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16 CHICAGO STARTUPS TO WATCH IN 2016

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By Jim Dallke – Senior Editor, Chicago Business Journal
Dec 11, 2015
Updated Jun 8, 2020 2:49pm CDT

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2015 was a big year for Chicago tech. We saw several multi-hundred million
dollar exits, huge funding rounds, and a continued push to cement the city as a
leading tech hub in the U.S.

But as the tech community begins to see more and more success, we wanted to take
a look at the startups that are poised to reach the level where companies like
Avant, kCura, ContextMedia and others are today.



Below, we've compiled a list of 16 Chicago startups to watch in 2016. These are
startups that have made solid strides in 2015, and that we believe could blow up
in 2016. Most are Series A (ish), have recorded a significant milestone, and are
tackling their respective industries in an innovative way.

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Here are the 16 startups to watch in 2016:

1. Tock

If you were launching a tech startup in the restaurant space, you'd be
hard-pressed to find a better team than Nick Kokonas, Grant Achatz, and Brian
Fitzpatrick. Kokonas and Achatz, the owners of award winning Chicago restaurant
Alinea, and Fitzpatrick, the former Google developer who was influential
in bringing an engineering department to Google's Chicago office, together
founded restaurant ticketing startup Tock in December 2014. Tock lets people
pre-order meals before they get to the restaurant, which helps customers secure
a table at a popular restaurant and cuts down on no-shows for the places that
use online reservations.

Tock is looking to change the restaurant reservation game that has been crowded
by players like OpenTable. Tock has been slowly rolling out its service to a
handful of restaurants, including Next, Aviary, and Alinea. The startup says it
has raised a "few million dollars" from a who's who of notable tech and
restaurant figures, including former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Salesforce CEO
Marc Benioff, Elon Musk's brother Kimbal Musk, and award winning chefs Thomas
Keller and Ming Tsai.

2. Gesture

Oak Brook-based startup Gesture is bringing technology to fundraisers and silent
auctions by letting people bid on items and donate money from their phone. The
startup, which rebranded in May from Auctions by Cellular, uses its technology
to help non-profits, schools, religious groups, and other organizations get the
most out of their fundraising events. Since Gesture launched in 2011, it has
been used at more than 2,000 events and has raised more than $170 million.
Gesture charges organizations a flat fee to use the service, and its technology
has been used by non-profits like the Ronald McDonald House Charities.



3. Glidera

A Techstars Chicago 2015 graduate, Glidera wants to make it easier to save, buy,
and use bitcoins. Glidera enables website developers to add bitcoin buying and
selling services into their applications using the Glidera API. Glidera says it
has built an "on-ramp to the bitcoin ecosystem" by handling the interaction with
traditional banks and its bitcoin wallet partners, and people can buy and sell
bitcoin from the wallet of their choice with the push of a button. Launched in
2013, Glidera says it's working to bring bitcoin into the mainstream.

4. Harken Health

As people are still trying to make sense of today's changing healthcare
landscape, health insurance startup Harken Health recently launched to provide
people with competitively priced healthcare. Based in Chicago and Atlanta,
Harken Health offers features like no-charge primary care visits and a personal
care team available by phone, email, text or video chat. The health plan was
available in Cook County when the Affordable Care Act's open enrollment began on
Nov. 1, and it represents a "new kind of health care company" as other players
in the Illinois healthcare marketplace--like Assurant Health and Blue Cross and
Blue Shield popular individual plan--have been shut down. In November, the
startup opened four health centers in Chicago, ensuring that the service,
despite its relative affordability, still remains relationship-based.

5. NuCurrent

As people spend more and more time connected to their devices, staying charged
has never been a more pressing issue. To keep devices juices up without needing
to stay plugged into a wall, NuCurrent has developed wireless power antenna
technology. NuCurrent, which launched out of Northwestern University in 2009,
creates wireless charging technology across a variety of products including cell
phones and wearable devices. The company, which raised a $3.48 million Series
A last year, has 17 patents and 34 more pending in US, Asia and Europe.
NuCurrent landed a big hire this year in Glenn Riese, the former Motorola
Mobility engineer who played a vital role in developing two of the company's
most iconic products: the RAZR and the Droid. Riese was named
NuCurrent's director of product engineering.



6. 4D Healthware

4D Healthware wants you to know you're sick, even before you begin to feel any
symptoms. Based out of MATTER, Chicago's new healthtech incubator, 4D Healthware
uses things like activity trackers and wearable biometric sensors to capture a
patient’s relevant health history, and it uploads the data to its platform in
real time, 24 hours a day. The company can then deliver care recommendations for
each patient, which they can view from the 4D Healthware dashboard. Essentially,
the startup wants to be like a car dashboard for your personal health.

