Last night, a friendly crowd of entrepreneurs, students, investors, engineers and others enjoyed snacks and drinks as five new companies pitched their stories upstairs at Rockit Bar & Grill.
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First up was Daniel Stanford from HugBoard, a collaborative digital pinboard where people can post inspirational cards for loved ones who need support. Stanford said the idea arose when his mom started training for her 5K and, soon after, his cousin shipped off to boot camp after enlisting in the Army. He wanted a way to send them encouraging messages that was less cheesy than ecards. According to him, “This is the next best thing to a group hug.”
Next was Jay Hoffman, CEO and founder of RocketMiles, a travel startup that rewards hotel bookings with airline miles. I wrote about this company a month ago when the team raised $2 million in seed funding. Today, RocketMiles operates in 32 cities, up from 25 at the end of April. Hoffman says the average business traveler’s stay earns him or her 7,000 miles, or over 3,000 per night. Use code BUILTINCHICAGO to earn an extra thousand miles with your first booking.
Appropriately, a cross-device web app for business travelers, BTSocial, hit the stage next. Tim Hines described it as a way for nomadic professionals to maximize their captive downtime with networking. The app allows users to check in, locate nearby professionals in the network, create events and plan meetups. LinkedIn logins allow users to see others’ professional details and figure out whether they’d like to meet up, perhaps over drinks at a hotel or airport bar.
ForGoods, which rewards volunteers with loyalty points, is run by Beth Bond, who wants to get people off the couch in front of American Idol. According to her, more Americans watched that show and The Voice last week than volunteered in all of 2012. She rewards volunteers for hours, social sharing and feedback, while providing a project management system that currently runs in Chicago and LA. Next month, she’ll launch nationally at the Points of Light summit in Washington, D.C.
Finally, FunderHut co-founder Dan Salganik shared a community-driven approach to crowdfunding. Inspired by the lack of benches on downtown Chicago streets, Salganik realized he could team up with members of his community to bring projects to fruition. Unlike other crowdfunding sites, FunderHut seeks to encourage members of the same community to provide financial support to each other. At five months old, the team is now seeking investment and in-house developers.
Once the pitches ended, the crowd turned to networking, exchanging business cards and, let’s be honest, sneaking peeks at the Blackhawks game on the screens around the bar. Go Hawks!
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