Even though Tech Cocktail is now based in DC, we still consider Chicago home – our first event was held there nearly 6 years ago. Because there’s no place like home, we are really excited to be hosting another one of our classic Tech Cocktail Chicago mixers tonight where we’ll be showcasing a wide range…
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Thinking about producing an explainer video for your website? Finding video producers is easy, which you know if you’ve started a search. What’s difficult and ultimately time-consuming is finding the right video producer at the right price. You can spend weeks doing research, contacting producers, getting estimates and then narrowing down the proposals and picking…
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Vizua started with a conundrum: why are video game graphics far better than medical imaging? It turns out that 2D medical scans are sometimes difficult to read, and other 3D tools are quite expensive. So Vizua offers a cheaper 3D tool for doctors to view medical scans on the web or iPad, then share with…
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Depending on where you live, you’ve already played several rounds of golf this year or are just now getting out the golf clubs, all eager to tee up. If you live in the Chicago area, you’re going to want to start using Back9Booking, a new interactive website that lets you search, compare and book tee…
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“Driving in traffic is a different kind of hell every day,” said Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert. The same could be said for taking the metro. Somehow after weeks and weeks of delays, construction, and bumper-to-bumper, we still hope for a smooth commute. That’s why commuting is its own class of agony. To ease the pain…
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Found in Town is a free, online lost and found recovery service that helps reunite misplaced items such as keys, mobile phones, and wallets, with their rightful owners. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? But there’s more to the company and concept than meets the eye. Founded in Chicago by Zach Haller, he jokingly said that he…
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Though good-intentioned, our acts of charity are sometimes inefficient – we give our local homeless shelter some clothes, for example, when they’re desperately in need of those forgotten wooden chairs in our basement. Setting out to slash those inefficiencies is Zealous Good, a Chicago startup that connects charities to people with unwanted items. Just tell…
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Since launching nearly a year ago, DC-based TroopSwap has been growing by leaps and bounds, raising nearly $1M from angel investors and then raising $2.5M in equity financing and partnering with Lego. The ecommerce platform exclusively for active service members and veterans now offers access to military and veteran discounts, most of which are sourced…
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Demo day is wrapping up in Chicago as 10 new health startups launch to the public out of Healthbox. The 3-month accelerator program offered mentorship, office space, and $50,000 in funding (in exchange for 7 percent equity) to 10 lucky startups who are tackling a tricky sector. “Between rising costs, issues of access and a…
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Solomon Arman Nabatiyan was a research professor at Northwestern University before he started pitching investors. His company, CerviaDx, was planning to create a revolutionary cervical cancer test that would be as easy as a pregnancy test. It seemed like a great investment, Nabatiyan explains: a woman dies of cervical cancer every 2 minutes, yet it’s…
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Groupon has been on quite the acquisition spree this year. In February, they purchased travel site Uptake, which lets you use your social networks to research travel destinations, adding to their Groupon Getaways department. Prior to that, they acquired Hyperpublic, which aggregrates place and deal data to connect people to places better, and Adku, an…
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Do you have a pile of other people’s business cards that just sit around collecting dust? Maybe you’ve even forgotten who you wanted to reach out to. Sometimes meeting new people gets the best of us, and we either forget to reach out to the people we met or just don’t make time for it,…
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Are you starting up in Chicago and looking for an office to run your day-to-day? TechNexus should be on your consideration list. In combining elements of co-working, incubation, and virtual offices, TechNexus is attempting to cover all the small business bases. In the eyes of TechNexus’ managing partner, Terry Howerton, the real value of his…
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Is it being overshadowed, or flying under the radar? Call it what you will. No matter how you shake it, last week’s launch of Eventup, a marketplace for renting venues, created quite a splash. However, a little less than one month earlier, Ella Lief launched Venue Cricket, a marketplace for renting venues, resulting in a much…
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For a new generation of students, “test prep” will no longer conjure up the image of sleepy, 3-hour Kaplan classes or 10-pound Barron’s SAT books. One startup ushering in the digital age of studying is Chicago-based BenchPrep, backed by Lightbank. Founded in 2009, BenchPrep has recruited more than 150,000 students to their online learning platform…
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Launching last week as part of 500 Startups’ third class, eSpark Learning is leveraging iPad apps to make learning more engaging for young students. “Consider a typical student’s modern entertainment options – iPods, iPads, Wii, Nintendo, Xbox, video games, social networks, HD television, 3D movies. Why are we mostly using sophisticated technology to merely entertain…
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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