I appreciate BuiltInChicago as an effective way to promote knowledge about the Chicago tech scene and I looked there the last couple times I was job-searching, but this list is really uninspiring. Uber for [moving, dry-cleaning, beauty needs], clones of better-known startups, clones of startups that have already failed.
On what axis is Chicago competitive with SFBA or NYC as a "tech hub"? On the obvious ones, like dollars of VC funding or number of tech employers, it doesn't even look close.
IMO, Chicagoans like to lean on their prior history of being a technological and manufacturing center.
You had some serious engineering here: Western Electric, Teletype, Bell Labs/Lucent, Stewart-Warner, Illinois Tool Works, USRobotics, Admiral Radio, Shure, Abbott Labs, Baxter, Rockola, Seeburg, Williams Electronics, Bally, Zenith, and of course Motorola. Motorola alone seeded lots of other small companies in the area.
This isn't a very good snapshot of what's going on in Chicago. I don't know what kind of outreach this site does, but it seems to be tied to local investors.
50?! I would love to see a heatmap of this page. The Chicago start up scene is a total mess right now, and a list of "50 start ups to watch" exemplifies it perfectly. You're right - these are mostly clones (with some exceptions).
The Chicago startup scene has so much potential once people stop "trying to be like SV" OR "trying to be Chicago." There's a fantastic middle ground, just look at Basecamp.
Mercaris, data and trading for Organic agriculture, based out of 1871, founders are grads of Excelerate (now Techstars Chicago), recently closed a Series A, hiring/growing.
You're way more connected with the Chicago startup scene than I am. Do you think this list was representative? (I'm not challenging you; I genuinely don't know the answer).
From the list:
Mac & Mia is an online, custom clothing boutique for kids
with soul & style. The company has a team of personal stylists that create looks for newborns to kids up to six. To get started, you create a style profile for your child and then, wait for the magic to happen. Once you decide to make the purchase, Mac & Mia will send you a box full of clothing customized for your child -- if your baby isn’t into the design, tread it right back for free.
http://www.macandmia.com/
Wow. Some people really do have too much time on their hands.
Baby clothes particularly, can be an incredible money sink. My twins are four-months-old and have cycled through four different sizes already. I quickly learned there is practically no reason to buy "outfits" and having them live 24/7 in sleepers makes life a lot easier on me. And sleepers can be found cheaply at used clothing stores, baby item swap meets, garage sales, etc.
Seeing the words "kids" and "boutique" next too each other definitely makes me cringe a little.
Wait till they get older. My two-year old loves a pair of boots I bought her, and every time I see her in them something lights up inside me. We're basically just monkeys, who get attached to trinkets, even at a young age. Some people have more money to indulge the proclivity than others, but it's natural.
Let's not be classist. There's probably a market for this. I live in a trendy part of the city and boutiqe baby stores are a thing and have been a thing for at least ten years now. This is just a personal shopper for those stores.
I don't see how this really is more ridiculous than owning a current gen 3D printer or other expensive geek friendly frivolous toy. In fact, if you're part of the wealthy crowd, what your kids look like affects your social capital as so much of that is image based. If its creating jobs and opportunity, I don't really care about these Gweneth Paltrow-like excesses. Its just business.
I don't understand how 'class' is involved here. It's "rich people who have too much money will spend it on junk" - which equally applies to geek friendly frivolous toys.
It's super weird to me how preoccupied the tech industry is about geography. Why does it matter where a company is? Why are VC firms so focused on a tiny patch of land? Other than internet connectivity, there's no real reason why it should be harder to start an internet company in Estonia than in Palo Alto, but it self-evidently is.
Is this a market failure? Has anyone figured out how to build a fully distributed company yet? How about "Built Online"?
The conventional wisdom is that, in general, VCs join the boards of the companies they invest heavily in. Which means they'll have to travel to attend a monthly board meeting. And it's easier to only invest in companies where they don't have to travel too far to get to the monthly meetings. Of course, I think it's a terrible excuse, but that partially explains things.
edit: Bryce Roberts at OATV is currently running an experiment that could challenge that default VC mindset with Indie.vc: http://indie.vc/
If you’re a recent startup founder, chances are you’ve taken a
huge paycut. Well guess what - America was built on innovators
like yourself and there are government assistance programs
designed to help you while you sacrifice to grow your
business. mRelief helps a user determine whether they qualify
for Illinois government assistance programs like Food Stamps.
