Josh Linkner, founder and CEO of ePr
mentors Mason Levey, a member of Bizdom
University's first graduating class.
Biz Kids
Bizdom U breeds entrepreneurs to rev up the Motor City.
Bill Carroll
Special to the Jewish News
ewish businessman-sports-
man Dan Gilbert has an affinity
for large cities. In his speeches,
the chairman of Quicken Loans-Rock
Financial often tells of his father's suc-
cessful restaurant in Detroit and how he
enjoyed visiting his dad's establishment as
a youngster.
Gilbert bristles when outsiders, mainly
in the news media, make fun of Detroit,
which he defends to the hilt. He even
picked another large, industrial Midwest
city, Cleveland, in which to buy a profes-
sional basketball team and an arena and is
developing other business projects there.
And, despite current economic condi-
tions and the city's political problems,
he's expressing the ultimate confidence in
Detroit by planning to move the headquar-
ters of Quicken Loans, the largest online
home mortgage company in the nation,
j
from Livonia to downtown, along with
about 4,000 jobs.
But that isn't all. Gilbert, 46, of Franklin,
ranked as a multimillionaire in Fortune
Magazine's list of the nation's wealthiest
people, is trying to get budding young
entrepreneurs to open new businesses in
Detroit — and he's providing $10 million
of his own money in an effort to do so.
Gilbert conceptualized the idea of
Bizdom University, a nonprofit, compre-
hensive, interactive, one-year program with
a mission to guide entrepreneurs on how
to start and lead successful Detroit-based
businesses.
And this university is tuition-free with
free room and board to participants as
long as they're at least age 18, high school
graduates and have "the entrepreneurial
bug:' according to the Bizdom recruitment
flyer, which describes the program as more
like a boot camp than a university class.
The first Bizdom class graduated last
month with seven students out of 12 who
started last year. The graduates included
three women and Jewish student Mason
Levey, 20, of West Bloomfield. A new class
of 15 got under way soon afterward.
"This is a tough, demanding program
and students must have the desire, drive,
passion, discipline and full-time commit-
ment to make it work and create a plan
for a Detroit-based business:' said Bizdom
Executive Director Ross Sanders of Troy.
Bizdom is multidimensional and not
for the faint of heart. The application and
selection process is rigorous and the cur-
riculum is intense and filled with the real-
life lessons needed to become a Detroit
entrepreneur.
"Five of the original students dropped
out or were asked to leave said Sanders,
a graduate of Michigan State and Wayne
State universities. "Those who graduated
will become what we like to call the Green
Berets of entrepreneurship."
Gilbert, who graduated from Wayne
State's law school in Detroit after getting
a communications degree from MSU,
believes the most promising future busi-
ness leaders aren't necessarily the college-
bound, straight-A high school students
of today. He expects future entrepreneurs
to have street smarts, but perhaps not the
temperament or patience to last four years
for college degrees.
"We love Ph.D.s:' he said when Bizdom
was launched last year, "but a specific kind
of Ph.D. — poor, hungry and driven!"
Gilbert, who co-founded the Rock
Mortgage Co. in Southfield with a $5,000
loan at age 23 in 1985 — closing 50 loans
for $6 million in its first year — also has
an affinity for slogans, sayings and gadgets
("a penny saved is a penny") that decorate
the Quicken-Rock main office in Livonia.
The firm, with 3,300 employees in offices
in Michigan, Ohio, Arizona and California,
closed $19 billion in home loans last year,
mostly through the Internet.
Biz Kids on page B2
July 24 • 2008
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