Alex is an Economics student at the University of Michigan. A recent addition to our sales team, he is “accomplishing a long-time goal to work for a start-up alongside a group of talented and ambitious individuals.”
Alex developed a connection for interacting with customers while working endless summers as a bag boy at a local golf course back in his home town of Frankenmuth, Michigan. He passionately pursues his own creative projects that exist in various forms: the lead singer of a band, an independent writer, and a lover of photography. He firmly believes that business should be an extension of self, and aims to bring his enthusiasm and drive to his work at CrowdClarity.
He also posses an unrivaled ability to produce bird calls.
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Jed Christiansen, author of Mercury’s Blog, a blog on prediction markets and innovation recently published a story about CrowdClarity.
In it, Jed covers not only the data we’ve produced, but explains why that data is valuable to large companies who may have difficulty otherwise predicting sales accurately.
Within the first week of November 2008, the prediction market would have warned Chevrolet that they were going to miss their revenue targets by $800 million in the Chevrolet division alone. And depending upon the exact product mix, this could have easily exceeded $1billion.
… Assume that even with three weeks’ early warning Chevrolet was only able to save 10% of that gap, it’s still $80million in savings. Even if a corporate prediction market for a giant company like GM cost $200,000 a year, that would still be a return on investment of 40,000 %. And again, that’s in the Chevrolet division alone.
It really brought things full circle, all of us here at CrowdClarity read Jed’s blog often, even when we were just starting to develop our solution and bring it to market. His blog continues to be a very rich source of well thought out analysis on all things prediction markets – Thanks Jed!
News Coverage
Gandhi Jagasia has joined CrowdClarity’s development team to help our company keep up with the growth that we’ve experienced over this 
summer. He will be helping to implement new features in our main product as well as work with specific resources for a new customized version of our product that will be released through one of our customers late 2009.
He recently graduated with a bachelors in Electrical Engineering, and joins us after two years of start-up experience through Michigan Tech’s Enterprise Program. Gandhi is a perfect fit for the team as he was looking for another start-up to work with where he would be part of an energetic and dynamic team, instead of his fear of “becoming another cog in a large software firm”.
Gandhi also brings with him a few years in management experience, extensive knowledge of almost all things “geek culture”, and a secret talent for writing entertaining reviews of horrible movies.
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Jonathon Carender, CrowdClarity’s VP of Sales, was interviewed and featured on the Detroit Free Press’s front page on Sunday September 13’s paper.
You can find the digital version of this story here at Freep.com
Also mentioned in the article is the Tech Arb, where CrowdClarity current holds their offices.
“He’s one of nearly 40 students working on start-up companies at the university’s TechArb, a basement on campus that provides free office space for young entrepreneurs.”
News Coverage
Maarten Mulder, Jean-Jacques Vossen, and Rik Veldhuizen (left to right, above) take the European approach to business planning.
Soon CrowdClarity will be predicting the wine harvest in Bordeaux, the winner of the Champions League, and how long Barack Obama will remain more popular than Nicolas Sarkozy.
Check back for soon for more news of this international growth.
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David Forrester has just joined CrowdClarity’s sales team. He brings with him extensive experience in sales and marketing, with a specialized background in leadership training. He will be integrating with our existing sales team and sharing his 15+ years of management experience in the field. He is a graduate of the College of Business at James Madison University.
He enjoys golfing in his spare time, public speaking, and is interested in the United States space program.
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David Zuidema is a successful 4th year student at the Michigan Technological University. David brings his expertise from the field of psychology and graphic design to spearhead CrowdClarity’s breakout marketing campaign. David is harnessing his skills as an expert communicator to design sales support documents that facilitate the redirection of CrowdClarity’s go-to-market strategy.
Previously, David spent his summers exceeding the industry standard in lawn maintenance. He also draws on his experiences working with underprivileged kids to encourage them to seek degrees in higher education working with the Summer Youth Program at Michigan Tech. David is an avid wine connoisseur, powerlifter, and pastry chef. Although this is David’s first entrepreneurial experience, but he brings a myriad of skills to the table.
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Arun is an Electrical Engineering student of the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. When he is not working on CrowdClarity’s software, he is usually playing videogames or guitar. His strengths are web design and python.
He is developing a new, easy to use, market type for CrowdClarity’s software solution. This market type will most closely resemble over / under “spread” betting and will have a greatly simplified interface to allow users to contribute more easily and in a more streamlined manner.
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TechArb, which is the space in which CrowdClarity currently holds our offices and most of our employees, has reached the top of the news on the University of Michigan’s front page. For a direct link to the story and video, click here.
The Ann Arbor Chronicle also picked up a story on the new incubator space, which you can read here.
Lastly, TechArb now has its own page up, showcasing the start-ups and their team members that frequent the space.
News Coverage ann arbor chronicle, incubator, start up, techarb, university of michigan
CrowdClarity had a good showing at The National Summit in Detroit this week. Dr. Mary Sue Coleman, President of the University of Michigan, mentioned CrowdClarity on two occasions during her presentation to attendees at the Summit as an example of a fast growing start-up founded by University of Michigan students. Below, Dr. Coleman visits CrowdClarity’s exhibit booth after her speech.
(Jon Carender – CrowdClarity, Dr. Mary Sue Coleman – President of the University of Michigan, Matt Gibson – Fontis Biotechnologies, Jeff Meng – ModuLine Technologies)
Event, News Coverage Dr. Mary Sue Coleman, Fontis Biotechnologies, ModuLine Technologies, MORE Program, National Summit