Cappex + Leon Heller + Mike Moyer + Jace Mouse
Cappex has set out to improve the college admissions process by helping universities and students connect. High school students fill out a profile on Cappex and receive invitations to apply to universities they may have never heard about otherwise. Meanwhile, Cappex works one-on-one with colleges to help them target appropriate students. The service is free students and most colleges, it will be advertiser supported.
The founder of Cappex, Leon Heller, was previously chairman and CEO of FastWeb until it was sold to Monster in in 2001. Also on the core team are Mike Moyer and Jace Mouse. Mike has held sales and marketing roles with a variety of companies including RealNetworks and Bissell. Jace has held technology roles at Orbitz, Cars.com, iExplore, and State Farm Insurance.
Dimensions: <50 people x ~1 year (2006) x $NDA
Funding: Private investors
Customers: Students trying to choose a college, pay for college, or choose a career
Location: Chicago [Highland Park] + www.cappex.com
Humanized is a small start-up on the north side of Chicago that is re-thinking the way you interact with your computer. Their product, Enso, takes simple tasks you do every day, in lots of your applications, and makes them easier. If you are writing an email and need to multiple two numbers, with Enzo you can just multiply, no need to launch a separate calculator program. You have to 
When considering a new job offer, do you consider the perks? Discounted health club membership, movie tickets, cell phone plans--PerkSpot makes it easy for companies to offer perks like these to their employees. PerkSpot negotiate the deals with HP, Cingular, Enterprise, TicketsNow and dozens of other partners. They create a branded portal that plugs into your employee intranet so all employees can enjoy the perks.
Art Roldan's latest start-up, SecurePipe, was just acquired by AmbironTrustWave in January 2007. SecurePipe was Art's sixth start-up. Prior to this was Novarra where Art was CEO; Kettle Partners and JK&B Capital were both investors and 
If you have posted a job on Monster or CareerBuilder and been flooded with applicants, then you could use an Applicant Tracking System like PeopleFilter. Their software helps you search, sort, and manage incoming resumes for each job opening. There are a lot of competing companies who have popped up in the past few years, but PeopleFilter's unique spin is to automatically analyzes resumes to determine how good of a fit each person is.
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Lee Rosenberg is currently President and CEO of LRSmedia. LRSmedia creates music-focused entertainment programming (Legends of Jazz, SOUNDSTAGE). Lee has a long history of investment and entrepreneurship in Chicago. In 1996 he founded Kettle Partners Venture Capital along with 
CohesiveFT is trying to make the installation of enterprise software as easy as installing desktop software. Currently, installing an enterprise CRM system is quite a bit more complex than upgrading your copy of Microsoft Outlook. CohesiveFT is simplifying this process by creating "virtual appliances." A virtual appliances is a huge file that is an "image" of a whole computer. Inside this file is an operating system, supporting software, and any special configuration. All the customer has to do is load up the virtual appliance and they have an exact copy of a perfectly setup server.
The last time you bought a big ticket item--house, car, medical services, college education, electronics--did you use the web to do research? 85% of consumers answer "Yes" to this question, but in spite of this, can you name a company that dominates this research space? Viewpoints Network plans to become the leader in providing high-quality reviews for the major purchases in life, and to do this, they are assembling a group of a few hundred online reviewers.
There are lots of places to buy international prepaid phone cards, but no one makes it quite as easy as ZapTel. A few clicks to purchase, and your calling code is delivered via email. In additional to simplifying calling card plans, they also provide online management of call records and billing so you can track and refill your account. 
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When children want to have a little fun learning their multiplication tables, and teachers want a ready-made quiz they can download for to their class--FunBrain makes them both happy. With educational games for children K-8, and tools for teachers to find, create, and grade quizzes, the site claims the title of #1 education site for kids and teachers. Even back in 2000, the site would draw 35 million page views per month and was consistently ranked one of the top 5 most popular children's sites on the web. Today it still remains one of the top 1000 most trafficked internet sites in the US (according to Alexa.com).
As a Chicago grocer, it would be exciting to see sales on your bananas up 3% for the month; until you learn that sales for all other Chicago grocers are up 10%. FreshLook makes analysis like this possible with its detailed sales tracking data for fruits, vegetables, cheese, meats, bakery items, and all the other perishable foods. They provide this data to growers, manufacturers, retailers--all parties involved in the perishable food industry.
Chris is the founder and CEO of Cleversafe, a unique data storage company, and the latest in a series of ventures Chris founded. Most recent was MusicNow, sold to Circuit City in 2004. Prior to that was Cruise Technologies, a dominant supplier of wireless thin client technology. Chris is an inventor on over 30 patents (issued & pending), has testified before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs on music copyright, and is an avid poker player.
Dan first founded Snapdragon Technologies, a Boston-based IT consulting firm, and merged it with Wired Business. He became their CTO and in '98 morphed the company into a nationwide DSL provider. He had a brief stint with a new start-up and then joined Driveitaway (started in Boston, but the venture brought him to Chicago). Today he is VP of Technology for Sittercity and Chairman of the Nanotechnology Alliance. Dan went to Brown University.
Jamie is best known as the founder and CEO of Performics - an online marketing firm that was an early advocate of text ads and helped spur the adoption of Overture and Google AdWords. He built the firm with Stuart Frankel and Chris Heneger, and sold in 2004 to DoubleClick for $60MM+. Since then he has served as a Director at PRIMIS Marketing Group until it was acquired in 2006. There he worked with Dan DiCaro who, like Stu and Chris, worked with 
Next time you walk into Jewel grocery store, you can scan you Preferred Card and you'll receive a print out of a dozen coupons for items targeted based on your past purchases. This program -- called Avenu -- drives increased sales for retailers, trial for product manufacturers, as well as some savings for consumers. Already in 500 Jewel and Albertson's stores, the system is delivers much higher conversion than traditional couponing.
The convergence of all the communication technologies is happening all around us: television on your cell phone, phone calls from your computer, e-mail from your cell pocket. Great Software Laboratory (GS Lab) is building an expertise in this area by delivering custom software applications for clients in this space as they patiently work towards a more productized platform.
Bob is currently CEO of Goliath Solutions - a provide tracking for in-store displays and promotions - where he works with Gary Overhultz (an IRI vet). Bob was previously President of FastWEB, provider of financial aid information to students until it was sold to Monster in 2002. Before that, he was Chairman of FunBrain which was sold to Pearson in 2001. He also did time at iXL, IBM, and graduated from Indiana University. 
Eric co-founded and edits Freshwater Venture with 
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You're probably reading this on one of the 500 Million PCs where Installshield has helped you add/remove 80% of the software sitting on your hard drive. For PC software developers it eliminates the need to wrestle with the install and configuration issues - a major source of application failures. For you, it provides for an experience as simple as Next > Next > Finish. 
Peter is COO and works with Kate Edwards at CenterPost. He was previously VP of Fixed Operations for AutoNation. Before that, he and Kate worked together at CCC, where he was President & COO at their DriveLogic venture and CMO. He was held leadership positions at ChoiceParts, ADP Hollander, and was founder of Sales Master Systems. He got his BA at University of Minnesota, magna cum laude.
Steve and his partner Bruce Barron run Origin Ventures, an early stage VC firm. He's invested in VHT (where he works with Brian Balduf and sits on the board with 
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