Source: Danny Veri, Livonia Builders Writer: Natalie Burg

Chelsea artist Lindsey Dahl loves nature and vibrant colors. Combining the two has become her trademark style as a painter. Now, with her new Wild Feather Studio, she has the opportunity to create more and larger works, and the public will have the chance to engage with her work as well.  "There's a lot of foot traffic in Chelsea during the summer, especially during Sounds & Sights on Thursday Nights and the summer festival," says Dahl. "In my new space, I hope to gain more great collectors and clients, as I'm always game for working on custom commissioned pieces." Wild Feather Studio is above Smokehouse 52 BBQ on Main St. in Chelsea. Dahl moved into the space at the beginning of March, and will soon have signage available to direct people to the studio to see her work.  "Using non-typical colors in my paintings to show my subjects is so much fun," Dahl says. "Working in this kind of style never gets boring, and I'm constantly learning about color. I think my paintings are very eye-catching, which is helpful to an emerging artist who's trying to get noticed." Dahl studied fine art at Eastern Michigan University with a focus on painting. She works with acrylics, as well as spray paints, fabric paint and acrylic mediums. Some of her work also incorporates metal, beads and feathers, and she works with both canvas and barn wood. Source: Lindsey Dahl, Wild Feather Studio Writer: Natalie Burg

Backyard Brains has come a long way since its inception in 2010. Back then it was a side project of a couple of neuroscientists looking to sell a few insect neuroscience kits to teach grade-school students how the brain works. Today it is a multi-national corporation selling those kits on three continents. The Ann Arbor-based company expanded into South America last year focusing on the Chilean education market. It has since cemented its presence there and is now expanding into Africa, making sales in Nigeria, Uganda, Morocco and Ethiopia, among other nations. "We're now in 60 countries," says Tim Marzullo, co-founder of Backyard Brains. "That's pretty exciting." Marzullo and Greg Gage launched Backyard Brains with its RoboRoach product. The testing kit enables students to control insects via antennas. Its flagship product is SpiderBox, a bioamplifier that allows users to hear and see spikes of neurons in invertebrates. Backyard Brains sales of these products have increased an average of 5 percent a month over the last year. Revenue spiked to $70,000 last November (the business’ busy season and when it struck a partnership with Harvard) and reached $40,000 in February, which was still up considerably from a year. International sales, especially in Chile, are helping drive the company's growth. "It (the Chilean market) is where Backyard Brains was three years ago," Marzullo says. "We're making sales there every month now." The growth has allowed Backyard Brains to add staff. It has hired three people (an engineer, an accountant and a designer) in the U.S. over the last year, expanding its staff to six full-time employees and six part-timers. It also employs one full-time person and three part-timers in Chile. Source: Tim Marzullo, co-founder of Backyard Brains Writer: Jon Zemke Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Olark is moving to bigger digs in downtown Ann Arbor as the spring officially begins in Michigan. The software startup creates a messaging platform so businesses and their customers can connect online faster and with fewer headaches. It was launched in Ann Arbor and is upgrading its space from 1,000 square foot office to a 1,500-square-foot office with much better conference rooms at 205.5 S Main St. "We were playing musical chairs with our conference rooms," says Zach Steindler, chief olarchitect at Olark. "One person would step out and another would go in." Conference room space is critical to Olark because the startup's employee base is becoming more remote-based. Olark has gone from a staff of 12 people at the beginning of 2013 to 25 today. It has two primary offices in Ann Arbor and Silicon Valley where half of its employees work. The other half work remotely around the world. Olark has hired three people so far this year. It also has four open positions in office administration, web development, senior UIX engineer and senior mobile engineer. More info about those openings can be found here. "We're all excited to keep growing our organization," says Steindler, who is also one of the organizers of A2 New Tech Meetup. "We might slow down a little bit, but we're definitely excited to keep growing." Olark has bootstrapped its way to this point. It hasn’t accepted any sort of seed capital from outside angel investors or venture capitalists and it doesn’t plan to anytime soon. "All of our growth comes from our customers," Steindler says. "We're very happy to continue growing our company organically." Source: Zach Steindler, chief olarchitect at Olark Writer: Jon Zemke Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

IROA Technologies, formerly known as NextGen Metabolics, has sent its first test kits to market this year as the Ann Arbor-based firm hits few early milestones in 2014. The life sciences startup released its first two testing kits for yeast and bacteria and is getting ready to release another testing kit this quarter. IROA Technologies testing kits help identify key metabolites that can be used to diagnose diseases, such as cancer in samples including blood and urine. The technology cuts through the clutter of information from the analysis of blood or other bodily fluids and tissues to find the critical metabolites that relate to disease and illness, making for shorter diagnosis times. "Folks can use them to study any sort of mammalian system," says Felice de Jonge, CEO of IROA Technologies. "You can use them to diagnose disease so you can see if a disease is metabolically different from a control sample." IROA Technologies landed a Series A worth more than $1 million last year. Its core team of two people have used that seed capital to finish development of the test kits and plans to market them aggressively throughout this year. IROA Technologies has also brought on Nicolas Barthelemy as a member of the startup's board of directors. Barthelemy held various executive positions at Life Technologies for nine years, including serving as President of the $850 million Cell Systems Division and finally Chief Commercial Officer. "He has a lot of commercial expertise on cell manufacturing and life sciences in general," de Jonge says. "He knows how to grow life sciences companies." Source: Felice de Jonge, CEO of IROA Technologies Writer: Jon Zemke Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.

Just out: Inc. magazine's list of companies that have consistently upped their headcounts every year, recession or not. Custom T-shirt and apparel maker Underground Printing is one of a tiny percentage of U.S. mid-market companies that consistently hired. Excerpt: "We began the Build 100 project by collecting  data  on more than 100,000 U.S. mid-market companies (those with 85 to 999 employees). We then looked at how many increased head count in every year from 2007 to 2012. Remarkably, fewer than 1.5 percent of the companies met that standard...We focused on head count rather than revenue because we found that increased hiring is more predictive of future sustained growth, and that’s what this project is all about." More here. 

Employment sector trends are mapped out in this interesting article that forecasts where the nation's plum jobs will be. Good job growth is predicted for the Ann Arbor area, which will also compare very favorably against the rest of the nation in creative-class jobs.  Excerpt: "...Between 2012 and 2022, the U.S. will add 15.6 million new jobs, according to BLS projections, with the overall workforce growing by 10.8 percent from 145 to 161 million. Of these, 5.6 million will be high-wage, creative class positions. The creative class will grow by 12.5 percent, the highest rate of all groups.   Forty-five percent of metros (179) will experience employment growth greater than the national average of 10.8 percent. The darkest blue areas are along the East Coast, in parts of Florida, and in the energy-driven metros of Texas and the Midwest. The metros that will add jobs at the fastest rate include mainly smaller metros like Duluth, Minnesota; McAllen, Texas; and Greenville, North Carolina. College towns like Morgantown, West Virginia; Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and Ann Arbor, Michigan are also projected to experience a relatively high rate of job growth." More here. 

Source: Jawad Seif, Damas Restaurant Writer: Natalie Burg