The team at PishPosh has been working all summer toward building out new studio space in downtown Detroit, and now the podcasting and video production startup is about to embark on a new line of business -- maker education.
PishPosh plans to start offering day-long classes in mid October that teach people how to building new technology. The firm wants to ensure that classes are affordable -- think spending a few hundred dollars to learn how to build a drone or an arcade-style video game console. When classes conclude, participants get to walk out with their new toys.
"They get a box with all the parts they need," says Michael Evans, co-founder of
PishPosh. "They get lunch, and then they get to leave with what they built."
Both Evans and his partner, Ben Duell Fraser, are instructors at
Grand Circus, where classes in how to create software often cost thousands of dollars. They believe that PishPosh's new classes will complement Grand Circus' offerings and help grow the local tech community by giving them a broader range of education options.
The classes are set to take place in a 600-square-foot space in PishPosh's offices in the
Department of Alternatives, a downtown Detroit-based entrepreneurial collective near Grand Circus Park. The walls in the education room are up and are covered in primer paint. Evans and Duell Fraser expect to finish off the space within the next few weeks.
"This is our training room," Evans says. "We're thinking of calling it PishPosh Academy."
PishPosh made its name with its "
Slash Detroit" online video series, a roundup of the local news with a sharp sense of humor. Duell Fraser serves as the main anchor of the broadcast. The startup has toyed with making other shows over the last year and is now playing around with other formats, such as an uncensored version of the
Friday Fahles where local media members give their take on current events.
PishPosh has expanded into 2,000 square feet at the Department of Alternatives to keep up with its current workload. Not only is it doing its Slash Detroit episodes and preparing to offer maker classes, it is doing custom video work, such as creating a documentary on
Code Michigan for the state of Michigan. The company needed bigger and more intricate work/studio space to keep up with its portfolio of projects.
"If everything goes the way we want it to go, it wouldn't be too long before we needed the extra space anyways," Duell Fraser says.
Source: Michael Evans and Ben Duell Fraser, co-founders of PishPosh
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
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