“Whatever idea comes to us, it’s there because we are uniquely designed to make it happen,” says Leah Caplanis, founder and CEO of SOCIAL Sparkling Wine. “Our experience has brought us that idea, based on our life.” It’s rare that I meet a founder whose personal story and business story aligns like Leah’s…
Gaming is about to get a lot more interesting. Ultra, a blockchain-based gaming platform, is set for its public launch by mid-2019. Through its publishing platform and marketplace, the company is hoping to put “an end to the current distribution monopoly by providing new opportunities to game developers, players, and influencers,” according to…
Talking E-Commerce with Seller Labs’ Jeffrey Cohen Selling on Amazon has some clear advantages: huge, thriving global market, low marketing costs, no need to store inventory. About half the products on the site are sold by third-party vendors. “It’s created this new wave of brands being able to come to market that aren’t required to…
“It’s crazy. It just works,” says Zak Dabbas of the “flat” organizational structure behind his digital marketing agency, Punchkick Interactive. “Flat just means that everybody has the same opportunity to grow.” For Zak, flat isn’t just a buzzword. It’s a reflection of his personal journey. Zak was pre-med in college, intending to…
Drew Lydecker admits that his company, AVANT Communications, can’t be summed up easily. “What we are in a nutshell –– it’s not the easiest thing to explain,” the founder and president says. “We’re a platform. But we’re a sales enablement company at our core.” The nine-year-old Chicago company (not to be confused with the…
It Takes a (Trusted) Village: PediaSource Leverages Experts to Offer On-Demand Parenting Support “With families scattered all around the world or the country, it takes a village,” says Hema Raj Trukenbrod, founder and CEO of PediaSource, a child and teen behavioral and developmental platform that offers support by phone from highly vetted experts. “My goal…
Equity crowdfunding can help bridge the funding gap for underrepresented founders. It’s no secret that starting and investing in businesses has long been reserved for wealthy white men. In 2017, the funding given to female founders in the United States was higher than in years past, but accounted for only 2.2 percent of total funding given.…
10 Steps to Snack-Food Domination with the CEOs of JiMMYBAR! If you want to be a guest on the Technori podcast, there are a number of ways to approach us. Contact our PR firm Walker Sands; email us; tweet @Technori; slide into my DMs on Instagram (@kitun). But the surefire way to my heart is…
Chicago Blend survey confirms VCs are, unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly white and male. It’s no secret that tech and venture capital, like most industries, are suffering from a lack of diversity within their ranks. Insiders and outsiders alike have been exposing the negative consequences of that homogeneity, from Susan Fowler’s memo on Uber’s toxic culture, to…
Earlier this year, WeSolv founder and CEO Stella Ashaolu was asked during an interview which tech mogul she’d most like to have in her corner: Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos. Understandably, Stella didn’t love the premise of having to choose her hero from one of three white guys (she eventually settled on…