Last night we had 300+ attendees and introduced five awesome startups at the first Built in Chicago Monthly Meetup. If you missed it, don't worry we will see you all in March!
We have lots of great photos from the event that you can check out on our Facebook page.
If you attended, let us know what you thought of the event in the comments.
Here's the quick recap:
Matt Moog, the Founder of Viewpoints and Built in Chicago welcomed the crowd and made a few announcements. First, Built In Chicago, in partnership with CEC and 1871, will continue hosting the monthly meetups moving forward. We will also partner on some other initiatives..stay tuned. Matt also announced the inaugural Built In Chicago Digital Awards Ceremony on June 22, 2012. This will be the Opening Party of TechWeek and will be an awesome way to get national recognition for our companies! More on this in the next few months...
CEC President Kevin Willer shared some details about 1871. If you are looking for office space for your startup, you should definitely consider making 1871 your new home. They're getting lots of applications and space is limited, so the sooner you apply the better. Also, they will be hosting more weekend hard hat tours. Sign up for their newsletter (bottom part of page) or follow them on twitter at @1871Chicago for the most up date news.
Rishi Roongta from New World Ventures and Techweek Co-Founder John Pasky announced the Chicago SXSW party in Austin, TX on March 12, 2012. Join Built In Chicago and other local organizations as we showcase Chicago startups Braintree, GrubHub, GiveForward, Belly, Groovebug, CodeAcademy, Sittercity and FeeFighters. Let us know if you plan to attend
Megan Kashner presented Benevolent: A crowd-giving platform that helps meet one time needs for individuals in low income circumstances. Megan wrote a great post about Benevolent and the meetup that can be read here.
Scott Roberts presented Favo.rs: A place where founders and professionals broadcast and fulfill each other's requests for help. They make it really easy and fun to network, you should sign up today.
Zach Haller presented Found in Town: They give you tags with unique codes for your keys, phone, or other personal items. If you lose an item that's been registered, you can check their website to see if it's been recovered (It's free to register & get tags). Zach was recently interviewed by TimeOut Magazine, you can check it out here.
Ella Lief presented Venue Cricket: The site allows anyone with an event space to create a profile complete with photos, descriptive information, and an availability calendar. Users of the site can then filter venues according to their criteria and book their chosen venues online.
Dave Chung presented Weatherist: An online weather service that provides users with the Most Probable Forecast for their area. Unlike traditional weather forecast services, Weatherist.com reviews local, national and user-generated forecasts, grades them based off of actual results and only displays the highest rated data. Their predictions are the most accurate in the Chicago area, so there's really no reason why you shouldn't be using the site.
