The Techstars Chicago’s Demo Day took place earlier with month with 12 companies, many from Chicago, having the opportunity to pitch their ideas and startups. The live event was hosted by Techstars Chicago and 1871, a highly acclaimed accelerator program and tech group.
The startups that presented at the event were a part of the 2022 Techstars Chicago accelerator cohort that was announced back in June. Over the past three months, these companies and their founders completed programming put together by Techstars and received mentorship from other CEOs.
“The true value of the Techstars experience is the connections you foster with the people around you. The lifelong bonds that get formed throughout [the] program and long thereafter are hard to quantify but are consistently the number one benefit our founders say they experience from the program,” Neal Sáles-Griffin, managing director of Techstars Chicago, said back in June.
These are the companies that took the stage this year at the 2022 Techstars Demo Day.
BāKIT Box is raising cultural awareness through baking with its easy-to-use meal kits. The company has an online platform where customers can select from diverse recipes and have ingredients delivered to their doorsteps. According to co-founders Shelley Gupta and Carla Medina Jacobson, they started the company to teach others about different cultural cuisines and make baking more accessible.
BāKIT Box is based in Chicago and has raised $537,000 in pre-seed funding along with $55,000 in grants since launching, according to Techstars. To date, the company has done over $40,000 in sales and has hundreds of subscribed and one-time purchase customers.
Bekome is helping women treat their anxiety through a self-developed, three-prong approach that involves education, supplementation and consultation. The company is based in Chicago and helps treat anxiety with natural supplements meant to improve gut health. On its website, bekome sells supplements and provides daily routines for people to follow with the aim to improve their anxiety.
According to Techstars, Bekome has raised $145,000 in funding and $30,000 in grants. According to the company, 93 percent of its users have felt a reduction in their anxiety within one week of using bekome products and training.
Based in Cleveland, Bloomfilter is a software startup that develops custom enterprise project management software. The company was co-founded by Andrew Wolfe and Chris Stoll and currently employs four full-time employees. According to Bloomfilter, the company collaborates with other software businesses in order to better use artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
Bloomfilter has raised $370,000 in funding, according to Techstars.
Medical school is one of the hardest lines of study and requires many exams prior to receiving a license. Israel-based Brocali wants to make studying for those tests easier with its e-learning platform that creates custom study plans for users. The company was co-founded by Amin Ali and Mike Kardosh.
Brocali is currently in beta but has over 500 customers and has raised $220,000 in funding, according to Techstars.
Plus-size clothing can be hard to find; fashionable plus-size clothing can be even harder to come across. Cue the Curves wants to make it easier for plus-size women to find clothes. The company’s app is a central place to shop for plus-size brands. It also works to provide insight into the sizing of different clothes and brands.
Cue the Curves is based in Evanston and has raised $160,000 in funding, according to Techstars. The platform also currently has a waitlist of about 7,000 people and has been featured by Microsoft.
Flare FS, a remote company with staff in Chicago and San Jose, California, makes finance software for nonprofits. Nonprofit organizations are held to strict financial regulations and Flare’s software helps ensure that they are in compliance.
The company was founded by Vernon Gair and has been bootstrapped since its launch.
Co-founded by Namin Shah, Raj Lulla, Dante Vaisbort and Tyler Revesz, Haylon Technologies is creating battery solutions with 3x the longevity of traditional products in the space. It does so by creating a battery pack that can hold two types of chemistries that produce energy. The startup also develops software to enable the two power sources to work simultaneously.
Haylon has raised $215,000 in funding, according to Techstars, and has secured pilots with companies that could purchase over $6 million worth of batteries per year.
Many older adults chose to live independently for various reasons but it can be time-consuming to cook themselves food. Chicago-based Meal Village has a solution. The startup provides ready-to-eat meals and delivers them to older adults who live alone.
Meal Village has been bootstrapped since launching. According to Techstars, it has done over $2 million in revenue and sold over 600,000 meals.
Consumer technology is ever-changing. This often makes it difficult for older adults to keep up, stay connected, surf the web or pay their bills. Near Technology offers a solution through one-on-one coaching for retired adults to get the technological help they need. The Chicago-based company was co-founded by Ferrona Lie and Andrew Mueller.
Since launching, Near Technology has raised $15,000 in funding, secured $8,000 in grants and signed several partnerships with retirement communities in the Chicago area, according to Techstars.
Based in Nigeria, Remote Gravity provides data and location intelligence services in an area of the world with limited internet access. Remote Gravity provides location data and analytics and has over 5,000 data points throughout Nigeria.
The company has been bootstrapped since launching, according to Techstars.
Work injuries and on-the-job deaths happen more often than they should which results in expensive lawsuits for companies. Transfer Thought is looking to reduce the number of work-related accidents with its platform that can create interactive training materials for large workplaces to ensure their employees’ safety. The company was co-founded by Frank Alonso, Keenan Karich and Abe Reese.
Transfer Thought is based in Aurora and has raised $400,000 in funding from investors, according to Techstars. It has also held pilots for several companies, including one Fortune 100 enterprise.
Zest is a mobile app that teaches Gen-Zers how to cook and, as a result, rely on food delivery services less often. Through the app, lessons are delivered in “bite-sized” tutorials that are easy to follow.
Founded in Chicago, Zest has raised $145,000 in funding and seen a 20x increase in monthly subscribers in recent months, according to Techstars.
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