{"id":902398,"date":"2026-06-30T05:33:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T05:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/902398\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T05:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T05:33:12","slug":"innovate-marquette-smartzone-releases-fy2025-impact-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/902398\/","title":{"rendered":"Innovate Marquette SmartZone releases FY2025 Impact Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">MARQUETTE, Mich. (WLUC) &#8211; An entrepreneurial support hub brought in more high-tech development, according to its <a href=\"https:\/\/innovatemarquette.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Impact-Report-FY2025-Website.pdf\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/innovatemarquette.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Impact-Report-FY2025-Website.pdf\">FY 2025 Impact Report<\/a>. Innovate Marquette SmartZone helped create 53 jobs in the region and launch 11 new businesses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThe Impact Report, I think, is the first break-out year,\u201d said Joe Thiel, the Innovate Marquette SmartZone CEO. \u201cI think usually these ecosystems take between seven and 10 years to develop. It\u2019s year 10; we should be seeing these type of outcomes, which is great.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The hub also secured $3.2 million in \u201cfollow-on funding\u201d for local startups. Theil says this money provides continued support for grants or services like patents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cSo, once we get that traction, they start to scale,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s when they have to hire people. So, most of the companies you see in that Impact Report, you\u2019ll see have a number of employees now. C-Suite level employees or management level employees; those are high-paying jobs. So, we really want to show that traction first, that follow-on funding and then the job growth. That\u2019s really impactful in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Thiel says his team is working on a new model called \u201cScale Fast,\u201d which will help tech founders scale up and also quickly spot failures.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cFail faster and safely,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, give a safe place for these founders to fail, cause they fail a lot, and we want them to fail. Failure is learning, and we really want them to fail quickly to identify where they need to go with the business, and beyond that survive, survive the fastest.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">He hopes to continue to break down barriers and help more startups succeed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The video above will feature the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uppermichiganssource.com\/livestream\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.uppermichiganssource.com\/livestream\/\" target=\"_blank\">TV6 livestream<\/a> until staff can clip the corresponding story, if available, from broadcasts or other TV6 content. You can subscribe to our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@wluc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@wluc\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube page<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uppermichiganssource.com\/page\/tv6-plus\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.uppermichiganssource.com\/page\/tv6-plus\/\" target=\"_blank\">download TV6+<\/a> to stream the latest local news and weather.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 WLUC. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MARQUETTE, Mich. (WLUC) &#8211; An entrepreneurial support hub brought in more high-tech development, according to its FY 2025&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":902399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[16],"tags":[64,10966,607,365388,365387,110729,10999,242,274165,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-902398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-businesses","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-impact-report","tag-innovate-marquette-smartzone","tag-marquette-county","tag-million","tag-tech","tag-tech-support","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116837431169844870","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}