Remember last May when 1871 had just launched? The Chicago tech community was glowing with pride; you could feel the buzz all the way up in Evanston! Well, that frenzy, it hasn’t gone away. And that’s all due to the companies in 1871 that continue to impress audiences on either coast and bring well-deserved attention to Chicago.
So much is going on within 1871 that we at least wanted to catch up with a few 1871 companies this season that you should be sure to keep a close eye on over the coming months. Below are the highlights from Built In Chicago’s Q&A sessions with each company to look out for.
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OpenAirplane: makes renting an airplane as easy as renting a car. This bootstrapped company offers a universal pilot checkout, which means that, if pilots demonstrate their proficiency annually, they can check out airplanes around the country instead of demonstrating their proficiency every time they rent a plane. This helps pilots to get more value out of their pilot certificate (over 3,000 have signed up already!) and also benefits aircraft operators by helping them to monetize their planes.
Why they do what they do: Cofounder Rod Rakic put it simply: “We are fixing a broken market,” he said. OpenAirplane is fixing the expensive, redundant process of renting an airplane by taking technology from other companies, like Airbnb, in other marketplaces and applying it to private aviation.
Why you should keep tabs on them: Just this week, OpenAirplane added eight more airports to its list of participants. Now with 14 participating airports nationwide, the four-person team is focused on growing that number to 25 by the end of 2013. “We are on track to blow that goal away,” Rakic said. After that, there’s no stopping them from bringing all 5,500 public-use airports in the US on board!
1871 works for them because: their team is often scattered around the country at different airports. 1871 has been not only provided the team with flexible nights and weekends membership, but has helped them develop from an idea to a business with customers and revenue. Being in 1871 is similar “to enrolling in an MBA program,” Rakic said, because you are able to have in-depth conversations with people like Chuck Templeton and other mentors.
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AdYapper: is a real-time tool that lets marketers track their digital ad spend, so that with just 10 minutes of work, waste is identified and eliminated. In addition to the suite of analytics that they provide, AdYapper also provides viewability monitoring with a technology that knows where an ad is on the page, when somebody scrolls down to see it and how long the viewer spends in front of it. “On average, what we are seeing across our major clients is that 30 to 40 percent of their ads are seen and the rest is just complete waste,” CEO Elliot Hirsch said.
Why they do what they do: We started AdYapper as a way for consumers to give feedback on ads, but we realized the data we had was really valuable. Now we are a real-time analytics platform. We still have that feedback aspect as a feature now. September 2011.
Why they are a startup to look out for: AdYapper just completed TechStars New York (ahem, 1,700 companies applied and 11 got picked!) and now they are setting up for major growth. They are looking to hire a senior systems engineer, a front-end developer and sales team members in the next three months. Also, Hirsch said an exciting funding announcement will be shared soon.
Why they can’t get enough 1871: “We can’t say enough good things about 1871,” Hirsch said. “It’s where we met a whole bunch of mentors who are absolutely critical for us and where we met investors who really saw something in us.”
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SimpleRelevance: emails relevant content to customers with extreme simplicity (hence the name). Through optimizing email messages and automating delivery, SimpleRelevance is already generating millions of dollars of incremental revenue for its clients; for every dollar their clients pay, about $20 of incremental revenue is generated, CEO Erik Severinghaus said.
Why they do what they do: Severinghaus helped to found iContact during his time at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and it grew to be the third largest email service provider in the country. Later, while he was working for IBM, he realized that “most companies send the same email to everyone on their list. What they might call personalization might be a little bit of AB testing or something like putting a first name in the subject line.” The personalization tools that were out there were too difficult for marketers to effectively send emails – and he set out to fix that.
Why you should watch them: SimpleRelevance has grown by about 8x so far this year and raised over $1 million in total capital (closing on $700,000 right before starting their current TechStars program). Look out for them at TechStars’s Demo Day on August 28 where they might be demoing some of their “really disruptive” earlier stage technology. “We are trying to decide what we are ready to show off,” Severinghaus said.
Why they dig 1871: They’ve grown from a team of four to a team of 22, including part-time employees and interns, while at 1871. “We see tremendous value from the space,” Severinghaus said. “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say it really is the beating heart of Chicago’s entrepreneurial scene at this point; it is the focal point of early stage entrepreneurship.”
