Grand Rapids, Mich., May 31, 2012 -- Today Start Garden, the $15,000,000 seed fund that selects ideas each week for $5,000 investments, announced the results from the fifth week of submissions to startgarden.com.

The idea selected by the Start Garden team for funding was Regular Coffee. After years in the café business roasting and serving premium coffee, founder of Rowster New American Coffee on Wealthy Street, Kurt Stauffer, wants to innovate on a delivery service. His take is that the industry can now make amazing coffee at affordable prices, so why is it only available at boutique shops?

The idea selected by the most endorsements from visitors to startgarden.com was Design a Dream. Shannon Gales has been running Vue Design, a custom wedding dress shop. Her idea is to make custom dresses more affordable and designable by the customer by breaking the dress down into parts that can be mixed, matched and sewn together.

Each idea receives a $5,000 investment, pending the completion of the investment agreement, which can be found on startgarden.com.

“Both ideas recognize that new possibilities have opened up to make yesterday’s premium products affordable to regular consumers,” said DeVos. “It’s a pleasant coincidence they’re both right here in Grand Rapids.”

The fund’s management team takes submissions through startgarden.com. Ideas with potential to become businesses can be submitted. Each week the Start Garden team selects an idea and the broader community on the website endorses another idea to receive $5,000. Start Garden can continue to invest up to $500,000 in a single idea. Learn more about submission criteria

Each Thursday at noon the ideas on startgarden.com are stored in the database, and the slate is cleaned for the next week. Anybody who has already submitted an idea and wants it reconsidered for the next week must go back to the website to resubmit.

The next round of $5,000 investments will be announced Thursday next week, June 7, after the noon deadline.

Contact:
Jeremy Bakken
616-233-0500
jbakken@lambert-edwards.com