2020 was a year truly not like any other. Between the pandemic, racial justice movement and political upheaval in the United States, the year brought plenty of challenges and opportunities that were without precedent, completely turning the world on its head.
Amid all of this, we saw leaders of our local tech scene innovate and persevere, sometimes pivoting their businesses on a dime, all while also never losing sight of the struggles faced by their employees and communities.
Here at Built In, we’ve published hundreds of stories about how Chicago startups have responded to these historic times over the past year. Before we turn the page on 2020, we wanted to let the numbers do the talking as we share five of those stories that stood a cut above the rest, drumming up more views than any of the rest of our coverage over the course of these past 12 months.
From big IPOs and inspiring launches to massive hiring pushes, read on for the five most popular Chicago tech news stories we wrote this year.
#5. GoHealth raised a $913M IPO. In July, Chicago-based online health insurance marketplace GoHealth went public in a big way. On its first day on the Nasdaq exchange, GoHealth raised $914 million in capital, bringing its valuation to some $6.6 billion. At the time, the IPO represented the largest healthtech IPO of 2020, a year that has seen a lot of activity in that space. An incredible success story of the Chicago tech community, the company is continuing to grow and is currently hiring for dozens of open roles including opportunities on its data, engineering and HR teams.
#4. Chicago will be home to the first Black-owned stock exchange. Also this summer, we reported on the efforts of investor Bill Ellison and lawyer Joe Cecala to launch The Dream Exchange, a Black-owned stock exchange that will focus on featuring smaller companies, particularly those that are minority-owned, that want to go public. The exchange is slated to go live as a listing site in late 2021. In the meantime, the company offers a free platform allowing businesses to connect with investors. By being successful, Ellison told Built In, he hopes the companies listed on the exchange will “create a lot of jobs for a lot of people, a lot of communities, and we’d love to see that.”
#3. Numerator is opening a new HQ. In January, data tech giant Numerator announced its plans to open a massive, 60,000-square-foot new global headquarters in what was formerly the Marshall Field building. At the time, the space was due to be completed in 2021, and according to Numerator CFO Regan Garrett, the company remains eager to open its new headquarters in full compliance with COVID-19 mitigation restrictions. The company has already increased its Chicago-area headcount by 15 percent this year and plans to continue to grow. It currently about 23 open Chicago-based roles listed on its careers page.
#2. Chief, a network for women executives, launched in Chicago. March brought the news that Chief, a New York-based private network for women executives at the VP level and up, was expanding its footprint and setting down roots in Chicago. The network aims to take on the boys’ club mentality of tech leadership and had plans for a Chicago clubhouse to open in the summer. Due to the pandemic, Chief is sticking to a virtual-only approach to networking for now, but has still expanded its presence into both San Francisco and Boston in 2020, in addition to raising a fresh $15 million funding round in May.
#1. Google is hiring thousands in Chicago to diversify its workforce. In October, Google unveiled a new push for the tech giant to hire 10,000 new employees at its offices in Chicago, Atlanta, NYC and Washington, D.C., over the next five years. It is part of the company’s effort to double its number of Black employees by 2025. Currently, Google has two offices in Chicago and employs about 600 people locally. The company is also working to increase its number of people from underrepresented backgrounds in senior-level positions by 30 percent nationally.
