Innovate Marquette SmartZone Receives Grant For Special Project
MARQUETTE, Mich – An Upper Peninsula based company received a grant for $611,000.
Innovate Marquette SmartZone secured a Capital Challenge Grant via the U.S. Economic Development Administration through the Build to Scale program.
The money will be used for the “Make It Marquette Start to Scale” project.
“The money is used to build the fund and the network to fund the education and the outreach to the community. So, the real focus here is the dollars for the platforms. to create the sophisticated platforms to manage it all. the resources needed labor wise, resources to build the entire program and outreach, how it all works, the partnerships, somebody to manage the fund, somebody to manage each one of the elements,” said Joe Thiel, CEO of Innovate Marquette SmartZone. “The dollars of the grant are used for that. Now by having that actual fun here and all that infrastructure around it, that allowed us to connect to other organizations and venture capital, angel investors and large groups of individuals who might want to bring dollars to the area.”
Thiel shared why this grant is so important to Marquette.
“We don’t have that infrastructure here now. In having that infrastructure here, and the outreach and communication to build it professionally, gives us the possibility of being a branch of many other successful hubs of investment,” Thiel said. “It gives the community to come in and share their ideas and their companies in a whole new way where we have a new location here for them to do that and access those dollars.”
For more information about the grant or future projects, visit the link below