Healthbox Demo Day

I had a chance to attend my first startup Demo Day for Healthbox on Wednesday. Unfortunately, I had to miss the first five presentations, but I really enjoyed the second portion of the event and I hope this is the first of many Demo Days that I will be able to attend.
I'd have to say the most memorable part of the event was "The Healthbox Song," which you can check out below:

It was a great way to remind all the investors of each of the startups near the end of the event and it happend to be a pretty catchy tune. It was pretty amusing to see a few VCs humming along to the song in their suits as they were playing with their iPads.

Healthbox also announced that they will be moving to Boston for their next 3-month program and are currently accepting applications now. The good news is that they will be back here in Chicago around the same time next year to have another class of Healthbox after the Boston class. Good luck to all the Healthbox startups with raising the funding they need in the next few weeks.

CareMerge Interns

I'm helping to lead the effort to find an intern to help out with CareMerge's marketing efforts in the next few months/summer as we're getting ready for trade shows and ramping up customers.

See below for the Company's website and short description:

Caremerge is a provider of world’s first complete set of web and mobile apps for senior living facilities. Our solutions help reduce costs, improve market differentiation and increase regulatory compliance We help our customers accomplish this by improving communication and collaboration with on-site / off-site decision makers (doctors, families, etc.) and streamlining paper.based care coordination workflows through software automation. (www.caremerge.com)

I'll be at Chicago's Booth B-School Start-up Networking Night on Wednesday, April 4th, so if you might be interested, feel free to stop by and learn more about CareMerge and other local startups who are looking to hire interns.

1871 Tour

The startup that I’m currently working with just applied for the new 1871 co-working space and on Saturday I had the opportunity to go on the Hard Hat Tour of the space. While it is still under construction and is expected to be completed sometime in Spring, it was great to help visualize the vision the CEC team has for the new space and for Chicago’s startup scene.

Some of the highlights of the new 1871 space will include reserved desks, conference rooms, classrooms, a coffee shop, shared working space, and additional space for startup accelerators to rotate through, and reserved rooms for universities and VC firms. They currently have 50,000 square feet in the Merchandise Mart with the option to expand another 50,000-75,000 square feet on the same floor, so if there is a ton of demand and if all goes well, they will choose to open up the additional space.

I think the biggest appeal to becoming a member of 1871 is to be connected with the tech community that they are creating. Not only are the spaces/membership options cheaper than the current options, but included in the membership will be several classes on coding and valuation as well as access to guest speakers and mentors. Everyone who is invited to become a member of 1871 is also expected to give back to the community in some way, whether it is teaching a class or mentoring other startups, so it will be a great way for the whole startup community to collaborate on the new ventures that are being established in Chicago.

My First Ohours Session

I signed up on the ohours.org site to chat with a managing director at the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center (CEC).  I originally signed up to chat with the MD to learn about her background, how she came into the role and what the CEC does. I came to realize that the CEC is a phenomenal resource for the startup community here in Chicago and their goal is actually very similar to mine when it comes to advising startups. The CEC is a non-profit organization that has been around for about 10 years, providing resources and connections to local tech startups in the area. They have five criteria for the startups they work with:

1. Tech industry focused
2. Unique and compelling value proposition in the company’s specific landscape and industry
3. Growth potential – they like to see reasonable projections of $10m in revenue by years 3-5 in order to help the startups get ready for funding
4. Market validation – i.e. customers
5. Strong management team

They also want to understand what the startup needs help with and see if it fits with the resources they have available. They typically have 30 startups that they talk to on a regular basis and develop an informal curriculum to bring in experts on valuation and how to build marketing strategies, etc. The sessions are typically twice a month and not publicized, since they are exclusively for the startups they work with and often 10-15 startup teams will attend each session on a first-come, first-serve basis. After an initial phone call, they like to meet in person with the startup team to do a deeper dive into the business and see where their network may overlap with the company’s own contacts. After our initial phone call, I introduced the startup I am working with to the CEC and we will be sending our teaser/executive summary prior to our in-person session. After the holidays, I’m looking forward to hopefully getting a chance to start attending these bi-weekly informal classes offered by the CEC.