environmental regulators to loosen restrictions on the sale of diesel cars by verifying claims that their engines ran on “clean diesel.” Two of the models tested – the Volkswagen Jetta and Passat – passed emissions tests in the lab, but were still emitting unacceptably high levels of pollutants under real-world driving conditions. Since US clean air standards are higher than those in the EU, Mock contacted his American colleague. Would identical testing on vehicles made for the US market produce the same results?" Read the rest here.

Building single-family home sub-divisions is nothing new in the Ann Arbor area. Building one inside the loop of freeways that make up the city's defacto borders is rare. Ann Arbor Builders is working to pull off the development with its Banyan Court project. The custom-home building firm plans to turn a nearly 3-acre lot on the city's southwest side into a 10-home sub-division over the next year. The lot, located on South Maple Road between Jade Court and Country Village Court, used to house an old ranch house that is now razed. "There aren't too many parcels like this left," says Alex de Parry, developer of Banyan Court. Ann Arbor Builders plans to build a cul-de-sac straight back from the road and then build the 10 single-family houses off of that street, which will be named Banyan Court. The houses will range in size from a 1,600-square-foot ranch to a 2,200-square-foot two-story house. All of them will be made in a craftsman-style architecture, which de Parry says will match the surrounding area. "We try to build according to what is on either side," de Parry says. "That's what we did here. We want to blend into the neighborhood, not stand out." Ann Arbor Builders plans to sell the houses for $350,00 to $450,000 each. It has already taken a couple of reservations for them and will build them out to for individual buyers as they put deposits down. Plans call for construction to take about a year starting next spring as long as the city signs off on the planned-unit development. "We hope to have approval by January," de Parry says. Source: Alex de Parry, developer of Banyan Court Writer: Jon Zemke

Soon web surfers will be able to go to the website for the Library of Congress and click on the retail catalog for its e-commerce platform. They'll be able look for the work of re:group, but perhaps can't find the products from the downtown Ann Arbor-based firm at first glance? They will be able to take a step back and look at the whole catalog. Then they can can see it. The 12-year-old digital marketing agency recently created the online retail catalog for the Library of Congress, which should go live later this fall. Its part of a bump in work from some big names, which include Taubman, the global retail development firm based in metro Detroit. The Tilted Kilt, a national restaurant franchisee, also named re:group as its agency of record. That work has added up to a 5 percent bump in revenues for re:group, which has allowed the company to hire four people in the last year, expanding its staff to 34 employees. "We'd like to grow 10 percent," says Carey Jernigan, vice president of development for re:group. "It's a little more than we did last year but we don't want to grow too rapidly. We don't want to disrupt the service we are giving our clients." Much of that growth has come from referrals. It is also coming from re:group's work with franchise businesses. It has steadily grown its business bringing on more and more franchisee clients, like the Tilted Kilt. That is why it's continuing to host a quarterly conference, Franchise Business Update, for franchises in Ann Arbor with the next one happening next week in downtown. Source: Carey Jernigan, vice president of development for re:group Writer: Jon Zemke Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

As more people move to cities, how can rapidly developing neighborhoods tackle parking challenges without gobbling up valuable urban space for off-street lots?