Chicago Startup: Iconicast’s “Smurks” Puts The Heart In The Machine

How can you share that smile on your face through digital and mobile? How often have you misinterpreted the context of a text message because you didn’t know how the other person was feeling. Does that LOL mean laugh out loud, that’s really funny. Or does that LOL mean laugh out loud you’re really stupid?

Chicago’s Lightbank Invests In Santa Monica Startup LifeCrowd

LifeCrowd is a Santa Monica based social startup that helps consumers participate in social events in their city. Lifecrowd users can browse activities ranging from a night full of board games, to rock climbing, band jamming, and wine tasting. They can then invite friends to join in the activities. They’re different from other sites like

Chicago Lean Startup Challenge Taking Applications For Summer Session

The Chicago Lean Startup Challenge, like other similarly named challenges across the country is based on Eric Reis’ “Lean Startup” methodology, customer development by Steve Blank and the business canvass model by Alexander Osterwalder. Ultimately the challenge is to take startups and hone them in on the most efficient way to succeed. “Unlike business plan

Chicago Startup: MentorMob Teams Up With Girl Scouts & Motorola For Online Badge System

One things for sure, these aren’t your momma’s brownies. The Girl Scouts of America are going high tech with the help of Chicago startup MentorMob and technology/financial partner Motorola Mobility Foundation. Last month MentorMob was the recipient of a $150,000 prize as part of the Digital Media and Learning Competition, a contest sponsored by the

Interview: Chicago Startup Toodalu Has It All Figured Out, Reward With Cash, Donate To Charity

Great things happen in Chicago, despite what anybody else says. Toodalu is one of those great things. Founded by three friends that met in (dare I say) Chicago’s thriving tech scene, Todd O’Hara, Ravi Singh and Chris Lubinski, they set out to provide another mobile startup that caters to the reward/engagement/loyalty space but they’ve hit

Chicago’s Groupon Acquihires Ditto.Me

Lately the news about Groupon hasn’t been the good news we’re used to hearing. First, there is a group of investors that are suing Groupon suggesting that the Chicago based startup had cooked the books. Also over the weekend Groupon disappeared from Apple’s iTunes app store. That hasn’t stopped them from making acquisitions though. Social

Chicago Startup: FlyWhim Wants You To Imagine If You Bid On Airfare Like Hotwire

Are you familiar with Hotwire? Most people who travel all the time have either used Hotwire, checked Hotwire or know about Hotwire. They were the first on the hotel booking scene with blind box bidding on hotel rooms. The way it was originally designed to work is hotels would load up their unused inventory, you

Chicago Startups Yield $160M In Q1 From Funding To Acquisition: What’s This Midwest Mentality?

Whoever said Chicago didn’t have a thriving tech scene may need to crawl out from under their own angels and actually look at the facts. Builtinchicago.com has just released the Q1 numbers and they are mighty impressive for a town with no startup culture and entrepreneurs who are at home by 5:00pm. According to the

Chicago Startup: iFindit Takes On Real Social Discovery

We’ve heard about hundreds of social discovery apps. You’re familiar with the type, punch in your account info for Foursquare, Twitter or Facebook and find people near you. That’s what we are used to when it comes to “social discovery”. Well there’s a relatively new startup out of Chicago that helps users connect with real

Chicago Startup TechMoola Helping Startups Make Money And Loving The Chicago Tech Scene.

The house music capital of the USA is about to become the capital of startups in the USA if these Chicago based entrepreneurs have anything to do with it. You may recall a couple weeks back Pando Daily sent a young reporter to Chicago who reported back that there was nothing to report here. Pando

Illinois State Government Backs Startup Tech Center In Chicago: Who Says Chicago Isn’t A Tech Hub?

Last week Pando Daily’s Trevor Gilbert struck a nerve in the heart of the midwest when he penned this piece: The Midwest Mentality. He spoke about a Chicago that didn’t live the startup culture life and how entrepreneurs there didn’t get it and went home at five pm.  Nothing could be further from the truth,

Chicago Entrepreneurs Launch PlanFast A Simple Way Of Planning

Chicago entrepreneurs Dan Schneider and Brian Doxey have launched a new start up called PlanFast. It’s a free web based service that allows you to plan just about anything visually rather than in a list form. As their video tour says, planning using PlanFast is as easy as scribbling a plan down on a piece

Start Up Spotlight: Chicago’s Klutch Club, Health & Wellness Delivered To Your Door Monthly

Companies like Shoe Dazzle and Sole Society revolutionized a new concept for busy people. These two companies send their “club members” a new, stylish pair of shoes every month. The shoes are roughly based on questions you submit when you join and most users are finding they get very stylish shoes. The “of the month

Your Workers Won’t Automatically Become a Team

When it becomes to your business, you shouldn’t underestimate just how beneficial it can be to have a group of workers who aren’t just individual employees, but a proper team. It is every manager’s dream to have a workforce with individual skillsets that complement each other well, a team that can be given a task