Coworking and Startup Culture Spark Success in Michigan State University Entrepreneurship Ecosystem
MSU Research Foundation coworking and incubator spaces are fueling startup success by fostering collaboration, creativity, and community. Discover how these environments are transforming innovative ideas into thriving businesses like Ride YourWay, Michigan's top non-emergency medical transportation provider.
by Rich Keener
One of the most enduring images of the high-tech entrepreneur is the visionary who starts with some hardware, a garage, and his dreams and builds a multimillion-dollar business that changes the world.
Jeff Smith, Director of Research Parks for the Michigan State University Research Foundation, acknowledges that while it is possible for this model to lead to success (“I mean, that’s how Apple and Microsoft started, right?” he notes), most startups find their way through a business incubator.
“The companies we’re focused on supporting really can’t do the work from their home,” Smith said. “These are companies that are a little bit more technology heavy. Maybe there’s advanced materials or biosciences involved, and we try to create the right environment and resources for those companies that need it.”
Ride YourWay: A passionate patient’s success story
Ride YourWay Co-founder Thomas Sikkema (left) helps plan a day of non-emergency medical transportation at the company's headquarters within The Bridge incubator.
One of those companies is Ride YourWay, a wheelchair and ambulatory transportation enterprise with a mission to provide safe, reliable transportation for medical appointments, dialysis, physical therapy, and other medical needs.
Ride YourWay has thrived at The Bridge in downtown Grand Rapids—one of the Foundation’s business incubators.
Co-founder Thomas Sikkema got the idea for the company after he became a registered nurse in 2018 and observed a critical need for reliable non-emergency medical transportation. Five years earlier, Sikkema was diagnosed and treated for a rare type of pediatric brain cancer, and during his recovery, he noticed that same need as his family relied on transportation to lifesaving treatments.
“I’ve seen healthcare from all the different perspectives—from the bedside to actually being in the bed, and now from more of the business perspective,” Sikkema said. “And I saw a need within my patients, just needing to get transportation to and from their doctor’s appointments.”
He started to do some research regarding providers in the Grand Rapids area that were currently assisting with non-emergency medical transportation. He soon realized they didn’t meet the quality standards he would have expected as a patient, and he saw a lot of inefficiencies.
“So I kind of put my brain and my emotions together, and started to see that, hey, if we can get some vehicles, get some really kind-hearted individuals driving those vehicles, and then leverage the slew of technology that’s out there to streamline the way we do things, we can really create some incredible improvements.”
That desire led Sikkema to team up with his brother Bradyn to form Ride YourWay.
When the company launched in 2018, they had only one vehicle, and they were providing one ride a day. Sikkema said he was doing everything—the business development, finance, scheduling, and driving.
“It was a one man show for a while there,” he said. “Now we’ve worked our way up to providing about 165 transports each day all over the state, with 19 vehicles—14 in Grand Rapids and five in East Lansing. We’re in about 70 different nursing homes and hospital systems.”
The vehicles are a good mixture of wheelchair-accessible vans—for individuals who utilize a wheelchair and need wheelchair-accessible transportation—and ambulatory sedans, for individuals who might not have a mobility need.
All the Ride YourWay drivers go through extensive training and onboarding, and everybody is first aid and CPR certified.
The company utilizes a web-based platform, with each organization and individual at that organization receiving their own HIPAA-compliant login whereby they can type in trip and client information and then send it over to Ride YourWay for scheduling.
Ride YourWay scales up
In the late winter of 2022-2023, Sikkema, who is the CEO of the company (Bradyn is the director of finance) found himself hunting through LinkedIn, looking for like-minded individuals in the Grand Rapids area who could help the company increase their services within the healthcare systems in the city. His search led him to Kyle McGregor, Director of Venture Creation at the MSU Research Foundation.
Sikkema contacted McGregor, and they met over coffee to discuss Sikkema’s ideas. Toward the end of the conversation, McGregor mentioned that the grand opening for The Bridge was that week and that Sikkema should stop by and check it out.
“The second we stepped foot up here, we saw all the connections and the networking and all the resources that were available,” Sikkema recalls. “And it was a leap, but we decided then to get one of the ten-by-ten spaces up here. We’ve been slowly working our way, growing our way into larger offices, and now we’re in the biggest office on the floor.”
Incubators and coworking
The Foundation’s several incubator facilities are an integral part of its mission of supporting venture creation activity. And the culture of incubators is essential to the success of many startups.
One aspect of that culture is coworking—workers from different companies sharing the same space. One of the obvious benefits of coworking is that it provides a more cost-effective way to deal with business expenses, since those expenses are divided among those sharing the business space.
But coworking also enhances creativity, allows for greater collaboration and flexibility, and increases productivity.
For McGregor, collaboration and community are great strengths of the coworking movement.
