GRAND RAPIDS ? Rick DeVos, like his grandfather Richard DeVos, co-founder of Amway, is writing a new page in the entrepreneur rule book with the announcement Thursday of Start Garden, a $15 million investment fund ? the money is put up by the DeVos family ? that will invest $5,000 in two ideas each week, including one selected by popular vote on the Internet.

DeVos, the younger, is blending two other entrepreneurial projects he launched in Grand Rapids ? Momentum and 5X5 Night ? to spur on the nascent entrepreneurial community, not only in West Michigan, but across the entire state.

The fund is open to anyone, anywhere to apply, DeVos said. Each person who receives the initial $5,000 investment has 60-90 days to get some traction with his or her idea, and return to West Michigan to give an in-person update at a public event. The update informs Start Garden management and mentors which candidate made a smart use of the funds. Ideas can receive an additional $20,000 to continue to move forward. Projects that demonstrate success and continued growth can ultimately receive as much as $500,000 dollars in incremental investments.

Start Garden also is bringing in the regional business community to help mentor these projects. Several national corporations including, Steelcase, Amway, Cascade Engineering, Fifth Third Bank, among others, will help do the business vetting, making sure the company, and investment, have a chance at commercial success.

?We?re creating an idea ecosystem with a Venture Capital fund,? DeVos said during a press conference at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in downtown Grand Rapids. ?We?ll evaluate hundreds of ideas from our web site. We?ve created the fund, we?ll bring the water, but we?ll ask entrepreneurs to plant the seeds.”

Each week, Start Garden will invest in two ideas submitted to the website. Each idea will receive $5,000. One of the ideas will be chosen by Start Garden team members, the broader community will select the other. Each week, the public has the opportunity to visit startgarden.com and endorse the idea they like the most. The idea with the most supporters at the end of each week receives the second $5,000 investment.

?Anyone familiar with my past projects knows I enjoy getting the public involved with a ?vote?,? said DeVos. ?It?s not just to find out what people like, an idea has a much better chance of success when an entire community gets behind it.?

DeVos? past ideas include Art Prize, a three-week long fall art extravaganza that lets the patrons pick winners. This year, $360,000 in prizes will be subject to public vote. Another DeVos experiment is 5X5 Night, where once each month five entrepreneurs make elevator pitches to an audience that decides how to parcel out $5000 in cash prizes. DeVos also created Momentum, an incubator program of sorts that includes a $20,000 equity investment in the start ups selected.

Start Garden will unfold in stages. The first stage provides the necessary resources. The DeVos family?s $15 million commitment is used to invest in new ideas, and then work with those ideas to grow them into new businesses. Start Garden places a lot of small bets across a wide variety of ideas with an expectation to earn a return on a few great innovations that emerge.

DeVos said the next investment level would be $20,000, followed by $50,000, $100,000 and up to $500,000 for a seed company that becomes ready to bear commercial fruit.

?We haven?t got the details worked out yet past the $5000 investment,? said Paul Moore, Start Garden?s marketing director. ?In the opening round, we would take a 3 percent share.?

Moore, who partnered with DeVos in 2005 to develop the film buff web site, Spout.Com, and later became marketing director for Art Prize, said he returned to DeVos? Pomegranate Studios last July because he was attracted to the early stages of bringing a company into the world. Pomegranate Studios is a business incubator focusing on web-enabled business, social entrepreneurship and empowering individual voices through technology.

Through Start Garden, he?s dealing with the earliest stages of company development, the initial concept. As such, Start Garden will replace Momentum and, for now, 5X5, he said.

?5X5 we learned a lot from,? he said. ?It was a fun event. We turned out big crowds. We have decided not to make a decision yet on whether it goes away. But 5X5 is on hold until we see how Start Garden does.?

Start Garden already has made four $5000 investments. Those companies include:

599Work, a project where freelance workers create a menu of jobs they would do for $599.

The Delta Bike. The company uses ?crowd sourcing? to develop new business models and electric motorcycle products.

One Second Epic – The concept is simple: every day, record and capture a single second of video. One Second Epic compiles these tiny slices of your life into a

single, continuous ?epic? video.

NetValue takes new algorithms to use creative statistics for fantasy players to build better teams.

For the Grand Angels, Start Garden could become a farm team to funnel the next hot investment to this angel investing group. Angel investors are high net worth individuals who invest, as a group, in companies. Typically Angels will invest $250,000 to $500,000 in a company.

?I think it?s another great idea from Rick DeVos,? said Grand Angels President Jody Vanderwel. ?From a Grand Angels perspective, I hope and expect they will generate more good opportunities for us to invest in as the Start Garden deals goes through the various stages. When they hit $20,000 or $50,000 they might be candidates for Grand Angels. We?ll begin to take a look at them. But we probably wouldn?t invest until they hit the $250,000 round.?

Grand Angels did make an investment in one of DeVos? Momentum companies. Varsity News Network, a web site for prep sports. What the angel group looks for in an investment is whether it is scalable, that is has the potential for big sales to a big audience to maximize their return on investment.

Certainly Start Garden will fill a hole that existed in the West Michigan entrepreneurial ecosystem, said Birgit Klohs, President of the Right Place, the West Michigan economic development organization.

?We have not had in this region the back of the napkin money before,? she said. ?We?ve needed what Rick is doing very badly. It could be a venture capitalist way down the line could look at an investment by Start Garden as the beginning of the pipeline.?

Venture Capitalists typically invest millions, or even tens of millions of dollars in a company.

Klohs said the Right Place will join the other West Michigan businesses and private equity investors participating in Start Garden to help vet the projects. She said her group?s particular expertise was in manufacturing, particularly auto manufacturing.

?I?m very excited that they started this fund,? Klohs said. ?West Michigan really needs it.?

a>>