2016 was an incredible year for entrepreneurship and innovation in Chicago and the Midwest, in large part due to our ecosystem’s willingness to share resources and provide the tools necessary for success. In that spirit, we looked back on all of our blogs from 2016 and hand-picked the top 5 most read and shared to […]
As any entrepreneur knows, pricing is a critical component of successfully bringing a SaaS product to market. Even after determining your revenue model and pricing strategy, finding the price that customers are willing to pay for can be a challenge. That’s why we spoke with an expert on SaaS pricing, Trustwave Co-Founder, Truss Co-Founder, and […]
If you missed the event or just want a quick recap, read on for highlights from the discussion. The event brought together world-class entrepreneurs and investors Jim Gray (CEO, G-Bar Limited Partnership; Co-Founder, OptionsXpress), Amanda Lannert (CEO, Jellyvision), Badal Shah (Co-Founder and CEO, TurboAppeal), Michael Small (CEO, gogo), and Kevin Willer (Partner, Chicago Ventures) to […]
Growth Stories is a new HPA blog series focused on profiling what happens to our portfolio companies after they raise venture capital. This first edition focuses on The Eastman Egg Company’s latest expansion. When Hunter Swartz first landed on the fast-casual breakfast concept in 2014, he started by opening a food truck. Two years later, […]
As part of HPA’s efforts to build opportunities for growth and success across our portfolio and our partners, we connect them to one another to drive results. We connected our portfolio company Xaptum with one of our partners, Westcon-Comstor, to do just that. Almost a year later, we spoke with Steve Garrou, EVP of Corporate […]
The Hyde Park Angels “New Investment Series” profiles our most recent investments by examining the investment process and the individual company’s future trajectory from two perspectives: the portfolio company’s CEO and the HPA leader who made the deal happen. This edition focuses on Occasion. Aksh, why did you start Occasion? What problem were you trying […]
When a founding team starts a business, the members have to ask themselves a critical question: how should we make sure they divide the value of the company fairly? There are many ways to do this, but often the simplest is to structure the initial shares as vesting. Vesting shares means an individual does not […]
The Hyde Park Angels “New Investment Series” profiles our most recent investments by examining the investment process and the individual company’s future trajectory from two perspectives: the portfolio company’s CEO and the HPA leader who made the deal happen. This month we invested in Quikly, a Detroit-based digital marketing platform for retailers, in a Series […]
At the early-stages, entrepreneurs are concerned with a host of problems and uncertainties surrounding the development of their company from how to hire talent to what it takes to get that product built and sold to customers. But overwhelmingly, we see entrepreneurs struggle to understand how the early-stage investment process works, and what they need […]
In a resource-strapped, lean, and agile environment like a startup, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that you are just as vulnerable to business risks as other types of companies. Anything from an employee slip and fall to a security breach can turn into a major liability. For a startup, it’s […]
