How much does it cost to send a loved one to a nursing home? What happens when a relative with large financial debts passes away? Is a reverse mortgage a scam? I spent a great deal of time learning about how to care for geriatric patients during medical school, but nobody ever teaches you about…
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In two years – with no funding and no full-time developer until 2010 – entertainment company Spartz Media has built popular sites that attract over 115 million monthly page views: sites like MuggleNet, OMG Facts, and GivesMeHope. As they continue to launch one site a month watching for blockbusters, CEO and MuggleNet creator Emerson Spartz…
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Chicago Ideas Week is an inclusive experience for the thinkers and doers of Chicago and the greater Midwestern area. We are excited to round out this great event by showcasing 10 local startups and their innovative products at our Tech Cocktail Chicago mixer tonight. Thank you to our gracious sponsors for making this event happen:…
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Online music services are gaining popularity, and they can be the gateway to millions of listeners. But indie bands may have trouble breaking into Pandora channels, Turntable.fm rooms, and Spotify playlists. Chicago startup SoundOff.fm wants indie bands to be heard. According to its founders, “SoundOff.fm was started to give indie artists a real chance at…
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Chicago-based startup Cerrio, which was co -founded by a former derivatives trader and software developer for the trading industry, is demoing 2 products for developers at Tech Cocktail’s event at Chicago Ideas Week Sunday night: x-stream.ly is a fast, secure, and scalable service that lets web developers add real-time interactivity to their apps. No server…
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Genevieve Thiers, founder of the immensely popular Sittercity and the Small Business Administration Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2006, is at it again: this time with a startup called Contact Karma. Contact Karma provides recommendations for B2B services like consulting, IT, legal, and event planning, based on ratings by users in your network and…
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With patients paying as much as 1,100% more for the same medical procedure, there is a huge incentive to shop for health care. Chicago-based startup OkCopay is the first open medical comparison engine that removes the mystery of pricing for patients, while improving reimbursement rates for doctors. Regardless of insurance status, you can “shop” for…
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If you’re a small business owner, there’s nothing more important than making a lasting connection with your customers. New startup Spontaneus is aiming to do just that, sending free certificate incentives from businesses to their target audience. Founded by Julian Erickson and Mike Wolf, Spontaneus is providing a new, transparent and exclusive marketing option for…
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A new location-based marketplace for mobile devices is launching today. Chicago-based Grabio is entering a very crowded arena, so it will be interesting to see who comes out on top. We just covered Goshi and showcased them at Tech Cocktail Chicago last week, and I wrote about Taap.it a couple of weeks ago. So what’s…
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It is hard to believe that Tech Cocktail is 5 years old today – and to think it all begin with a simple blog post. We are really excited to be celebrating with all of our friends in Chicago, and can’t wait to see everyone from the awesome local tech community tonight. We owe many…
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Despite all the hype over daily deals among the public, vendors are less enthusiastic. According to a recent study of five deal sites, including Groupon and LivingSocial, just over half the vendors surveyed made money off their daily deal, and only 35.9% of restaurants/bars said they would offer future deals. Jeff Glazer, who owns a…
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Machines and technology are often seen as the enemies of real human connection, but the Denver-based job site Robot Recruit is trying to prove otherwise. A quirky combination of automation and personalization, Robot Recruit matches tech and startup jobs to candidates using an algorithm that learns over time. Job seekers simply post a resume and…
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Want to see the world through others’ eyes? San Francisco-based startup Picturely is a photo streaming utility that searches through Twitter for the latest mobile image uploads. It has been used to unofficially cover the recent Mumbai bombings, Vancouver riots, Madrid protests, and San Francisco Giants wins (and losses). Picturely’s first commercial product is the…
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With the dramatic increase of connected devices and applications, gaining visibility and maintaining control of the branch office LAN is at an all time high. Cymtec provides a simple and affordable way to ensure application performance and network uptime with its new product, Cymtec Sentry. Sentry was created and priced for the remote and branch…
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If you produce video, audio, images, documents, apps, or any other digital content, a new Chicago-based startup can help you quickly and easily set up an online store to sell and deliver content to your target market. DailyDigital provides a professional, free SaaS for digital publishers via digital storefronts that embed on any web or…
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A new startup out of Chicago is creating a fully mobile and localized application aimed at transforming the classifieds marketplace. Goshi allows people to use their mobile phones to post items they are both looking for, as well as items they want to sell. The beauty is that each post is tagged with a location…
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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
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
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
Coming off of one of our biggest Tech Cocktail mixer events in Chicago this past week, which showcased 14 early-stage start-ups, we thought it would... Read More