#50ONFIRE: The 18 People and Companies Heating Up B2C Tech in Chicago (Packback & ParkWhiz)
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This week we announced the 150 nominees for 50 on Fire, Chicago Inno’s winter awards event. The nominees represent the people and companies that are making moves in Chicago’s tech scene across several industries, including B2B tech; B2C tech; education; marketing and advertising; civic; investment; health and medicine; food, dining and delivery; and lifestyle, fashion and fitness.
To give you a closer look at the nominees, we wanted to highlight the contestants in each sector to show you how they are heating up Chicago’s tech scene. (A group of judges will determine the 50 winners). Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be publishing deep dives into the different sectors, starting now with B2C tech.
Here are the 18 B2C tech nominees for 50 on Fire:
Adam Justice, Vice President and General Manager, Grid Connect
Justice is leading the development of one of the industry’s first Apple HomeKit-enabled devices to hit the market. Envisioning how the Internet of Things could change the way consumers interact with their homes, Justice transformed Grid Connect, a small components manufacturer and distributor of networking products, into a cutting-edge technology products company, launching a line of ConnectSense wireless sensors in 2013 that monitor for changes in the presence of water, humidity, motion, light and other variables. In 2015, Justice spearheaded one of the first product initiatives with the Apple HomeKit, and announced the ConnectSense Smart Outlet, an Internet-connected electrical socket that turns run-of-the-mill household appliances into smart devices that can be controlled via app or Siri voice control.
Anthony Watson, Founding Partner and Head of Business Development, ShipBob
Watson, the youngest of the 5 founding partners at ShipBob, has been at the company since its second month after graduating from the Y Combinator. Since joining the team, Watson has led the business development team with co-founder Jivko Bojinov in growing ShipBob 30% month over month since inception. Founded in 2014, ShipBob helps small businesses ship their items more easily. With the ShipBob app, users take a picture of what they want shipped, note where and how they want it shipped, and a ShipBob agent will pick it up, package it, and mail it out. ShipBob, which earlier this year raised a $1 million seed round, says it eliminates the need of manually mailing items and waiting in at the post office.
In September, consumer lending platform Avant closed a $325 million Series E, bringing its total funding in equity to over $600 million and its total in debt to $1.1 billion. In less than three years, Avant has grown from a three person startup to 730+ employees. Its latest round of capital now values Avant at over $1 billion, cementing it as Chicago’s latest unicorn. Avant uses big data and machine-learning algorithms to improve and streamline the way consumers borrow money, and it has given over $1.8 billion in loans through its platform.
Last November Curiosity, looking to operate more like a startup, spun off from Discovery Communications. They raised a $6 million Series A round and launched a new app to help people learn five new things everyday. Curiosity, which operates like a “Pandora for Education Content,” aggregates online education content to help users discover web-based courses, classes and tutorials from e-learning sources.
David Kalt, Founder and CEO, Reverb.co
Reverb.com is Kalt’s third straight success story. His first–Third Party Solutions–was the first CRM for travel agents, his second–optionsXpress–was the first online broker for equity options traders, and now his third is the first e-commerce site specifically for musicians and collectors. Reverb.com, in just its 3rd year, will hit $130 million in transactions, and it just launched Reverb Lessons, a platform for connecting aspiring musicians with experienced, qualified teachers and instructors.
Jessica Gandham, Co-Founder and Lead Designer, Packback
After appearing on Shark Tank and snagging an investment from Mark Cuban, Grandham has helped make Packback one of Chicago’s most recognizable startups. Packback offers short-term textbook rentals for $5 or less, attempting to disrupt the decades-old model of bookstores selling expensive books that are only opened a few times a year.
Kate Drane, Senior Director of Tech Outreach, Indiegogo
Kate Drane is helping grow Indiegogo’s presence in Chicago. Having arrived in January, Drane has built crowdfunding partnerships with 1871, Catalyze Chicago, Chicago MakerBiz and the soon-to-be-open Innovation Island run by the University of Illinois.
