Chicago Archives - Page 6 of 10

How Can You Save Money On Kid’s Clothes? Chicago Startup MoxieJean

How can you save money on kid’s clothes? It’s a question millions of parents have, especially when their children are between newborn and size 5T. Forget about the problems you’re going to have when your kids get older, grow 3 inches in two months and need the latest fashions, just getting to 5T can be an economically taxing challenge.

Thrift stores and yard sales can be an easy way to acquire clothes for your kids but often times they are previous years styles, have stains on them or just don’t look right. What if there was an easier way to get clothes and not just pieces, but entire outfits?

Well that’s the problem that Chicago area entrepreneur Sharon Schneider set out to solve with her company Good Karma Clothing For Kids which has been relaunched as MoxieJean.

MoxieJean is so much more than just an online place to buy clothes for kids. MoxieJean sells gently warn kids clothes for newborns to size 5T and they’ve created a system that’s great for parents. MoxieJean is economical, easy to coordinate and even green.

Here’s how it works:

1. Moxie Jean buys only the best and cutest kids’ clothes from moms whose own kids have outgrown them. Moms get store credit for the clothing they send in, or they can choose to donate that credit to kids in need, as distributed by the staff of various charities.

2. Moxie Jean then steam the clothes at high temperatures, match them into outfits (rather than individual pieces) and group a few outfits of a similar style and feel into a “bundle.”

3. Bundles are photographed and posted on the site and moms can quickly hone in on the size and style line (e.g. “Little Miss Sunshine” for girls or “Prep School” for boys) they like.

4. With every purchase shipped out, Moxie Jean include a prepaid “Moxie Jean Mailer Bag” so that moms can send back anything that is still in great shape and get credit toward the next size up.

MoxieJean’s unique bundle system helps you by taking the outfit coordination off of your plate and of course keeps the pricing down low. Just how low, we asked Schneider:

For example, a new outfit from Janie & Jack is currently on sale for $35.99 ($14.99 for the tank top and $21.99 for the shorts) but we have a bundle including a Janie and Jack shorts set PLUS a Little Lindsay shorts set for $19.99. If you purchased them without the clearance prices, it would be far more…

To take a more “basic brand” example, we have a bundle with an Old Navy romper, a tshirt and Carter’s cotton pants. These items each retail for $5 or $6 new right now, at the height of the summer sell-off season, totaling $17 plus for the sake of argument let’s say $6 flat rate shipping from Carter’s. That’s $23. Our price is $11.99 with free shipping, which is about half.

Linkage:

Check out MoxieJean here

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Startup Interview With Chicago Startup: The Plastic Bag Solution

The Plastic Bag Solution is a green startup located in Chicago IL where the issue of plastic bags is actually becoming a hot button topic among residents, environmentalists and government officials. In fact 1st Ward Alderman Proco Joe Moreno introduced a ban in 2011 of single use plastic bags. The legislation is still waiting to be heard in the Health and Environment Committee. If the legislation is passed Chicago will be the largest city in the country to enact such legislation.

Plastic bags clog sewers,drains,cause animals to suffocate, and take hundreds of years to decompose. The Plastic Bag Solution provides an alternative to the plastic bag that is 100% compostable and great for the environment.

The Plastic Bag solution provides their compostable bags at a fraction of the cost as traditional plastic bags and also educates consumers, business owners and government officials on the use and benefits of their solution to plastic bags.

We got a chance to talk with Coleman Franklin, Co-Founder and Vice President of The Plastic Bag Solution about what their startup is all about and what they’re doing in Chicago.

Check out the interview below:

Chicago Startup Flux Headphones Say They’ve Solved The Tangle Problem, Need Help On Fundable

Fundable, the new crowd funding its, has some really cool projects on it right now. One of those is the Chicago startup Flux Headphones. Flux headphones was founded by Matt Scandora and Jatana Srain.

Scandora and Srain had a problem that millions of people face and that’s the tangled mess that earbuds become when thrown in a pocket, pocketbook, backpack or anywhere else when not in use. While their are products on the market like the flat corded Jays headphones that do a great job of staying untangled Flux Headphones address the problem in a different way.

The Flux Headphones have little magnets in the cords that let both cords stay stuck together and untangled, and then you can simply wrap them around your arm when you’re not using them. You can also opt to put them around your neck, in your pocket, heck you can attach them to the fridge or any other magnetic surface if you want. Scandora and Srain are aware of the competition out there, but they’re right no one solves the problem so easily or quite like this. When you take them out and are ready to use them they unfold to their normal earbud wearing position.

