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Teri Grossheim
SE @JAMFSoftware | Contributor @Reverbdotcom @Technori | @DePaulMBA Candidate | Webmaster @AESorg Chicago | Musician & Audio | Boardsports

Technori B2B event showcases Chicago startups

Orion Henry, Heroku Founder

On January 26, the Technori B2B event took place at the Chase Auditorium in Chicago. The event began with a keynote by Orion Henry, founder of Heroku. Heroku is a foundational company that was an early pioneer in cloud computing. Heroku went on to be acquired by SalesForce, where it became a central component of the SalesForce App Cloud. In his keynote, Henry discussed the history of centralized cloud computing and his philosophical vision for a decentralized cloud infrastructure. According to Henry, a decentralized model for many classes of applications could work better than a centralized model, but presents challenges due to compilers and kernels. After doing a survey, he realized the technologies aren’t quite there for decentralized application model, as a result there is room for R&D. Henry mentioned iPython, Jupyter, AMS.js/Web Assembly, and WebRTC as possible technologies to support a decentralized application model. After the keynote was complete, five startups took the stage.

Occasion

Aksh Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO of Occasion, was the first startup to take the stage. Gupta discussed how services are more challenging to sell online than products, since it typically takes a conversation and the importance of relationship building. Occasion helps service businesses get rid of the cart with the “conversational checkout flow”. This differs from the traditional shopping cart experience in that the online transaction is done within one step and one screen, versus several steps with a traditional online cart. Occasion’s intention is to build an end-to-end solution for services business, providing management using data from transactions, customers, marketing, and operations. In just over two years, Occasion has over $10MM in merchant sales and is accepting venture capital funding.

AkoubaCredit

Chris Rentner, founder and CEO of AkoubaCredit, has started a SaaS solution for community and regional banks to streamline their small business lending to make it profitable again by increasing revenue, strengthening relationships, and providing regulatory compliance. Rentner cited that lending practices are largely stuck in the past, with paper applications and costly long processing times. In addition, AkoubaCredit allows banks to generate more revenue from small business loans due to bottom line improvement, by providing opportunities to scale. AkoubaCredit recently signed a contract with Metropolitan Capital Bank, Wintrust, and Standard Bank. Rentner is a graduate of the United States Merchant Marine Academy.

PeopleVine

Jordan Gilman, founder and Architect of PeopleVine, discussed how his startup helps companies create band affinity with their consumers through personalization on a mass scale. PeopleVine is a brand experience marketing platform built for brands, powered by agencies. By collecting data from a variety of channels, PeopleVine allows businesses to make precise decisions for targeted, relevant marketing with end consumers to increase conversion and loyalty. Companies such as LiveNation, Zipcar, Cigna are currently using PeopleVine. Gilman founded NorthText and Spider Web Design before starting PeopleVine.

Starchup

Nick Chapleau, Co-Founder and CEO, is helping bring local dry cleaners and laundry business into digital age by using technology to help save local businesses. Starchup helps these businesses with marketing and delivery logistics, which seem to be stuck in the past. Chapleau mentioned popular app Washio, which in his opinion was meant to demolish the laundry industry. Unlike these apps, Starchup gives local businesses mobile and web tools to support customer retention and optimize delivery, using a monthly subscription model and per transaction fee. Over 18 months of operations, Starchup spent under $150,000 and operating in six cities nationwide, with a recent launch of an international expansion. In addition, the Tide spin app has been launched on the Starchup platform. Chapleau has a JD from the University of Chicago.

Tribe

Henry Vasquez, CEO of Tribe, helps teams build trust by offering reliable collaboration between organizations. During the presentation, Vasquez describes Tribe as an invisible assistant that helps workers keep organized by providing tools for collaboration between multiple organizations, built to work on top of email. Tribe functions by creating an open task protocol so that different collaboration tools can talk to each other in a decentralized way. There is also Tribe Pro, a project management tool, starting at $10/month. Hundreds of businesses including Sprout Social, Accenture, and IDEO are a few of their current customers. Vasquez has also co-founded Earlybird Software and is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.