Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel Praises Chicago Tech & Startups At Chicago TechWeek

For the second year in a row Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed out day two of Chicago TechWeek, congratulating We Deliver, the winner of the TechWeek Launch startup contest.

At the beginning of his remarks Emanuel congratulated TechWeek on improving the attendance and excitement of the conference, now in it’s third year. The mayor also had the chance to recognize the two people in the audience wearing Chicago Blackhawk’s jerseys. It was also “Black Hawk Day” where over 1 million Chicago area residents were in downtown Chicago for a parade to celebrate the Black Hawk’s Stanley Cup victory over the Boston Bruins.

Mayor Emanuel took a minute to recognize the new Google Motorola headquarters. The company is now an anchor tenant at the Merchandise Mart building, which houses TechWeek and over 200 startups in the 1871 co-working, incubation, and acceleration space on the 12th floor. The Google Motorola headquarters is the largest build out in Chicago history since 2005 with a total of 600,000 square feet within the walls of the Merchandise Mart.

When you put together the startups in the neighborhood along with the new Google Motorola headquarters there will be 8,000 employees in what Emanuel calls “the digital alley” which runs alongside the river. “8,000 employees that didn’t exist just four years ago,” Mayor Emanuel told the audience.

“I think the city of Chicago will become the mecca of startups in the midwest,” Mayor Emanuel said. “Just last year, worldwide, we went from 15th to 10th in startups.”

Mayor Emanuel praised 1871, calling it a startup itself because it just turned a year old. The mayor stressed the fact that Chicago has been known for the diversity in its economy, and he feels that the digital economy is becoming a pillar in the Chicago economy.

After his speech Mayor Emanuel toured the exhibit hall and even had time to play defense in a game of beer pong (with cups of water) on a C5 Beer Pong table. C5 is a Chicago startup.

Check out Mayor Emanuel’s remarks in the video.

Even more Chicago TechWeek Startup Coverage here.

Chicago TechWeek Has The Sexiest Startup City In The Country

Most big tech conferences have some kind of startup exhibition area. They go by various names: Startup Village, Startup Alley, Eureka Park, etc. This year, Chicago TechWeek has “Startup City,” and we love it (homage to Patrick Stump).

There are 70 startups in Startup City, and we’ll have a lot of profiles and interviews coming soon. But as we toured the Startup City, we couldn’t help but notice that there’s no shortage of startups on the racier side this year.

Get Lusty is a Chicago startup designed for married couples and couples in long term relationships that want to improve their sex lives. The company founders are a husband and wife team that found the bedroom was getting boring. Their solution? Launch a startup together, of course!

Savvo is the wine aficionado’s resource for all things wine.

F. U I’m Right is the ultimate argument platform, where you can get your social networks to support your argument. Interestingly, though, Boris, the company’s founder, told us he found that he was actually wrong a lot more than he thought.

There are a bunch of other great startups in Chicago TechWeek’s Startup City, but you can imagine why these instantly caught our eye. Stay tuned for more from TechWeek and Startup City.

We’ve got more startup coverage from Chicago TechWeek Here.

Conferences.io Keeps Improving The Conference Experience

We ran into the guys from Conferences.io at last year’s Chicago TechWeek, and this year they’re even better.

Conferences.io is an app that improves audience participation during a conference. Say it’s time for a panel or fireside chat. Participants can go onto the platform and type in questions they might have for the speakers. Then, they can vote on their favorite questions, with the most popular ones rising to the top to be asked.

Conference staff can also create polls to gauge audience needs during the conference. For example, running late into lunch? A quick poll can let you know whether the audience would like a shorter lunch or a later afternoon.

Check out our interview with conferences.io, and stay tuned for more from Chicago TechWeek.

We’ve got more Chicago TechWeek coverage here.

Aereo Founder & CEO Chet Kanojia On Why People Love It [VIDEO]

Chet Kanojia, the founder and CEO of controversial TV startup Aereo, appeared at Chicago Techweek on Thursday in a fireside chat called “TV Broadcasting: Who Is Controlling The Remote.” BTIG Managing Director Rich Greenfield led the discussion on topics pertaining to disrupting the world of TV.

