The May Report

News From Ron May

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The May Report: 6/122013: Just a quick report because the voting ends tonight for the Moxie Awards: http://moxieawards.builtinchicago.org/?page_id=1791 and I wonder if Matt Moog or Maria Katris will even bother to show up since they skipped out on BiC Launch at Rockit on Wednesday, May 29th when https://www.rocketmiles.com/ and http://www.btsocial.com/ were clearly in the lead in my informal poll until I hit the back of the room (the elevated section) and there Beth Bond and her firm http://www.forgoods.org/ came from behind with a spate of supporters, including three friends she had invited (one of whom, Annie Pudelek from www.totalattorneys.com , wanted to work for Beth but it hasn’t worked out yet) and all the boys from www.kauzu.com who were in Beth’s hip pocket because they like volunteering and the idea of a loyalty program for volunteers appeals to them; my first reaction was that Beth had stacked the deck, but not so, Andy Crestodina www.orbitmedia.com would argue since the night before he gave the keynote at Technori where he talked about hackers vs. hustlers and in that motif, Beth is a hustler — in a good sense — since she’s concerned with her audience; so the final vote based on my poll was #1 www.rocketmilers.com , #2 http://www.btsocial.com/, and #3 http://www.forgoods.org/ but it ended up as a very close third; http://www.hugboard.com/ had a few votes and http://funderhut.com/ got three votes, one from the founder Dan Salganik and one from Peter Smith from Credit Suisse and one from a guy named Josh. The event was the same night of the Hawks game and I noticed that not even counting the Rockit customers having no connection to BiC, there were lots of attendees not tied to the tech world.

The May Report June 12th, 2013

The May Report: 6/122013: Just a quick report because the voting ends tonight for the Moxie Awards: moxieawards.builtinchicago.org/?page_id=1791 and I wonder if Matt Moog or Maria Katris will even bother to show up since they skipped out on BiC Launch at Rockit on Wednesday, May 29th when www.rocketmiles.com/ and www.btsocial.com/ were clearly in the lead…

