When the New Enterprise Forum launched in the mid-1980s, the Ann Arbor group was an outpost in a community still missing many crucial links in cultivating a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem.

But as NEF prepares to celebrate its 25th anniversary today, the group is now viewed as a key piece of a much broader network of resources many startup companies have come to expect.

“When you have a winning formula, you stick with it,” said Jan Gensheimer, NEF’s president.

That three-pronged formula involves providing mentoring for budding entrepreneurs, giving startup companies a venue to pitch their business ideas and encouraging business networking.

NEF, formed by venture capitalist and startup veteran Tom Porter in 1985, has been meeting on the third Thursday of the month for the last 25 years. NEF volunteers include local accountants, attorneys, investors and other entrepreneurial leaders, who offer assistance and guidance to startup companies and entrepreneurs.

Porter said he started NEF because interest in entrepreneurial activity was high but resources were few.

“The environmental ecosystem in Michigan was in its infancy,” he said in an e-mail. “Were an entrepreneur to have a great idea, there weren't places to go to find investors, to network, to try out the idea with others, to find mentoring, service providers, advice, etc.

“It was very difficult to start, let alone fund an early-stage company at that time and we felt that we needed a more robust ecosystem in which startup companies could access the help and funding that they need.”

Porter and fellow Ann Arbor startup veteran Dick Sarns will receive NEF’s Lifetime Achievement award at the anniversary event. Sarns formed a medical device company in the 1960s that was later sold to 3M Corp. and then to Japan-based Terumo, which kept the company in the area and now employs more than 400 workers at two divisions in Scio Township.

U-M computer engineering professor Farnam Jahanian will receive NEF’s Entrepreneur of the Year award for his role in founding and leading web security firm Arbor Networks, which was sold in 2010 to Tektronix Communications.

Arbor Networks is one of several firms that have benefited from NEF. In fact, NEF volunteers have quietly influenced the development of several of the Ann Arbor region’s most successful startup companies.

In recent years, companies that have drawn resources from NEF included fuel cell firm Adaptive Materials, medical device maker Accuri Cytometers and alternative energy materials maker T/J Technologies, which morphed into the Ann Arbor research arm of battery maker A123Systems.

“We help entrepreneurs with their investor pitch,” Gensheimer said. “Everybody knows how to talk about their product or their service, but they don’t know how to talk about their business. And that’s what we do.”

Contact AnnArbor.com's Nathan Bomey at (734) 623-2587 or nathanbomey@annarbor.com. You can also follow him on Twitter or subscribe to AnnArbor.com's newsletters.