My passion for Michigan and the birth of Brand:Detroit
A little known fact: I was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1965, when the auto industry was booming and my dad was a member of Ford’s vaunted Finance Department. This was not, however, the place where I grew up. My time here was cut short by my father’s career moves, which took us to Boston, Washington, D.C., Rochester, NY and Chicago, before I finally landed at The University of Michigan in 1983. This is when life really began.
I followed my sister, Ellen, to Ann Arbor, who got her second degree from Michigan during my time as an undergraduate. It was around this time, only six weeks before graduating and heading off to my Wall Street job in New York City, that I met my best friend, the love of my life, the mother of our children, and also a very cute waitress at Rick’s that mid-March evening in 1987, Carin.
It was this plus my time at Michigan that changed everything. New-found esteem. Intellectual stimulation. The opportunity to start a new phase of life with a tabula rasa, with no baggage, no assumptions, just come-as-you are. It was more refreshing and exciting than I could have possibly imagined, and it set me on a course to meet people, take risks, stretch myself, and to become a person that seemed out of reach before my time in Ann Arbor. This is but one reason why my feelings for Michigan are so strong, but as I grew up, matured and had the luxury of becoming more externally focused additional reasons came to light.
Because of hard work, privilege and a healthy dose of luck, Carin and I have generated enough resources to dream beyond ourselves and to think about the impact we can have on others and on the world. For Carin this has taken her into the field of clinical psychology, where her knowledge, leadership, skill and heart has propelled her into leadership positions at a range of organizations from Greenwich Village Little League to Athlete Ally to The University of Michigan’s Marsal School of Education and more. She is a driver of mental health services within Michigan’s Athletics Department, and is deeply involved in our work at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine. She is an ally and an advocate who has leveraged her time and money to have a massive positive influence on the organizations where she has set her sights, and this is just the beginning. I couldn’t be more proud of her passion, engagement and impact.
My interests have generally fallen into areas where my business knowledge and experiences intersect with social mission. With respect to Michigan, I have long sat on the Advisory Boards of the College of Engineering and the Ross School of Business, and previously sat on the Board of the School of Information for six years. Our giving in these areas has focused on access and opportunity, from offering stipends for students seeking unpaid or low paid Summer internships with nonprofits, to extending our entry-level Robotics curriculum to students from HBCUs to scholarships for students from underprivileged backgrounds.
I also have had a focus on supporting affordable housing for more than a decade, investing in neighborhoods spanning East LA to Aurora, Colorado to Brooklyn, NY — and finally to Detroit. It was co-founding the Detroit-based affordable housing business, Greatwater Opportunity Capital, almost seven years ago that kindled the intense desire to be part of Detroit’s rebirth after more than five decades of decline, borne of racial tensions, offshoring, corruption and, mercilessly, the Global Financial Crisis and subsequent bankruptcy in 2013.
This once great city is the place where my my father got his start, my parents sunk down roots and where my sister and I were born. And less than 50 miles away, in Ann Arbor, is where my life metaphorically got its start and where I have deep emotional ties, a network of friends and significant engagement with The (Leaders and Best at the) University of Michigan. A new story for Detroit just had to be written, and I decided that I wanted to be a part of that story. Enter Brand:Detroit.
One of my co-founders at Greatwater, Jon Opdyke, had a similar dream. Jon was born and raised in the Detroit area, has two degrees from Michigan, and started a pioneering company in the performance marketing space called HookLogic (which was sold to Criteo for $250m). Besides Greatwater, Jon has been an active angel investor and has networked extensively across the Detroit startup, real estate and food communities. It was this perspective and enthusiasm that led him and me to discuss our “master plan” of being engines of not only affordable housing in Detroit that involved both rejuvenating existing neighborhoods and constructing infill to bridge existing communities (via Greatwater Homes), but to invest in and create new businesses within the City that supplied good jobs, exciting products and great places for people to eat and play. Then include all the work that we’re both doing with University of Michigan through the School at Marygrove, the Center of Innovation and my work on the President’s Advisory Group, you can see that our passion for the mission is real.
Our first move was to partner with the amazing restaurant visionary and Detroit-based entrepreneur Ping Ho, Top Chef Sara Welch and the amazing Marrow team. After becoming partners in Marrow and The Royce, Jon, Ping and I formulated even bigger ideas. We decided to start a meat business leveraging Marrow’s brand, ethos and quality, Marrow Detroit Provisions (MDP), that has direct relationships with farmers across the Great Lakes Region that use ethical, sustainable practices. Because this didn’t seem quite bold enough, we decided to buy and renovate a historic building in Detroit’s Eastern Market, 2442 Riopelle, where we are constructing the Marrow Detroit Provisions butcher and retail shop, as well as a Marrow restaurant and event space. Exciting!
Through this process of going deep with Ping on all things food in the area, as well as building relationships with like-minded people across the Detroit ecosystem, we started to see opportunities to partner with amazing founders building compelling products but who struggled to scale. It was then that a light bulb went off and we started to dream even bigger about connecting the dots among real estate, food, consumer products and culture, observing that Detroit had so many amazing people and ideas but that they could use a catalyst for connection. This became the germ of the idea for Brand:Detroit.
One thing Jon and I were missing: someone young, smart, creative, energetic, a foodie, in tune with today’s art and music culture and a consummate networker and relationship builder. Might we know anyone like this? Enter my son and our partner, Andrew. Also a fellow Michigan grad with a degree in Informatics and Entrepreneurship, Andrew spent three years working in data science as a product manger at the machine learning company DataRobot, a year working in web3 venture investing at Velvet Sea Ventures and a year working with me and his brother Ethan on Eberg Capital. Andrew has the perfect combination of attributes to drive value to our businesses and the Detroit ecosystem: technical; strategic; empathetic; energetic; and a true lover of people. Andrew already works closely with Ping and the MDP team, Jason LaValla and the Casamara Club team (our second Brand:Detroit investment after MDP) and has built a suite of relationships that is already helping to connect-the-dots across our disparate but related interests.
It is this sense of hopefulness, excitement and joy that we bring to Brand:Detroit. Part fund, part studio, we envision supporting and seeding Detroit-based businesses in the consumer products and hospitality spaces, creating a set of shared services and a supportive ecosystem that can help accelerate the City’s emergence as THE place for young people and families to pursue their dreams in a vibrant, fun, affordable, growing, climate-favorable environment. There is a lot more to come, but I did want to share a bit about our vision and plans for the future. Because it’s just so exciting. And let me close with Let’s Go Tigers and Let’s Go Lions! #detroitstrong