Chicagoan here. The amount of fraud in welfare here is astounding. I regularly go to the grocery store and see people with nicer cars than me using their link card to pay for "groceries." By groceries I mean high-end items like lobster and steak, which they are clearly cashing out the card on and not shopping for food like everyone else. I don't know how they qualify for this, but imagine via some creative accounting that mRelief, I'm sure, is also willing to share.
I don't think people outside of the city realize how bad things are here. The corruption, handout mentality, patronage, politics, public sector unions, etc are probably the worst in the nation and it only seems to be getting worse. The various attempts to build a SV-like environment in Chicago will continue to fail until this corruption is cleaned up. I don't see a lot of incentive to invest in startups here, especially if we factor in our very high tax load and the little public value we get from it.
Welfare fraud is one of those things that people seem to think is rampant, and politicians often encourage that idea, but when measured turns out to be pretty infrequent.
None of your links are local to Chicago. Yes, diluted nationwide I'm sure its an acceptable loss, but locally things are different. Politics are local and dismissing my experience with nationwide links makes you look especially disingenuous here. This is like saying Detroit is very safe to live in if you look at nationwide crime stats.
The only thing local here is the Reagan welfare queen comment from almost 40 years ago, which is far from timely. Nor was I making that argument. I don't think there are welfare queens of any type, but I do see, almost daily, casual abuse of the system designed to help the poor. With little political motivation to fix this broken system, if we consider the patronage from the aldermen, there's actually disincentives to fix this system. Considering our high tax rates, its a shame our leadership can't make this a priority.
This article doesn't support the argument upthread:
Illinois’ error rate, from either overspending on food stamps or not spending enough, is 1.74 percent, according to Januari Smith, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Human Services.
So (a) it's a tiny fraction, (b) it's an error metric, meaning some of it is money we didn't spend, and (c) nowhere is any of it categorized as "fraud".
I've picked up groceries from Jewel for my brother who is quadriplegic. Just because I'm in a 1000 dollar suit, doesn't mean I defrauding the government.
I worked at a Jewel as a cashier for 3 years:
"By groceries I mean high-end items like lobster and steak, which they are clearly cashing out the card on and not shopping for food like everyone else. "
Is mostly an uban legend.
There is some fraud going on, but it mostly lazy people who get disability diagnosises and just live on $1000 a month. Sucks for us tax payers, but they aren't living high on the hog.
Why would you assume someone with an expensive car is wealthy?
Statistics show time and again that the majority of wealthy people (millionaires or greater) drive used cars[1]
It seems that the people buying brand new Audi, BMW, Lexus etc are people with little regard for personal finance, and are more often than not overextending their credit to afford such a purchase. Any surprise should be aimed at lending institutions who provide low income homes with loans for luxury cars.
Mabye it's just the culture of the company, because the company still feels new tech (although it's old). I hesitated to put Braintree on here for the same reason (and because it was acq. by PayPal)
We're Chicago-based startup [1] that helps secure mobile apps and devices and recently completed a 12.5m Series A.
If you're interested in mobile security, you can get an idea about our work in a recently vulnerability we helped Samsung patch impacting 200m+ devices. [2]
Over 50% of our company is remote and we're hiring 30+ people this year. If you're interested in mobile and/or security, would love to hear from you. [3]
Maybe it's just me, but I see sooo many HR/Marketing/Finance startups in Chicago and they are all kinda boring to me because they are all approaching very similar problems.
640 Labs was bought out by Monsanto in December, 2014.
I used to work with one of the founders. A really great guy and his success is well-deserved.
640 Labs is my example of what a real Chicago startup should be. They put their heads down, got to work, and got a product out in the field (literally).
Chicago health tech entrepreneur here: I have so much respect for 640 labs and the others a here that are actually solving real problems, rather than trying to be a copycat. Agriculture, healthcare, and manufacturing may not be sexy, but we have those strengths here, and Chicago should be promoting the successes in these areas more frequently.
I like the concept of https://www.optionsaway.com but everytime I try to get a price quote it just says this flight is no longer available. Anybody get it to work? I was trying to find out how much it costs for each time period lock.
There should be more focus on what Chicago's uniquely good at, and what makes us not just a worse-SF: http://www.holovaty.com/writing/chicago-bootstrapping/