This was a very fitting topic considering that TechWeek kicked off with a screening of the movie Downloaded, a documentary that takes a look at the rise, fall, and influence of Napster, written, produced and directed by Alex Winter of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure fame.

Like music, the TV industry has had a lot of competition in recent years. NetFlix, Hulu, Sling, and several other companies have disrupted the world of watching television with rabbit ears or a simple coaxial cable into the side of your home. Highspeed internet, DVRs, TiVo, and satellite TV have contributed to that disruption as well.

So far most of the startups and new companies in the television space have centered around streaming cataloged content, with Hulu typically having the freshest of catalog content offerings. Some of the networks that have an ownership interest in Hulu can have their newest show episodes on the site the very next day.

Now Kanojia’s company Aereo is disrupting TV by offering broadcast television via the web in a streaming format which users can record and playback. Kanojia explained that it’s based on the fact that every American is entitled to antenna TV service, but “no one specifies what kind of antenna or how long the cord is.” It’s also based on the fact that recording television for private use dates back 30+ years, since the Betamax days.

Aereo has found itself facing some stiff lawsuits, which Kanojia was quick to point out, the startup is winning.

In the video below Kanokia explains the two keys to their success with their customers: simplicity and unbundling. Earlier in the day Kanokia used TechWeek as the venue to announce that Aereo’s next city will be Chicago, and the service will begin in September.

For more on Aereo click here. and watch the video below.

More startup coverage from Chicago TechWeek is here.

Jason Fried of 37signals Talks Product Design at Chicago TechWeek

It’s Chicago’s big week, and they have some awesome speakers and panels lined up.

First up, Jason Fried with Designing Products with Purpose. You probably know that 37signals builds collaboration apps for small businesses. Which means you probably know that they know what they’re talking about when it comes to product design. They’ve been in business for more than 10 years, so they’ve been through every change out there.

In the video below, Fried talks defines product design. In his view, product design doesn’t end when the product ships. Instead, designers need to think about the product and its usability years down the road.

He cautions entrepreneurs to focus and not try to do too much.

I’m always a fan of taking a vision that you have and cut it down to a manageable size so that you can actually do something.

Check out the rest of Fried’s video, and stay tuned for more TechWeek coverage.

Picslinger Combines Photo Sharing And Gaming

Remember those scavenger hunt games you played as a kid? In college, my sorority pledge class played them with Polaroid cameras. (Remember those?!) We’d race around campus, taking ridiculously embarrassing pictures and the team that embarrassed themselves the most usually won.

Now, with the ubiquitous smartphone camera, these games can be even more fun. At Chicago TechWeek, Kyle caught up with Picslinger, an app that combines photo sharing with scavenger hunt games. You can even earn real life flair with your pictures.

Check out Kyle’s interview, and stay tuned for more great startups from Chicago TechWeek.

Mike Muhney The Godfather Of CRM & 22 Others To Speak At Chicago TechWeek

Customer relationship management, or CRM has been big business since the late 1980’s. Sure these days everyone is very aware of Salesforce the cloud based CRM solution, but before there were clouds, the internet, mobile devices and salesforce there was ACT. ACT was the standard in CRM solutions starting in 1987. There are thousands of companies that still use ACT today.

While the backbone of any CRM software is a robust database, by name and by virtue CRM software is designed to help manage relationships. How do you know somebody, what do you know about somebody, how is one person related to another. These are all things that effective sales people, marketers, managers, and entrepreneurs count on to help reach the bottom line.

Mike Muhney is one of the cofounders of the original ACT software and over the past year he’s been taking over 25 years of experience in customer relationship management and pouring it into VIPOrbit, barnone the best mobile CRM solution out there.

We first met Muhney last year at Chicago TechWeek where he was introducing the world to VIP Orbit. We spent a lot of time with him during techweek and learned so much about not just VIP Orbit but about effectively managing relationships. Stuff that hundreds of books have been written on since the introduction of ACT.