The other great part about the magnetic design is that they allow you to adjust the length of the cord to where you want it and then it stays there. For instance if you’re using an armband to hold your music player or iPhone you can make the cord shorter utilizing the magnets and then voila the extra cord isn’t hanging off the bottom and doesn’t look messy.

Here are the tech specs:

Tech Specs:

Impedance: 16 Ohms
Frequency response: 17Hz – 22,000Hz
Speaker : 15mm
Plug: 3.5mm
Headphone cable length: 120cm
Sensitivity：114 db

So you’re getting a great quality headphone. Flux Headphoens will come in two varieties, in-ear earbuds and traditional earbuds.

Scandora tells nibletz.com that their manufacturer is ready to go they just need the funds to move forward. That’s why they’ve resorted to the new crowdfunding site fundable.com In addition Scandora says that Fundable’s founders Wil Schroeter and Eric Cori have been great mentors to Flux.

At the time of this writing Flux has raised over $5600 of the $45,000 they are looking for and have 37 days to go.

Linkage:

Check out the Flux Headphones here at Fundable.com

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We’re doing a little crowdfunding of our own. Check out this link

Chicago Startup: EcoResume Offers Job Hunters An Easy & Green Way To Hand Out Resumes INTERVIEW

Whether you’re actively searching for a job or you’re just passively looking, chances are you’ve been to a conference, networking event or other meetup and needed your resume close by. Now without bringing a briefcase or worse, a book bag, to every professional outing you take, carrying your resume with you can be cumbersome, often times resulting in a crinkled up, less professional looking representation of yourself.

Well a startup in Chicago, called EcoResume has a solution for you that solves this particular problem and makes things a little greener.

With EcoResume you upload your credentials and resume information to their website. From there the folks at EcoResume create a virtual business card for you, complete with the bullet points from your resume and links to your supporting documents. You can easily send this eco friendly card with resume highlights to anyone that you come across at a meeting, or professional event from your smartphone or when you get back to the office.

Sure there are other ways of doing this, including getting your own blog site, or custom url but EcoResume has it all figured out in a nice looking site that’s both easy to navigate and easy to find.

We got a chance to interview the founder of EcoResume Efrem McGruder. Check out the interview below.

Chicago Startup: SocialKaty Is Social Media Marketing For Everyone Else INTERVIEW

Enthusiastic and Scottish. Katy Lynch took her personality and social media skills from a hobby to creating a thriving venture backed company is less than two years. With a goal of providing result driven social media services for companies, she founded SocialKaty in August 2010.

SocialKaty is a full-service social media marketing firm employing 29 “social media assassins” who create and manage content for brands (big and small). Simply, they’re a one stop shop for social media who maintain and create content on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs and even develop tabs and apps for Facebook.

Why start SocialKaty?
1) Companies are struggling with creating and managing effective social media campaigns.
2) There are no real pure play social media firms out there. (There are marketing and PR agencies that offer social media as an “add on” service, but not as their core offering.)

What’s interesting is the diversity of companies and industries they service. To name a few – funded startups, bars, restaurants, retailers, non-profits, and heck even energy companies. It’s no wonder they’ve been profitable since day one, grown to a 29 person team and raised a Series A round from Lightbank.

We caught up with Katy last week during Techweek Chicago:

Links we’ve got em:

SocialKaty Is Here

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Chicago Funds 25 Startups For $188 Million In Q2 2012 Smashes Q1

Chicago recently played host to a great regional tech and startup conference called TechWeek 2012. Judging on the activity at the conference and the legendary after parties it should be no surprise that startup activity in Chicago is big. How big? Try $188 million dollars big of 25 startup companies. Two companies; Dealstar and Tribeca Flashpoint Acacdemy also exited in Q2 without disclosing financials behind their deals.

GoHealth received the most money in Q2 2012 with $50 million by Norwest Equity Partners. Valence Health came in second place with $30 million. In the tech space Singlehop led with $27.5 million. Total Attorneys was second in the non health space with $15 million.

Chicago’s startup de jour, Belly, pulled in two rounds of funding in Q2 for a total of $12.5 million. Lightbank Capital and Silicon Valley Bank teamed up for a $2.5m round for Belly in April and Silicon Valley powerhouse firm, Andreesseen Horowitz invested $10m in May.

The bigger story for Chicago is that in Q1 2012 there was just $33 million in funding split between 17 companies.

