We’ve been watching GiveForward, for quite sometime, as they participated in one of our Chicago events, went through the Excelerate Labs Chicago accelerator and most recently raised $500,000 in funding. Desiree Vargas Wrigley is the co-founder of GiveForward a website that allows people to crowd fund money for medical expenses. But that funding came after…
Read MoreSarah Hatter is the founder of CoSupport, a company that helps web and mobile app companies with their customer support. Sarah used to work in customer support at 37signals. CoSupport provides a personal support team, providing customer support for your apps. The product draws its inspirations from her old 37signals teammates David Heinemeier Hansson and…
Read MoreChristopher Hill is the founder of PerkSpot, a Chicago-based company that manages discount benefit programs for employers. PerkSpot’s clients include Fortune 500 corporations, state and local governments, school districts, and other affinity groups. Chris started Perkspot out of his condo four and a half years ago, and Perkspot has been doubling revenue every year since….
Read MoreOver the past 10 years, Tomer Yogev has worked with several startups, owned his own small business consultancy, and spent time in venture capital. Recently, he launched TandemSpring, another small business consultancy. In this video interview, Tomer explains how the individual can be more important than their idea or execution, and techniques for moving past…
Read MoreShawn Riegsecker is the founder of Centro, a company that makes the buying and selling of online media easy and has participated in Tech Cocktail Chicago events in the past. Last year, Shawn’s company pulled in $116 million in revenue. But things were not always that good. Shawn started the company back during the recession…
Read MoreWhen Sean Harper needed a credit card processor for his first company, he signed up for the first one he saw. He ended up being swindled into tens of thousands of dollars of charges and paid almost twice the amount they expected to the first year. That’s when Sean knew there was a problem. And…
Read MoreEditor’s Note: Bryan Johnson recently contributed this article to Tech Cocktail: Sometimes Boring Problems Present Great Opportunities. Chicago based credit card processing company Braintree has an impressive roster of customers – 37signals, Airbnb, github, OpenTable, and more. And that’s with a team of under 20 people. That’s not why I interviewed CEO Bryan Johnson though. I…
Read MoreCraig Ulliott started the Facebook app Where I’ve Been as a side project while he was working as a freelance web developer. Within a few days, usage of Where I’ve Been exploded, and within a month, Craig had to figure out how to support his growing user base of around a million users. A problem most…
Read MoreWhen Jake Nickell started the popular crowdsourced t-shirt design site Threadless in Chicago 10 years ago, he thought he’d be holding down a typical 9 to 5 with room for a life outside of his t-shirt making hobby. But Jake’s hobbie turned into a real business and has been one of the most interesting crowdsourcing…
Read MoreWe’ve known Phil Tadros for a long time. He’s had products like TextHog and MetroProper featured at Tech Cocktail Chicago mixers and most recently spoke at our Startup Mixology Conference. Aside from his startups, Phil Tadros also owns 13 coffee shops in Chicago and runs his own interactive agency called Doejo. He told me he…
Read MoreChicago-based news aggregator, WindyCitizen.com, offers a way to see what’s happening around Chicago. It’s like a Chicago focused Digg. In browsing the site it appears to be running on the traditional advertising model. But a closer look reveals the ads aren’t just regular banner ads; they’re real-time ads, created by founder Brad Flora himself. I…
Read MoreFoiled Cupcakes is a gourmet delivery-only cupcake bakery serving Chicago and its west suburbs. They bake and deliver fresh cupcakes by the dozen. Since starting Foiled Cupcakes a little over a year ago, founder Mari Luangrath’s online cupcake delivery company has been growing, increasing revenue and working with over one hundred Fortune 500 companies in the…
Read MoreWhen Ben Reid and his wife got married, they knew they didn’t need another blender or toaster. And they knew they loved to go out to eat. So Ben and his wife thought, why not just register for a food registry? There had to be one somewhere. Turns out there wasn’t, so they created Foodie…
Read MorePhil Murphy owns several traditional public storage facilities in Illinois. After having dinner with a friend and hearing horror stories about how his friend spent $60 in cab fare to get to a traditional public storage facility, Phil knew something had to change. So he created StorageByTheBox.com, a website that allows anybody to put stuff…
Read MoreWhen Eddy Lu and his business partner moved to Chicago to open a restaurant, they realized they didn’t know anybody in town. Rather than hit the loud, crowded bars every week, Eddy and his friend decided to do what any good creative entrepreneur would do: make a business out of meeting new people. They launched…
Read MoreAdam Weinstein used to travel a lot and never remember to send family members cards for their birthdays and such. He thought it’d be a great idea to create a place online for people to go to write greeting cards and schedule them to be sent at a later date. When he worked at an…
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Two months after the iPad 2 debuted in March, around 40% of users surveyed said their iPad was their primary computer, up from around 30%... Read More
There are a number of startup accelerator and incubator programs in the United States. We are fans of these programs (not to be confused with... Read More
We are excited to announce the participating startups for Tech Cocktail's South by Southwest (SXSW) event: #Startuplife Celebration presented by .CO. It was one of... Read More
With our Startup Mixology Conference coming up next week followed by our classic Tech Cocktail DC Summer mixer which will showcase a handful of early-stage... Read More