Last night, Built In Chicago’s monthly pitch took place again. Per usual, Rockit Bar hosted entrepreneurs, investors, and students excited about Chicago’s booming tech community. Here’s who pitched:
From the guy who brought you StageBloc Inc., Tom Giles has introduced his newest project: Mirrorgram, a photo and video app rooted around the idea that “symmetry is beautiful,” allowing users to create mirrored images on their iPhone. The first week after it’s launch, Mirrorgram was featured #1 New and Noteworthy by Apple. With new photo and video editing apps seeming to be all the rage right now, I’m confident that Mirrorgram will continue to make it’s way onto the home screens of many iPhones; in addition to Sophia Bush, Bon Iver, and 250,000 other users who already already loving the app.
Starter League students turned developers Tom, Scott, Brendan, and Ryan, have created LaunchPadLab, a web application development studio. With tons of startups popping out of no where these days, this is exactly what non-technical Chicagoans need: good people to build their apps. If you had any interest in seeing just what these developers could do last night, all you had to do was wait 3 minutes until...
Developed by LaunchPadLab and brought to you by adventure loving entrepreneurs Pete Stam and Paul Brogna, UrbanBuddy is exactly what it sounds like: your urban buddy, providing you with top-notch travel experiences by awesome people who have been around to experience it themselves. Based on the premise that “you’ll never get the most out of a place unless you have a friend to show you around,” UrbanBuddy will be that friend. I wish I had this when I spent 6 months in Europe, I think I’ll use it as an excuse to go back. Need help with market research, guys?!
A new social loyalty program that stands apart from the rest; BCKSTGR launched November 1st and has been cranking out rewards ever since. Opposed to typical rewards you’d find at other loyalty programs, BCKSTGR offers consumers exclusive one-of-a-kind experiences through their partnership with Mileage Plus, United Airlines’ award-winning loyalty program. BCKSTGR gives users reward miles based on their engagement in promoting participating brands on social media. You talk about a brand -> You get rewarded. On the business owner side, BCKSTGR focuses on growing your company, serving as a customer acquisition platform. It enables businesses to track consumer engagements on social media in order to promote their product, establish loyalty and continue engaging. The best part for business? Free until you get results.
I’ve wanted something like this to come out for literally the longest time. I am so excited. Ok so, how many times have you wanted to know how something is, without having to be there? I went to Matt and Kim at the Congress Theater this weekend. I wasn’t meeting up with friends, therefore had to guess what time the opener would end. I ended up going way too early. If Congress were on Evzdrop, I could have listened in to conversations and known exactly when to go. Get it? Evzdrop is the next generation location-based information network that lets you know what’s happening at certain places in real-time. You can find places that are trending or interest you, and they’ll be added to your feed. Users and business owners now have the ability to listen to what people are saying about places they are at right now, revolutionizing the customer experience on both fronts.
Photo courtesy of our friends at CrowdNoize! cc: @Go_Mene
