and create viable businesses that will, in turn, create new jobs. He’s also in favor of repealing a business tax here in Michigan that is not very popular with entrepreneurs.
Chris Rizik, a Detroit Xconomist and the CEO of Renaissance Venture Capital Fund, which has offices in Ann Arbor and Detroit, was Snyder’s second-in-command for years at Ardesta. Rizik was celebrating with Snyder at his victory party last night. I asked him to tell me what a Gov. Snyder would mean for the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Michigan.
“We know that the vast majority of new jobs come from entrepreneurial companies rather than large corporations,” Rizik wrote to me in the wee hours of this morning. “But many of the actions out of Lansing over the past few years, including the Michigan Business Tax, show that Michigan is not sensitive to what drives successful entrepreneurship.
“Having a governor who has been an entrepreneur and who has spent most of his career in entrepreneurship would be an important change, by providing us with a leader who led the creation of a legal and economic development framework that will drive entrepreneurship forward,” Rizik wrote.
Indeed, Snyder lives and breathes the entrepreneurial culture, and is well-established as a local job creator and economic development leader. He speaks the same language as most of Xconomy’s readers. I don’t agree with him on everything. He talks about making government run more like a business, and I would argue that business and government have two separate purposes, and that one should not necessarily run like the other.
But while these are philosophical issues that can be debated, there is no denying that Snyder will run a campaign that is based on his extensive experience as a technology entrepreneur. That, alone, will make this campaign something that Xconomy readers will want to pay close attention to.