Here’s the complete list of companies funded in Q2 from BuiltinChicago.com

Arroweye $3 million
Belly $12.5 million
BenchPrep $6 million
BrightTag $15 million
Dabble $140,000
Elevate Digital $2.7 million
Future Simple $6.8 million
GoHealth $50 million
gtrot $920,000
Journatic $3.2 million
Kapow Events $700,000
Mediafly $200,000
MentorMob $150,000
Monthlys not reported
Neighborhoods not reported
New Futuro $1.3 million
Open Kennel $440,000
Restaurant.com $8,000,000
Singlehop $27.5 million
SocialKaty $300,000
Tempo $750,000
Total Attorneys $15M
Unmetric $3.2M
Valence Health $30M

Linkage:

Source: Built In Chicago 1 2

Check out Nibletz’ coverage of Chicago TechWeek 2012

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Chicago Startup: Red Meat Market Connecting People With Meat, Socially! Video Interview

Did you know that meat could be social? Of course you did, how many times have you socialized over burgers, hot dogs (is that meat) or great steaks? Well a new startup in the Chicago area is connecting people socially over meat. This time though, it’s about buying meat.

Red Meat Market, like Kansas’ AgLocal, connects people in Chicago, Madison and Milwaukee (for now) to the freshest, farm raised sustainable meat. Red Meat Market has a website and a mobile app which makes it a cinch to order meat in boxes, by dollar amount, choosing the cuts that you want.

With Red Meat Market you tell their platform what you want to spend and it tells you what you can get in your “box of meat” you can get a variety or one choice cut but this way you always stay in the budget that you want, each and every month.

There are actually a couple of social components to Red Meat Market. The first is the ability to split your “box of meat” up with friends, within the site and the app. Red Meat Market handles the payment distribution and everyone gets the meat they want. The meat box can be delivered to your door, or you can opt to attend one of Red Meat Market’s Meat Ups (clever huh). At their Meat Ups, Red Meat Market supplies the beer and the sides and everyone gets the box of meat that they ordered.

By holding a meat up you can meat or meet other Red Meat Market users and socialize or swap cuts of meats between boxes.

Red Meat Market is in a great part of the country to start a business like this. Co-Founder Mark Wilhelms blends his 18 years of digital and marketing experience with his love of meat for a new way to not just sell great, quality, grass fed meat but to connect people who love meat together.

Check out our video interview below:

Linkage:

Check out RedMeatMarket here at their website

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Move Your Resume To The Front Of The Line With Chicago Startup hiredMyway.com

A new startup in Chicago called hiredMyway may have just solved a huge problem for job-seekers and that’s getting their resume actually reviewed and reviewed quicker. There is a cost involved, but when it’s all laid out for the job seeker the nominal $5 fee is worth so much more in the end.

Matt Mosher the CEO and Founder of hiredMYway.com is offering a different kind of job site. With hiredMYway, when an interested job seeker finds a position they feel they are qualified for or “perfect” for they can submit their resume for free, or they can elect to pay the $5 fee which guarantees their resume will be reviewed in the first 15 days. In fact hiredMYway will notify the job seeker when their resume is actually read.

Now we realize that job seekers don’t have a bunch of $5 bills just laying around, especially if they are out of work while on the job hunt. That’s actually the beauty of Mosher’s system though. Job seekers will only pay the $5.00 for jobs they feel they are really qualified for and actually want.

The current job hunting website system is broken. Typically when a job is posted to one of the current job sites, thousands of people submit their resume, whether they are qualified or not. Some even submit their resume when they don’t even want that particular job, they just want “something”.

Recruiters, hiring agencies and HR departments that sign up with hiredMYway will know that when someone is submitting their resume along with the $5.00 payment, they have a truly interested candidate. It will effectively move those candidates to the top of the pile.

“You’re not going to pull your credit card out if you don’t think you’re going to have a chance,” Mosher said in an interview with redeyechicago.

Now here’s where it gets better.

There’s a signing bonus structure within the recruiters, hiring agencies and HR Departments. According to this article from redeyechicago that signing bonus could potentially be as big as $4,000 if not more. As with any job site or hiring agency a fee changes hands from the employer to the “agency”. hiredMYway splits that fee with 2/3 going to hiredMYway and the other third going back to the job seeker who gets the job.

With that 1/3 of the “finders” fee back in the pocket of the job seeker they most likely will make all their money back, regardless of how many jobs they paid the $5.00 “token” fee for.

Mosher is in the process of moving the funded startup from Detroit to Chicago. They currently employ 24 people and plan to hire more. They’ve secured $3.5m in their first round of funding from VC’s and angel investors.