Leah Potkin, Head of Customer Care, SpotHero
As SpotHero’s Head of Customer Care, Potkin has made a customer service mindset a priority throughout the entire company. She developed a customer-oriented “Hero Day” program where all of SpotHero’s employees, including CEO Mark Lawrence, spend a day learning the ropes of customer service by taking customer service calls in real time. Hero Days help every employee better understand customer concerns, questions and feedback.
LyteShot creates an Augmented Reality gaming platform that turns any place in the world into a gaming arena. With the company’s mobile app system and sensor-based devices, users can play or create physical, immersive experiences. For example, LyteShot’s first game, Assassin, is an “action shooter” that enables players to go out into their community or city, searching for friends and “firing” the sensors once a target is spotted and in-range. Assassin has already received a number of awards and recognition including: CES 2015 Innovation Award; Augmented World Expo 2015 Auggie Award – Best Game; SXSW 2015 Accelerator Finalist – Entertainment; Game Connection 2015 – Most Creative & Original Project; and TechCrunch Hardware Battlefield 2015 – Finalist.
Martin J. Logan, Chief Information Officer, Guaranteed Rate
As the Chief Information Officer of Guaranteed Rate, Logan heads all of Guaranteed Rate’s tech-based initiatives, from networking and helpdesk to application development and launching new products like the World’s First Digital Mortgage. Logan created the Digital Mortgage, which was launched in June 2015, to make getting a mortgage significantly faster, easier and more secure.
Mike Zivin, CEO, Whittl
Zivin helped lead Whittl, a platform that helps people find, schedule, and pay for local services like dentists, barbers, and spas, to a $3.3 million Series A round in June. Incorporating key features from several other thriving tech companies, Whittl lets users reserve appointment slots like OpenTable, pay in advance and exit seamlessly like Uber, and search availability by ratings like Yelp.
Overdog offers an Xbox One app that helps people game with others who have similar interests in sports, music, movies and more. Instead of gaming with anonymous people in your favorite games, you can play with people who share your interests. Overdog’s Co-Founder and President Hunter Hillenmeyer played eight seasons for the Chicago Bears, during five of which he served as a Board Member for the NFLPA.
Previously, Parche was a valet parking app that partnered with local agencies and provides customers a convenient and cashless parking option in an outdated industry dominated by cash-only and shady practices. But Parshe is now changing its business model entirely by becoming a valet operator itself. Parche is now a local Chicago business hiring local workers, and says it’s proudly paying their employees a living wage and fully complying with City code.
Launched in 2006, ParkWhiz has been helping people find affordable parking for almost a decade. The company, which raised $10 million in funding last year, is in over 150 cities. Its app lets you search for your destination and see available parking spots near you. It shows the location and price of each spot and allows you to prepay for the parking spot from your phone.
In August, almost 10 years to the day after the company first launched, Polyera unveiled its first product: the Wove Band, a wearable smart band with a flexible display that can wrap around the user’s wrist. The band has a low power touch screen e-ink display that can lay flat or wrap around someone’s wrist. Unlike typical wearables or even curved screen displays which use rigid materials to mount screens, Polyera’s screen can literally bend, twist, fold, or flex to nearly any degree while functioning as a smart wearable.
Since launching in February of 2013, Raise has raised $87.2 million in funding and employs over 240 people in Chicago. Raise, a marketplace for buying and selling gift cards, says its iOS and Android apps have seen millions of downloads, and it recently acquired local start up Tastebud Technologies. Raise did $100 million in revenue in just 14 months after launching, according to Forbes, who values the company at $500 million.
Draft Kings and Fan Duel might be getting most of the headlines, but there’s a daily fantasy sports startup in Chicago that’s making some serious moves of its own. SportsLock combines the betting, real-money component of daily leagues with the social element of season-long platforms by packaging fantasy games into NCAA-style brackets. The company raised a $5 million Series A in June, and counts Robert Dupuy, the former COO of Major League Baseball, as an investor.
Tanvas closed a $5 million Series A round this year to enable users of touch devices to feel what they see. For example, on your touch screen you can feel the feathers of a bird you’re researching, or the fabric on a sweater you’re about to buy. The technology looks to not only change how people use touch devices, but allow apps, websites, and games, to physically interact with users.