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The May Report: 6/112013: Frank Muscarello’s company https://www.markitx.com/ is the second firm to have moved out of 1871 (as of last week) due to growth, Kevin Willer told the audience at the City Club of Chicago for lunch Thursday; the first one I’ve heard about being Food Genius http://getfoodgenius.com/ . Kevin provided an overview of the work that went into creating 1871, including visits to a number of similar places such as the Cambridge Innovation Center, PlugnPlay, and others. It was like a Bar Mitzvah speech in that KW did not forget to thank everyone who contributed to the creation of 1871 including the architect Gensler http://www.gensler.com/ but in his overview, while he did mention universities, he left out TechNexus and Catapult. Open the report here…. I saw Warren Ribley of the illinois Medical District http://www.imdc.org/ and asked him if Kevin had mentioned his organization. he told me that Jay Doherty of the City Club had mentioned him in the intros which I missed. Kevin did run down a list of possible future 1871 style facilities, including one for biotech. Some stats he offered up for the 225 start-ups with an average of 2.3 people per startup which employs 800 people now, with an anticipated 1,300 in a year or less; average age: 30; 50% from outside Illinois; 28% have a woman founder or co-founder; revenue of companies: $13MM; and more generally, 59 companies have raised $1MM or more and I believe he said that $695MM total has been raised — now that last number can’t be right because Braintree alone raised $70MM. Some old timers there included Darcy Evon and Dan Miller, and I met Kevin’s mom, Mary Delaney Willer. As Kevin kept saying, “It’s a start” and “We still have challenges,” he noted that folks in Austin, TX are coming here to recruit. One factual error I know about. When KW said that 28% of the firms had a woman as founder or co-founder, my immediate thought was “That’s bunk.” Indeed it was. One member of the CEC staff, a blonde but not Caity, told me that “Kevin misspoke. He meant to say ‘founder or co-founder or member of the founding team.’ ” Well, that last part makes a big difference! One more factual issue. Kevin said that 1871 has folks in their 50s and 60s are tenants. Really? I’d like to meet the people in their 60s. After the meeting and after Kevin was through talking to followers/admirers, he told me “You’re wrong. I am planning to be an investor and not stay in my job at the CEC.” He added that they have an unbelievably great pool of applicants for his job, and they’re still going through the process. The room seemed full to me but talking to managers at Maggiano’s and to Paul Davidovich, it turns out that it was a smaller crowd than usual. I was told they had 21 tables when they normally have 40 tables. One of the managers told me they had 220 versus the typical 320. I met John DiCola who was the other half of the Google operation in Chicago along with Kevin back when the Chicago office “was two phones, two desks and two computers at 401 N. Michigan Ave.” He’s an angel investor now and he told me he’s invested in such firms as tap.me and he wrote me that “I have placements with 4 businesses: ThrillOn (www.thrillon.com); LiveOne ( www.liveonegroup.com); MyLikes (www.mylikes.com); and GP Shopper ( www.gpshopper.com).” John can be reached at (847)770-5956 or john.dicola@gmail.com…. Thursday night the Chicago Innovation Awards held a kick-off event at Threadless downtown, and that same night there was a Launch event party for the 70 companies chosen to compete at Techweek held at American Junkie http://www.americanjunkiechi.com/ on Illinois Street; attendance for that extravegant event was about 250, sponsored by Walker Sands; each of the 70 Launch companies http://techweek.com/chicago/events/techweek-launch/ could bring 2 people, plus there was an internet retail conference in town and that added about another 110; they had a ton of people from Walker Sands and David Rosenblatt from Techweek was there; the spread was good and they kept bringing it, and it included dates in bacon, 3 types of pizza, lobster rolls, a 3 hour open bar with no tickets, and at 9pm, about 100 people walked the 5 blocks to see a screening of the new Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson movie about two Google interns b http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/movies/the-internship-with-vince-vaughn-and-owen-wilson.html?_r=0 — word is that’s it’s a good flick; Ken Gaebler, what did this overblown affair set you back?;.The cardiac surgeon who took my mother’s case on is world class, I’m hearing. He is Nicholas Kouchoukos, operating out of Missouri Baptist http://www.healthgrades.com/physician/dr-nicholas-kouchoukos-32j3h The surgery went well, but it is very true that the first 72 hours after surgery really matter. Our mom was out of the OR by about 4pm Thursday, but they had to go back in and open her up Thursday night because she was bleeding in both her chest and leg; the bleeding stopped and they closed her back up Friday morning; they kept her under sedation using varying doses of Propofol, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propofol (Mike Rhodes, keep your tongue in your mouth, I can’t get any for you :-)) until Saturday afternoon and then they woke her up, but the breathing tube stayed in until Sunday afternoon when they took that out and she’s been sitting up, talking a little, eating very lightly as of Monday morning (they were feeding her egg whites intravenously); she’ll remain in the ICU for at least a few more days since they’re working on kidney issues; Dr. Kouchoukos is apparently known for a cautious and conservative approach, but clearly the long road to recovery has begun — thanks to all of you who have expressed good wishes.

The May Report June 11th, 2013

The May Report: 6/112013: Frank Muscarello’s company www.markitx.com/ is the second firm to have moved out of 1871 (as of last week) due to growth, Kevin Willer told the audience at the City Club of Chicago for lunch Thursday; the first one I’ve heard about being Food Genius getfoodgenius.com/ . Kevin provided an overview of…

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The May Report: 6/6/2013: I know some of the events listed in this report already took place, but sadly I’ve been paralyzed and have gotten nothing done since the report Monday. At 6:30am this morning, my mother (and the mother of Lisa (Cortez), Paul and David May) will be moved from her hospital bed in suburban St. Louis and at 8am, the surgeons will start open heart surgery with a triple by-pass, plus they’ll work on the aortic value and the mitral valve. The surgeon told Paul that we may not know anything until between noon and 3pm. Plus, at 86, even if my mom survives the operation, the recovery will be tough. I’ve been praying for her, and crying because I’ve been such a bad and disappointing son. In my last words with her last night at 9pm, I told my mother this and she said she does not accept the apology. She’s sticking around to see if I really change. He [sic: the] biggest issue is my impoliteness, my rudeness, my lack of manners, my abusiveness — look, if you know me, you know what she’s talking about. But back to Chicago tech. After dialysis this morning, I’m rushing down to Maggiano’s to see how Kevin Willer handles issues about 1871 at the City Club of Chicago. At the meeting which Neil Kane presided over on May 23rd, my info. (mostly from Julie Friedman Steele) is that the economic instability of 1871 as a viable business model was discussed, their loss of operating money, dependency on state and corporate funds, and also I want to hear about exits. I know about http://getfoodgenius.com/ and I have a great story to tell you about how I found this out at VentureSHOT on May 22nd. Exits are important because the guppies need a place to go when they grow up. I’ll let you know how much tap dancing Kevin does.