While the $5.00 payment may be a turn off to some, if you live in a world where you believe you get what you pay for you may actually see the real value in redeyechicago. Some job sites charge extra for premium listings for job candidates. With hiredMyway your $5.00 goes directly to getting your resume seen.

Linkage:

Check out hiredMYway here at hiredMYway.com

Source: redeyechicago

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Video Interview With Chicago Startup ReGroup Therapy

ReGroup Therapy is a new Chicago startup that brings group therapy into the digital age. The service puts together people with common conditions in a video chat style group support session. The sessions are moderated by licensed professionals.

ReGroup Therapy can be applied to any number of conditions. Say you’re looking for a support group to quit smoking or an eating disorders support group. Now you can confidentially attend a group therapy session from the comfort of your own home.

One of the best parts though, is because it’s done over the internet and via video, you don’t have to miss your session if you travel out of town. You can access ReGroup Therapy from a laptop or a tablet and have the same experience.

Co-Founder David Cohn tells us that right now they are working with women with maternal depression and anxiety and plan to expand to a number of other group support offerings.

Cohn and his co-founder Sari Nass Ziv are two friends who met during their MBA studies in 2010. Cohn had developed an interest in the way technology can change people’s lives while volunteering in the Peace Corps in Guatemala. That passion stuck with him through more traditional positions in technology.

Nass Ziv started patients with mental illness as part of her psychology studies but then pivoted to the business world. That passion for helping people also stuck with Nass Ziv.

In 2011 as Nass Ziv was pregnant with her first child and Cohn’s wife Ana was pregnant at the same time, they started the idea for ReGroup Therapy which launched earlier this year.

Check out our video interview with Cohn below.

Linkage:

For more info visit ReGroupTherapy.com

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Video Interview With Chicago Startup: Care Content

One of the more interesting startups at last week’s Startup City event, part of Tech Week Chicago, was CareContent.

Kadesha Thomas is the founder of CareContent at care content.com. The new startup is a library of content for hospitals and other medical services that publish websites, newsletters and other resources for both patients and consumers.

Thomas has a background in publishing content for hospital websites and newsletters. While working as an editor for a hospital’s patient facing online resources Thomas was constantly sourcing content to fill the gaps that she hadn’t already written for the facility.

After she left that job as an editor she became a freelancer where she would get commissioned for jobs at hospitals to write stories about procedures, after care, medical trends, new hospital developments and more.

Now with CareContent Thomas is making her personal library as well as the works of others within the CareContent editorial network, available to hospitals and medical facilities either as packages or ala carte.

If a hospital needs new content for a landing page, blog entries or newsletter content they can sign up for a subscription plan to CareContent where Thomas and her company will make sure that the facilities have the content they need when it’s time to publish.

CareContent had a lot of people visit their booth at Startup City. There are article depositories, newswires and other resources for most kinds of publications but not one quite like this for the medical field.

Patient facing content is a lot different than the types of stories published in medical journals. Thomas has to take that kind of content and make it easier to understand, and not so overwhelming or sometimes scary, for patients that have either just had a medical procedure done or are thinking about having a medical procedure done.

Even with the long hard hours involved in launching a startup, Thomas is very enthusiastic about CareContent and it’s prospects in the Chicago startup scene. Thomas is just beginning as well. They just launched the company last month after months of research and they are also participating in Chicago’s Lean Startup Challenge and Chicago’s Medical Tech Pitch Event later on this summer.

Check out the video interview below:

Linkage:

Check out CareContent here

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Chicago’s Wunderland Group Wins Best Service Provider To Tech Community

The Wunderland Group, a staffing firm headquartered in Chicago has a national presence with offices in San Francisco, Austin, New York and New Jersey took home the Moxie Award for Greatest Service For the Tech Community. The Moxie Awards recognize leaders in the Chicago Technology space.

Wunderland was selected out of 70,000 votes and were recognized in front of 800 people from all walks of life within the thriving Chicago tech scene.

Although, technically separate entities entirely, the Moxie Awards for all intents and purposes kicked off Chicago’s four day TechWeek 2012 Conference

Although most people may not think a staffing company makes sense to win an award to the startup and tech community, The Wunderland Group goes above and beyond in the cities they serve, especially at home in Chicago.

The Wunderland Group holds technology focused meetups, provides mentors to various Startups and organizations, invests back in the community and of course serves as a staffing resource to any sized company.

The three original founders were on hand at the Moxie Awards ceremony held at the Park West Theater in Chicago last Thursday. What made the event even more memorable was that they we presented the award by the evening’s emcee, Saurin Choksi. Choksi is a Ruby on Rails developer who also happens to be the first placement ever for The Wunderland Group, three years ago.

