Tech roundup: Momentum Award winners, Raise and ReviewTrackers' new hires, and more

by James Risley
October 13, 2016

Civis Analytics, @properties and others win big at the Momentum Awards

The Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center’s Momentum Awards were awarded last week, with top honors going to some of Chicago’s A-list tech companies. Civis Analytics took home the Rising Star Award, while Impact Engine CEO Jessica Droste Yagan took home the Chicagoness Award. The 2016 Merrick Momentum Award was given to @properties. [Chicago Tribune]

 

Polsky Incubator’s latest cohort announced

University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation announced the companies accepted to its latest incubator cohort this week. The 10 companies range from medical device creators to a social network and e-commerce platform for artists. The companies get mentorship and office space at the Polsky Exchange. Half of the cohort is also the inaugural class for the Polsky Incubator Fintech Program, giving them access to various financial industry tools and specialized mentors. [Press release]

 

Raise makes two C-suite hires

This week, Raise brought on a new chief people officer and chief financial officer. CPO Maureen Calabrese comes from Cision, and will focus on improving performance of Raise employees in her new role. CFO Jillian Sheehan will add structure and process to Raise’s business. [Raise blog]

 

kCura teams up with Microsoft to ease legal discovery

Legal e-discovery software provider kCura is bringing its software to the most popular productivity suite on the market. The company announced a new integration with Office 365 that allows Relativity users to securely move files from Office 365 into Relativity or the new cloud-based version, RelativityOne, for review. kCura also added single sign-on capabilities for accessing cases, and the option to move cases with a high-speed data transfer from on-premises Relativity instances to RelativityOne. [Press release]

 

ReviewTrackers brings on new sales team leader

Josh Fosburg is joining ReviewTrackers’ executive team as vice president of sales. The former Jellyvision sales VP will improve sales processes as the company adds enterprise clients. At Jellyvision, he grew the sales team from one person to 50, and will similarly look to hire new sales talent for ReviewTrackers as well. [Blog post]

 

Nearly $25M in funding for Chicago’s tech ecosystem this week

In yet another big money week for Chicago tech, three companies announced fresh funding rounds. In the past three weeks, the city has seen more than $50 million in tech funding — despite a recent report showing VC activity is cooling.

  • ActiveCampaign (pictured above) scored the largest round, with $20 million going toward new hires across the board. The company has gone from 14 to 75 since the start of 2015.
  • FourKites raised $13 million, also with a focus on new hires as the shipment tracking firm adds to its 2.5 million tracked logging devices.
  • Techstars Chicago 2015 graduate Hooks raised $750,000 to provide more push notifications on more than 3 million topics. The company said it is now sending more than 2 million notifications some days. [Chicago Inno]

Images via Shutterstock, Twitter, LinkedIn featured companies

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