On March 5th, Ann Arbor SPARK hosted a MITX Up Event sponsored by Google Ann Arbor. MITX Up events, founded in Boston, match marketing and communication mentors with startups. These “marketing hackathons” put a team of marketers in the same room with a startup in order to help the entrepreneurs to leave with tactical marketing, communication and business development related ideas!
Ann Arbor SPARK invited three startups with marketing challenges to attend the event. The three startups were paired up with anywhere between 5-7 marketers. Each group had a marketing lead that lead the discussions that lasted about two hours.
One entrepreneur expressed that, “in attempting to vocalize our marketing problem we discovered a strategic growth problem, which our panelists voraciously tackled. While we came up with some cursory marketing strategies the majority of the conversations revolved around other issues we face and those discussions bore immediate fruit.”
MITX Up events are beginning to take place all over southeastern Michigan with the first event-taking place at TechTown in Detroit.