Linkage:

For more on The Wunderland Group, Click Here

See our Chicago TechWeek Coverage Here

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Interview With Chicago Startup: Swapidy

Swapidy is a brand new Chicago startup that just had it’s public launch Monday as part of Startup City at Chicago’s TechWeek 2012.

Swapidy is a pretty cool idea. The startup serves as the go-between for two people looking to swap, or straight up trade items of value or trade up if you want to and can find someone willing. For instance if you had an iPhone and you wanted to trade for the new Nexus 7 tablet by Google, you would be able to list your iPhone in an ebay style listing for trade.

Within the platform you would be able to describe the item, the condition and then say what items you would be willing to trade for. Once someone finds your iPhone and has the item you want to trade for, you set up the trade through Swapidy.

From there the two people trading items would send both items into Swapidy’s headquarters in Chicago. Their the Swapidy team would make sure that the listings matched, the both items worked and in the case of phones, that ESN’s were truly clean and the item was ready to go.

Once Swapidy approves the items for trade they are then sent to their final destinations.

That’s all well and good so far. It’s like an escrow system for trading valuable products. Swapidy brings a new layer of safety and protection to those wanting to trade something with someone not in their immediate area.

At launch though, Swapidy is having both traders pay for shipping along with a fee that gets paid to Swapidy. Swapidy uses that fee to facilitate the trade and then the final destination shipping. Swapidy founder Adam Ahmad suggested in the video below that the entire trade may cost both parties $25.

Now when you’re looking at acquiring an iPhone or a tablet, $25 doesn’t seem like that much money, but in the end it may be frowned upon since none of the money is changing hands from trader to trader.

On the other hand $25 may be worth the piece of mind that you’ll get from completing a trade on Swapidy and knowing that the item you are trading is exactly as it appears. When trading direct with shipping involved there are all kinds of factors that could leave one of the traders either empty handed or with a far inferior product.

We will definitely have to check in with Swapidy in a few months to see how the community of traders is growing and how many trades they’ve successfully enabled.

Check out the video below:

Linkage:

Try Swapidy now at swapidy.com

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Interview With Chicago Startup LineChop

LineChop Co-Founder Nishanth Samala is all smiles about getting rid of the wait list (photo: nibletz)

Being placed on a waiting list at a restaurant can be one of the most frustrating things in the world. You don’t want to stand around and do nothing, but you don’t want to leave the restaurant in fear that you may miss your call for a seat.

Earlier this month we brought you the story about Pittsburgh startup NoWait, and how they’re providing a turnkey iOS based system for restaurants to manage their waiting list. While at TechWeek in Chicago we met this young group of guys who are still in college, and plan on disrupting the wait list as well.

As LineChop’s co-founder Nishanth Samala told us though, LineChop is different form NoWait because it doesn’t require any specific hardware. The system, for lack of a better word, is cloud based. Samala was quick to point out that a host or hostess at a restaurant could run LineChop on their existing computer, an iPad or other tablet.

The other thing that sets LineChop apart is that they’re plan from the get go is to offer coupons and deals to those customers that are waiting in line.

LineChop has a text or messaging based feature which will allow patrons to be notified when their spot in line is available or they can get notified via the LineChop app.

Check out our video below with Samala who’s very excited about the prospects for his startup:

Linkage:

For more information visit linechop.com

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See All The Bathroom HashTag Signs From Tech Week Chicago

This past weekend at TechWeek in Chicago, startup ReviewTrackers had a very innovative guerrilla marketing technique to expose people to their company. What they did was give the TechWeek bathrooms a hashtag #twbr. This was actually the first thing we noticed when we arrived for TechWeek and started checking out the tweets.

The tweets were a mix of clean enough for tv potty humor blended with facts about reviews on Yelp and other sites, which are at the core of ReviewTrackers business.

Here we’ve assembled a collection of all the hashtag signs that were prominently displayed in the men’s bathroom. The custodian for the Merchandise Mart wouldn’t allow us in the women’s bathroom even after hours.

We’re familiar with companies taking to the bathroom to promote their message. At TechCrunch Disrupt in New York for instance, an Israeli startup left what looked like car keys in the bathrooms. If you found one you were directed to a treasure chest in the Israeli pavilion at Disrupt to see if your key opened the box.

Often times at other conventions you’ll see company stickers plastered to the backs of stalls and above urinals. In this case ReviewTrackers was able to expose their message in various tweet style signs and get traction going on Twitter during the four day event.

Here are the signs: