Let SBAM help you nominate your company for Michigan Celebrates Small Business awards
September 25, 2015
Michigan Celebrates Small Business, the state’s premier event for recognizing outstanding entrepreneurs and innovation, is now accepting nominations for Michigan 50 Companies to Watch and the Small Business Innovation Award. Winners will be recognized May 5, 2016, at the Michigan Celebrates Small Business gala at the Lansing Center.
It’s a fairly straightforward process to self-nominate your company for Michigan 50 Companies to Watch, or your innovative product/service for the Small Business Innovation Award. But if you would like to offload some of the paperwork, SBAM is standing by to help guide you through the process.
Just email your name, business name and contact information to us and we’ll contact you to get the ball rolling. In the meantime contact Lori Birman with questions.
Eligibility Criteria for Michigan 50 Companies to Watch
- Be a privately held commercial enterprise (not a nonprofit, not publicly traded, not a subsidiary or division of another company) and has not received the award in the past
- Be past the startup stage and facing issues of growth, not survival
- Employ 6-99 full-time equivalent (FTE) W2 employees which includes the owner – to translate all part-time employees into FTE divide the total hours of those employees by 2,000
- Have between $750,000 and $50M in annual revenue OR working capital from investors or grants
- Be headquartered in Michigan
- Demonstrate the intent and capacity to grow based on:
Employee or sales growth
Exhibit a sustainable competitive advantage
Other notable successes
Eligibility Criteria for the Small Business Innovation Award
- the product or service innovation must have been developed by the applicant and owned by applicant or company applicant works for
- the associated company must have 500 or fewer employees
- the innovation earned revenue for the first time some time from September 8, 2013 to now
You will be asked to provide a brief description of the following:
- product/service; the marketplace the product or service meets
- evidence of satisfying the market need
- the advantage over similar or previous versions of this product
- how the product benefits Michigan’s economy
- why the product/service is unique