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New Enterprise Forum is pleased to announce that registration is now open for our monthly NEF forum meeting happening on Thursday, March 21. The live portion will kick off at 5:00 p.m. at Ann Arbor SPARK with food, drink and networking, with the online webinar coverage beginning at 5:45 p.m..

The event will feature an expert panel discussion on the topic of “How Does Marketing Scale Up with Your Startup?” This panel will explore why marketing for a startup company needs to change from its first customers to its first hundreds of customers to having customers at scale and, more importantly, how to do all of that effectively and efficiently. Moderated by Barbara Boldt, Principal at Boldt Global, the panelists will be MariAnn Apley, Coordinator of the Entrepreneurship Center at Washtenaw Community College and a teacher at Saginaw Valley State University; Bill Taylor, Chief Marketing Officer at Reveel; and Shiri Vivek, Professor of Marketing and Supply Chain Management at Eastern Michigan University.

We will also have Sasha Kolodkin and Matt Liu, Co-Founders of Affirmative, reprise for us their Seigle Impact Track First Place Award winning showcase presentation from the recent 2024 Michigan Business Challenge, hosted and managed by the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies.

Finally, we have invited back Claire Smith, Founder and CEO of Teffola and Tenera Grains, one year after her NEF showcase investor presentation to 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. Claire will talk about the next chapter of Tenera Grains (and Claire Smith!), which is a book still being written.