Spotlighting Entrepreneurship In Illinois

The Economist recently did an article titled Why Startups Are Leaving Silicon Valley. The positive message in the article is that entrepreneurship has now spread around the world. Compelling ventures are getting built everywhere.

Today, we put the spotlight on Illinois.

First, a look at the Unicorns.

We have to start with Groupon, one of the highest profile companies from the region. Lavishly hyped up, it has since fallen in esteem, but remains a presence in the Chicago scene. Read: From Unicorn to Unicorpse: How Groupon Fell From Grace. Well, it’s not quite an Unicorpse, and has been working on a turnaround in recent years.

The good news, though, is this: Billion Dollar Unicorns: In Uptake, Groupon Founder Shows He Has Learnt His Lesson.

Groupon’s co-founder Brad Keywell and his investment partner Eric Lefkofsky joined hands to set up Uptake in 2014. Uptake’s solutions perform Big Data analysis at the industrial level. It looks like a legitimate unicorn, producing decisive numbers.

More recently, one of the most highly valued and exciting companies from the region is Avant, formerly Avantcredit, founded by Al Goldstein. Consumer Credit is a $10 trillion dollar industry that Al and his team are trying to turn on its head. Aided by Big Data and machine learning, they are creating a direct to consumer lending model that may have far reaching impact on the financial services industry.

Read: Aiming to Disrupt Consumer Credit: Al Goldstein, CEO of AvantCredit

Its last round of funding was held in September 2015 when it raised $325 million at a valuation of nearly $2 billion compared with a $875 million valuation in early 2015.

Then there is Cleversafe.

There aren’t many sub $100 million technology companies that can boast of a strong patent portfolio. Cleversafe is that rare exception, and hence, a tremendously valuable company with robust revenue growth in a $20 billion market.

In 2015, IBM acquired the company for $1.3 billion.

Read: Building a Fat Startup with a Massive Patent Portfolio: Cleversafe Founder Chris Gladwin

As has always been our practice, we celebrate, also, the bootstrapping entrepreneurs:

Bootstrapping Using Services to $40 Million: ActiveCampaign CEO Jason VandeBoom

Bootstrapping A 130 Million VAR In The Midwest: Ahead CEO Dan Adamany

Bootstrapping to $10 Million: Gesture CEO Jim Alvarez

Getting to Three Thousand Customers in Legal: iManage CEO Neil Araujo

Bootstrapping Using Services: InRule COO Rik Chomko

Bootstrapping to $45 Million from Chicago: RKON CEO Jeff Mullarkey

Bootstrapping with $120k Credit Card Debt to $7m Revenue: Scott Skinger, CEO of TrainSignal

The region is a hotbed of niche e-commerce:

Bootstrapping A 100M+ E-Commerce Company: OpticsPlanet CEO Mark Levitin

Bootstrapping to $13 Million in 4 Years in Niche E-commerce: Pavel Sokolovsky, CEO of eComfort.com

Bootstrapping a Two-Sided Marketplace to $10M: Sal Akbani, CEO of Gateway Classic Cars

Building a Cross-Border e-Commerce Success Selling to Russia: Bay.Ru CEO Aaron Block

Niche E-Commerce in Textbooks: ClassBook CEO Tony Pfister

Healthcare IT has also seen some interesting entrepreneurship:

Building an Exciting Healthcare IT Company From Chicago: LaunchPoint CEO Terry Ryan

Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Prashant Srivastava, CEO of Evive

Outsourcing: Jason Beans, Founder and CEO of Rising Medical Solutions

Artificial Intelligence is picking up:

Building a Cool Technology Company from Chicago: Narrative Science CEO Stuart Frankel

Other interesting stories include:

Outsourcing: Ross Kimbarovsky, Co-Founder of CrowdSPRING

Long Journey to a $435M Exit: Bytemobile Cofounders Chris Koopmans and Nicholas Stavrakos

Successful Pivot to $5M in Revenue from Chicago: Cohesive Networks CEO Patrick Kerpan

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Alex Bratton, CEO of Lextech

Overall, the Illinois startup scene is humming, and all indicators show that the future of the region as a startup hub is extremely promising.

Looking For Some Hands-On Advice?

For entrepreneurs who want to discuss their specific businesses with me, I’m very happy to assess your situation during my free online 1Mby1M Roundtables, held almost every week. You can also check out my LinkedIn Learning course here, my Lynda.com Bootstrapping course here, and follow my writings here.