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Cappex + Leon Heller + Mike Moyer + Jace Mouse

Logotagline3 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 + Aza Raskin + Jono DiCarlo + Atul Varma + Andrew Wilson

Humanized 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 watch the video to appreciate the program, but dozens of other tasks, like capitalizing a sentence, defining a word, checking spelling--all are made easier.

It's not every day a Chicago start-up launches to a praise from Walt Mossberg in the WSJ and interface guru Don Norman (among others). The team of four co-founders is a smart bunch with quite a varied background. One interesting anecdote, the President of Humanized, Aza Raskin, is the son of Jef Raskin, the inventor of the Macintosh.

Dimensions: 4 people people x ~1 year (2006) x $NDA
Funding: Angel funding
Customers: Anyone who uses a computer
Location: Chicago + www.humanized.com

 

ParkWhiz + Aashish Dalal + Jon Thornton

Pwlogo_big ParkWhiz's product is simple, a searchable directory all the available parking in a city. Type in the address of your destination and you will see a map of all the parking options, complete with cost and the hours it is available. But in addition to conventional parking garages, the ParkWhiz directory is open to anyone who has owns a parking spot (or even a driveway) and wants to make it available for rent.

ParkWhiz was started by Aashish Dalal and Jon Thornton. The company began out of Aashish's own frustration finding parking around Chicago. Meanwhile, Jon Thornton was a student of a professor researching ways to improve the discovery of available parking. Aashish discovered this research when exploring the business idea and ParkWhiz was born.

Dimensions: ~5 people x 6 months (2006) x $NDA
Funding: $10K FastPitch competition, Navteq LBS challenge, and private
Customers: Anyone who drives and has trouble finding parking
Location: Chicago + www.parkwhiz.com

PerkSpot + Chris Hill

Perkspot_logoWhen 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.

PerkSpot was started by Chris Hill in 2006. He left his job in private equity after coming up with the idea and has had nice uptake from clients in a relatively short amount of time. Clients like offering perks to their employees, and the discount-offering companies like the unique marketing opportunity.

Dimensions: 2 people people x 1 year (2006) x $NDA
Funding: Owner funded
Customers: Employers, educational institutions, and professional associations
Location: Chicago [Lakeview] + www.perkspot.com

PeopleFilter + Frank Pirri + Kevin Harrison

Peoplefilter_logoIf 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.

PeopleFilter (formerly Talentology) was founded by Frank Pirri and Kevin Harrison. The two founded PeopleFilter after selling MyPoints.com for $113 million in 2001, a company they were founding members of. The idea for PeopleFilter came from their frustration with hiring while at MyPoints. They raised a round of angel funding from friends and family while signing up customers like US Cellular. They closed a $4.5 million round in January of 2006.

Dimensions: ~45 people people x 6 years (2001) x $2 million in 2005
Funding: $1.2 million angel + $4.5 million VC from Cities Capital Funds (Cincinnati), Velocity Equity Partners (Boston)
Customers: HR departments of large companies
Location: Chicago [Arlington Heights] + www.peoplefilter.com

Motorola + Galvins + Ed Zander

Motorola_logoNow let us praise Motorola. It's the #1 cell phone player in the U.S. (#2 and closing on Nokia worldwide) and 2) the #1 cable box/IP set-up/DVR maker (vs. Cisco's Scientific Atlanta). Combine those two critical consumer platforms with their recent design and innovation leadership, and that makes this Chicago-area giant among the most influential technology companies worldwide - with the likes of Apple and Samsung. Other divisions include communications infrastructure, semiconductors (spun off as Freescale in 2004), and soon more mobile-related content delivery with recent acquisitions of Symbol Technology (enterprise mobility and RFID), Good Technology (mobile computing) and Tut Systems (video encoding and distribution).