I remember in earlier parts of my worklife reading about CRM and using ACT. ACT and by proxy now, VIPOrbit, allow you to manage the littlest details that can result in so much more when applying that information down the road.

For instance back in the 90’s during my radio career as a Music Director and Program Director I had the chance to use ACT at various stations. I would keep my ACT up to date with little information about record reps that would call on me, what we could get from them, who they could help us out with and even kids names and birthdays. They would keep a lot of the same information on the radio people they called on. It would insure great birthday cards but in one instance I vaguely remember one rep that was courting me on a record who knew I loved Jerry’s Subs and Pizza from Washington DC. I had moved on to a station in North Carolina but that rep brought me down a steak and cheese on a visit. I asked him how he remembered and he said he put it in his ACT.

The same holds true today for me and my VIPOrbit database. It’s easy for me to keep track of who knows who in the startup world and where I met them. I even have notes about various gate keepers. You can charm your way past a gate keeper if you know the right information.

While the application is phenomenal, what Muhney can teach people about relationships and how to apply it them in the entrepreneurial world will really help in the long run. The amount of data you can find on the internet and then apply to your CRM solution can give anyone the cutting edge.

VIPOrbit will be set up in booth 8-9121 near the Bar TechWeek area during the conference. There you’ll be able to find out all about VIPOrtbit and how it can really help you manage your relationships. You can test drive the iPad and iPhone apps. You can also pick up a copy of Muhney’s book, “Who’s In Your Orbit, Beyond Facebook, Creating Relationships That Matter”.

More importantly Muhney is one of 23 top shelf speakers who will be speaking during TechWeek. His talk “The Business of Meaningful Relationships: Perils & Opportunities” will be presented at 10:30 am on Saturday June 29th. I highly suggest if you’re attending TechWeek you don’t miss it.

Some of the other great speakers include: Matthew Bellows ,founder & CEO of Yesware; Robin Chase, founder and CEO of Zipcar and now Buzzcar; Tony Conrad, founder of About.me; serial entrepreneur Adam Goldenberg; PJ Hyett founder of Github; Matt Jacobson VP at Battery Ventures, and many more.

You can still register for Chicago Techweek happening June 27-29th at the Merchandise Mart. Follow this link to registration.

Check out these stories from last year’s Chicago TechWeek!

Muhney will also be keynoting here:

Chicago Startup: Matador Transforms How People Invest INTERVIEW

What are the two ingredients for making a successful investment? Answer: Knowing what to buy and when to buy. Say its late 2004, knowing that Google’s stock was going to skyrocket beforehand and timely buying some GOOG shares would seamlessly make you rich (and also mommy proud). But how would you know what to buy (i.e. Google) and when to buy a stock or commodity? That’s where Matador comes in.

Matador is a advisory messaging platform that empowers investors to be informed from financial advisories and act on this information by messaging a broker.

Example, Yahoo! Finance recommends to buy gold or treasuries because the economy is tanking. Using Matador’s web and mobile platform, an investor can receive an instant recommendation from Yahoo! and then accordingly email or call their broker within the app. Hence, Matador streamlines the slow and boring process of manually receiving information from an advisory and communicating that time sensitive information to your broker.

Matador has real potential to innovate in the investing space that hasn’t particularly seen many successful apps. We like the value they offer to users, advisories and brokers. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to have a rockstar team including serial entrepreneur Jared Steffes, founder of Tap.Me

Co-Founder Andy Guinn gave us a sneak peak of how the app would work. Check out the video interview below:

Links we’ve got em:

Signup for Matador’s private beta

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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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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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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:

Linkage

Check out our story and video on ReviewTrackers here

Visit ReviewTrackers on their website here

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Startup Interview With Chicago Startup KlutchClub

One of the startups we were very interested in meeting up with in Chicago was KlutchClub. We featured this subscription box for health and wellness startups back in April here on nibletz.com. Even in that short time we saw Klutch Club exploding with growth.

The KlutchClub booth at Startup City during TechWeek was slammed throughout the exhibition. Their card jar was full, yet they didn’t win the People’s Choice award. (we have no faith in that card system). They are definitely one of the top Chicago startups in our book. And, KlutchClub is woman owned.