“We have a beautiful space up on the roof that kind of overlooks all the downtown. We just had one of our member meetups that had 20 to 25 people up there, all connecting, talking, building that kind of fellowship model and building that community,” McGregor said. “And it’s just nice to talk with folks that kind of get it. You don’t have to be ‘on,’ to talk about specifically what you’re doing and what the next deliverable is, and whatever else is going on. We can bring a little bit more humanity back into this process.”
Building community
Smith said the culture of coworking and startups can help build a community through their need for access to creative environments, places for visiting investors to stay, and places where collaborators can engage.
“You start to see where hotels pop up. You start to see where restaurants and bars pop up, coffee shops pop up, good food tends to follow,” he said. “All those things are surrounding a startup culture and then activities and events, 5Ks and adventure races and bike shops, things that start to add to the character and lifestyle of the community are directly tied to it.”
Risk, creativity, and innovation
According to Smith, taking risks is an integral part of economic development, and incubator spaces offer the ability to derisk some of the transitioning from an idea to a company, and therefore allow for more participation from aspiring entrepreneurs.
“The creative and entrepreneurial mindset, and having a community that’s willing to take risks and explore new ideas and not be deathly afraid of failing, is one that’s always going to be more dynamic than communities that are not,” Smith said. “So having incubation space allows for those would-be entrepreneurs to have the opportunity to take the risk, but it also creates kind of a hub for that community to be able to either succeed or fail faster.”
And this environment fosters community and innovation.
“Even though you’ve got two companies that are doing completely different things, they’re both tech companies, and you start to realize, oh, we have a lot in common,” Smith said. “Someone might say, ‘I didn’t realize you were into board games.’ Another responds, ‘Oh, yeah, I am. I’ve got a whole collection.’ And then that turns into something bigger, and now you’ve got board game night happening in the community. Those simple collisions are where innovation really comes from.”
This type of community-building has led to rapid growth for The Bridge. Since their grand opening in March of 2023, they have gone from three tenants to 21 in 17 months, with another two tenants in the license agreement process.
McGregor said that when they are interested in a promising young company, they will not only offer to provide capital investment but also the opportunity to work at The Bridge.
“Some people choose to do that, some people want to have their own space or be in a different part of town, which is completely fine,” he said. “But for the ones who want to come in here and have all the resources in the community—the community is a big aspect here.”
Valuable business support
Sikkema appreciates the support incubators provide. He said he doesn’t consider himself a businessman; he’s a registered nurse who loves building relationships with people. And in that regard, he doesn’t always see all the different aspects that come with running a business and scaling a company.
“The MSU Research Foundation and other tenants on the floor that have scaled companies before, they’re there for us, to tap into and learn the different kind of nuances of scaling companies,” he said. “Just being kind of in the trenches with other individuals that are going through similar headaches has been really valuable.”
McGregor is happy for the success of Sikkema and Ride YourWay.
“Tom’s a phenomenal founder, person, and operator,” McGregor said. “We work with him a ton, just trying to help get the business where it needs to be, get in more contacts for different health systems, help them think through long-term planning and strategy and operations and things like that.”
The impact of coworking
According to Sikkema, another factor in Ride YourWay’s success is the role of coworking.
“We’re always out in the café area, so that’s a great place to connect and kind of bounce ideas off of one another, get a different perspective, and see the value in those perspectives,” he said. “The Foundation’s team, they’ve got just this crazy way of thinking outside of the box. And there’s so much overlap between Ride YourWay and other tenants here at the bridge, we can have discussions with them, and loop into each other. That has been something that I hadn’t really expected up here. “
The next steps for the company probably are to expand into the metro Detroit area and then start look at moving into Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, Sikkema said.
McGregor sees big things ahead for the company.
“You hate to call it early, but it certainly seems like this is one of those cases where they’re going to scale nationally,” McGregor said. “I have no doubt about it. I think they’re going to do some great work in a space that’s just been ripe for innovation.”
For his part, Sikkema said Ride YourWay’s driving force is finding new, innovative ways to provide care to individuals who need it the most.
“There’s always a way of creating a solution that best fits the individual,” he said. “We’re just super passionate about removing barriers that prevent people from living their best life. That’s our mission.”
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About the MSU Research Foundation
The MSU Research Foundation supports the Michigan State University ecosystem with resources that increase the impact of research and innovation. The Foundation achieves its mission through grant programs that contribute over $11 million annually to the University, entrepreneurial programming and early-stage investments that accelerate technology transfer and startup growth throughout Michigan, and environments where startup businesses and collaborators can thrive. The Foundation's work is made possible through its stewardship of a flexible and sustainable endowment, nourished by over 50 years of licensing revenues and investment returns. Learn more about the MSU Research Foundation and its impact at msufoundation.org