Motorola (originally Galvin Mfg) has played a role in many technology developments since the radio - the 'motor' portion of their name came from their car radio product. Lots of mission critical military communications (walkie-talkies), battery, chip innovations as well as early global wireless handsets and six sigma were created at Motorola. It was a family firm run by the Galvin's (Chris is now Chairman of NAVTEQ) until Ed Zander (former COO/President of Sun Microsystems) took the reigns of a turnaround in 2004. 

Dimensions:  70,000 people x 78 years x $41B
Funding: Founders, probably; Public markets. 
Customers: Phone companies, consumers, cable companies, carriers
Location: Chicago [Schaumburg] + www.motorola.com

CohesiveFT + Patrick Kerpan, Alexis Richardson, Craig Heimark, Dwight Koop

Cohesiveft_logoCohesiveFT 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 team behind CohesiveFT is a seasoned one: Patrick Kerpan (CTO) was previously CTO of Borland after they acquired the company he founded, Bedouin; Alexis Richardson (Bus. Dev) previously founded MetaLogic; Craig Heimark (CEO) is an advisor to OCA Ventures and previously CIO of SBC Warburg; and Dwight Koop (COO) was a founding member of the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) in addition to a senior manager at Borland, Swiss Bank, and Continental Bank.

Dimensions:  ~10 people x 1 year x TBD
Funding: TBD
Customers: Initial customers are financial institutions
Location: Chicago, Palo Alto, London + www.cohesiveft.com

Viewpoints Network + Matt Moog

Viewpoints_logoThe 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.

Viewpoints Network was founded by Matt Moog who was with Q Interactive for the last 10 years (last 5 as CEO). In July of 2006, Matt founded Viewpoints. By August Matt raised $4.7 million (a few different Chicago VCs contributed to this) and not long after the operating team was assembled. This crew consists of a few former Q Interactive employees, plus Leon Chism, former Chief Internet Architect at Orbitz.

Dimensions: 7 people x 6 months x TBD
Funding: $4.7 Series A round. Participants included Lon Chow, J.B. Pritzker, Matt McCall
Customers: Consumers making major life purchases
Location: Chicago [Loop] + www.viewpoints.com

ZapTel + Ron Reimann

Zaptel 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.

Ron has founded or been involved in multiple ventures. He founded Baler software in 1989, where he met Bob Geras as an investor. He joined Doug Grimsted at Geneer and helped grow the company to $22MM. He joined Scott Woodard at ShowingTime and helped successfully reposition the firm on its current footing. In 2003, using all the experience and a desire to own a business again, he bought a modest, online phone card company. Using SEO, SEM and smart sampling, he quickly tripled the company's revenues in 18 months and now manages the very profitable company remotely from a large boat in Lake Michigan. In 2006 the company made INCs top 500 fastest growing companies.

Dimensions:  8 people x 3 years x $3MM
Funding: Founder
Customers: International students and others needing to call home cheaply
Location: Chicago [Rolling Meadows] + www.zaptel.com 

LocalLaunch + Justin Sanger + Brad Geddes

Locallaunch Imagine you own a small, local, offline business, and you've got to figure out where to put your scarce resources against the online marketing. LocalLaunch began by creating RegisterLocal - allowing business owner to distribute their basic profile (address, phone, categories) to all the major online directories with a single entry. They extended the model to a unified dashboard (PAD or Personal Advertising Dashboard) for simplify management of local SEM campaigns across multiple PPC search engines and directories.

Before founding LocalLaunch in 2003, Justin started and ran online marketing firm Pulsity over six years. Brad has written on SEO and SEM via ebooks, major search engine sites as well as speaking events from PPC's inception. He founded iDjinni Consulting in 2002 and joined LocalLaunch two years later. LocalLaunch was was acquired in 2006 by R.H. Donnelley, the country's leading yellow pages and directory publisher.

Dimensions:  40 people x 3 years x NDA
Funding: Founders 
Customers: Small local businesses, local search directories
Location: Chicago [Downtown] + www.locallaunch.com