Founder and CEO Julie Bashkin created KlutchClub out of her own needs. She spent some time in her career in corporate America in a position where she had to trail 4 days out of every 5 day work week. She struggled to find quality health and wellness products that worked, fit her travel lifestyle and were cost effective.

Through her career in marketing she found that vendors weren’t getting to the customers they needed to and customers weren’t finding these manufacturers products. KlutchClub solves that problem as well.

After a couple of years of vetting the idea out, she finally launched KlutchClub to a great reception. Bashkin won’t say how many subscribers she has but she happily reported that they’ve shipped over 15,000 boxes.

Each monthly box contains a minimum of $50 in products and members pay $18 per month. As you’ll see in the video though, this months box is well over $150 with just one of the products retailing at $70. This is a win win for every household.

The original KlutchClub boxes are all geared towards women however with the feedback and subscribers Bashkin has already picked up she quickly set out to design a box for men as well. That monthly subscription will begin in August, and we are definitely getting on that list.

Check out our video interview with Bashkin below:

Chicago Startup: Benevolent One Of The Greatest Ideas At TechWeek

We scoped out Benevolent.net at TechCocktails mixer on Sunday night at TechWeek 2012. We didn’t learn that much about it and they quickly went on the shortlist for Monday. I’m really glad that we did get to spend time withMegan Kashner the founder and CEO of Benevolent.net because what she and her startup are doing is incredible.

Benevolent is a kickstarter like platform for low income people to get things that they need to better their lives. Kashner, a career long Licensed Clinical Social Worker, found that in her days of seeing low income clients that just one extra push like $100 for a pair of glasses and an eye exam, or $200 for a college credit course, could make or break someone trying to rebuild their lives.

Social Workers are always told to try not to bring their work home, and not to mix their personal lives with their work lives, but I know about 5 social workers who work with low income people or people in recovery who take themselves almost to poverty levels by just giving their clients that extra money for that thing that they really need (not want).

Well Benevolent makes helping people with these kinds of needs easier, however Kashner is no fool she has a very serious vetting process for the needs based kickstarter platform. First off, the user who “needs” something needs to be endorsed by a social worker or accredited 501 C3 organization. Kashner and her team make sure that each “endorser” or “sponsor” is fully vetted and that no one is trying to fraudulently rip off people by pulling on their heart strings.

Benevolent is already making a difference. Kashner showed me an example of a young lady who was trying real hard to interview for jobs and she was very self conscious about her thick glasses. She really wanted contact lenses but couldn’t afford the lens exam and that first box of lenses. Her story was endorsed and she quickly received enough donations for the contact lenses. Now at the end of the campaign the funds don’t go to the person that actually needs the item, but rather the social worker or non profit that is the sponsor. This provides an extra layer of security and insures the donators that the money was used exactly for what it was intended.

Check out the video below:

Linkage:

Check out Benevolent here at benevolent.net

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Startup Interview: Chicago Startup PrepHero

PrepHero is a new Chicago startup that bills itself as the premiere “social” development network for athletic training. While RocBob, another startup that exhibited at Chicago TechWeek, is about recreational sports, the team and “the game”, Prep Hero is about the athlete.

PrepHero allows the coach and the athlete to keep up with their training regiment, skill sets, areas of improvement and more. The coach can then use the PrepHero platform to keep up with his or her entire team and map the progress of their athletes.

What sets PrepHero apart from other scholastic athlete focused startups is that PrepHero is about the conditioning and developing of the athlete. It’s more invested in the person who is the athlete rather than how many home runs, RBIs, rebounds or free throws they have.

Where some platforms for athletes are about bragging rights and wins, PrepHero is about achievement and progress. In fact those who support the athlete, outside of the coaches circle, are called boosters. Boosters can be dad, mom and other family members, even your grandfather states away.

We got a chance to interview Barry Tarter the co-founder and CEO of PrepHero about this unique new idea. Check out the video below:

Linkage:

Find out more about PrepHero’s here

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