7. HerbFront

The medical marijuana industry is just starting to take off in Illinois under
the state's pilot program. Cultivation centers started growing cannabis earlier
this year, the first Chicago dispensary opened for business this week, and a
scene of marijuana entrepreneurs has started to form in Chicago. And HerbFront
wants to be the Zillow for marijuana entrepreneurs. The company connects
cannabis entrepreneurs with qualified real estate owners, and supplies zoning
and mapping tools to iron out the logistics. HerbFront lets you search available
listings, access State and Local zoning codes, and find the best location to
grow your business. With the legal weed industry set to take off, HerbFront
wants to be there for startups looking for the best place to settle down.

8. Kapow

Chicago startup Kapow is helping businesses and organizations across the US host
killer events. Launched in 2012, Kapow creates an online marketplace for
corporate events and lets companies browse from dozens of events in their city.
Kapow's platform lets people find unique venues and book events online, saving
companies the headache of scouring the internet for the perfect holiday party
venue, company dinner, etc. Kapow is now in 20 US cities, and the company was on
pace this year to open a new market every 20 days.




9. SportsLock

With the fate of daily fantasy sports potentially hanging in the balance in
states like New York, Chicago startup SportsLock is definitely a company to keep
an eye on in 2016. SportsLock is a fantasy sports site similar to Draft Kings
and Fan Duel, but with some notable differences. SportsLock is a fantasy app
that uses a bracket-stlye competition for daily, weekly, or season long games
where people play head to head in groups and advance to the next stage of the
bracket. The idea is that it combines the real-money component of daily leagues
with the social element of season-long platforms. The company raised a $5
million Series A in June, and its investors include Robert Dupuy, the former COO
of Major League Baseball.

10. Options Away

Purchasing airfare isn't always a pleasant experience. Buying a plane ticket is
stressful in large part because it's one of the only purchases where there's no
turning back from. A cancellation or change fee can at times be more expensive
than the flight itself, which means when you click "buy," you're pretty much
committed. But Chicago startup Options Away set out to give travelers more
control over the experience. The startup lets travelers pay a few bucks to hold
a flight in order to lock-in a low fare before they were ready to pay the full
amount. You can hold the flight for up to 21 days and purchase whenever you're
ready. If you cancel the trip, the hold expires and all you've lost is the fee.
Options Away, which raised a $3.5 million Series A in March, partners with
travel sites like American Airlines and Expedia to bring a buy button to their
customers.



11. Akouba Credit

Techstars Chicago 2015 graduate Akouba Credit wants to change how small
businesses get loans. Akouba's software, which debuted in April, uses
an algorithmic underwriting platform to reduce the time and cost required for
banks to give small business loans. Akouba works with the community banks to
offer a software package that allows them to issue small business loans for
under $1 million, and the startup just announced a partnership with Metropolitan
Capital Bank & Trust of Chicago in November. While there are a ton of people in
the business of alternative lending, few are selling directly to banks, which
could provide a big opportunity for Akouba.

12. Specless

Chicago startup Specless, another Techstars 2015 grad, is making more engaging
and responsive banner ads for brands. Specless optimizes digital ads across all
devices quickly and easily, making the content look appealing on a phone,
tablet, desktop or wearable device. Specless' ads are more fluid and flexible
than traditional banner advertising, and publishers like ABC, NBC, Fusion,
Deadspin and Gawker, have already used its service.

13. Rithmio

Rithmio has set out to make wearable technology smarter. The Chicago startup,
which was founded in 2013 out of the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, is
creating software that helps people get more precise information about their
movements. Using wearable training devices, Rithmio's software can analyze
things like how many strides you took on your morning jog, or how many shots you
took during basketball practice. The company raised $3 million in June.

14. Infiniscene

The streaming video game industry is becoming massive. It might sound strange to
some, but today video game celebrities are broadcasting their gameplay to
millions of followers, and making serious money in return. Amazon acquired video
game streaming service Twitch for nearly $1 billion last year, and YouTube
launched a similar service--YouTube Gaming--earlier this year. Infiniscene, also
out of Techstars, helps gamers more easily become broadcasters in just a few
clicks using a web browser. The startup, which has six patents pending, is
working with Twitch and YouTube Gaming to be featured in their "getting started"
guides, and Infiniscene is also launching Xbox and Playstation apps.



15. Rippleshot

Rippleshot is helping banks better identify fraud. Rippleshot, based out of
1871, is a fraud analytics startup that uses machine learning algorithms and
data analytics to help banks and credit unions catch fraudulent behavior. The
startup, which just raised $1.2 million earlier this month, processes millions
of payment card transactions in real-time and can pinpoint when a data breach
has occurred, and then alert the bank before the problem becomes worse.

16. BauBax

In August, Chicago-based BauBax was crowned the most funded clothing project to
ever be crowdfunded after it raised more than $3.7 million on Kickstarter.
Created by Northwestern MBA student Hiral Sanghavi and his co-founder Yoganshi
Shah, the Baubax Travel Jacket is billed as the "world's best travel jacket." It
has 15 built-in features including a built-in neck pillow and sleeping mask,
hand heating pockets and attached gloves, and a separate pocket for a drink,
blanket, passport, headphones, and sunglasses for easily carrying the things you
need--particularly during a flight. The jacket has since launched on
Indiegogo InDemand, where it has raised over $10 million.




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