The May Report June 6th, 2013

The May Report: 6/6/2013: I know some of the events listed in this report already took place, but sadly I’ve been paralyzed and have gotten nothing done since the report Monday. At 6:30am this morning, my mother (and the mother of Lisa (Cortez), Paul and David May) will be moved from her hospital bed in…

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The May Report: 6/3/2013: It should therefore not have surprised me that last Thursday night’s PCC awards dinner at the Palmer House http://publicity.org/golden-trumpet-awards/the-2013-golden-trumpet-awards/2013-gold-trumpet-winnners/ was something of a drunk and disorderly affair to paraphrase one of the Lifetime Achievement Award winners Howard Mendelsohn as he reminisced about the revelry of the good ole days… Open report here…

The May Report June 3rd, 2013

The May Report: 6/3/2013: It should therefore not have surprised me that last Thursday night’s PCC awards dinner at the Palmer House publicity.org/golden-trumpet-awards/the-2013-golden-trumpet-awards/2013-gold-trumpet-winnners/ was something of a drunk and disorderly affair to paraphrase one of the Lifetime Achievement Award winners Howard Mendelsohn as he reminisced about the revelry of the good ole days… Open report…

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The May Report: 5/29/2013: This has to be quick so I can get down to Rockit for Built in Chicago launch and I’ll be monitoring how long Maria Katris hangs around and whether Matt Moog, Kevin Willer or Troy Henikoff even show up. Last night at Technori, despite the heavy rain between 8pm and 8:30pm, very solid turnout, but the after party did have far fewer attendees than usual. My polling had decisive results. https://www.adopttogether.org/ was the best presenter, heartstrings and all, plus a really good presentation, and they’ve raised $1MM in funds for adoptions, not in venture capital; the clear favorite for the best product or business was a Canadian firm (I believe) http://infoactive.co/ which is heavily in big data and has already been working with 150 companies, the BBC and Al Jazeera, but David Culver told me they need to charge their enterprise clients more and at least charge everyone something; https://www.desktimeapp.com/ got a few votes (mostly from a table of Rails developers who worship DHH), as did http://www.forgoods.org/ which will also present tonight at Rockit; but going back to the April 17th BiC at Rockit, Ann flood’s www.MeetFOAF.com was the crowd favorite, even though her presentation was not the most professional, but it was the most genuine, as several people commented, and http://onlyadate.com/ and http://loclean.com/ did well — look if I don’t get out of here, I’ll be late and the Hawks game starts at 7pm

The May Report May 29th, 2013

The May Report: 5/29/2013: This has to be quick so I can get down to Rockit for Built in Chicago launch and I’ll be monitoring how long Maria Katris hangs around and whether Matt Moog, Kevin Willer or Troy Henikoff even show up. Last night at Technori, despite the heavy rain between 8pm and 8:30pm,…

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The May Report: 5/26/2013: Neil Kane (312-404-3507), please call me! I don’t want to misquote you and you know how Martin O’Shield gives very slanted versions of a story –nonetheless a stopped clock is right twice a day. My questions are about what you, Nik Rokop and Sascha Deangeli and others supposedly said about 1871 at the meeting you presided over Thursday evening to get input on whether the $10MM for an Illinois Manufacturing Laboratory, (advanced manufacturing I gather), using money from Governor Quinn and the federal government should be co-located at 1871. Neil, I have the bulk of the list of the 52 attendees with many phone numbers and emails, so if you don’t call, I’ll call them and your words will then come out of their mouths. Some of the folks there included Joe Born, Caralynn Nowinski, Michael Norman, Julie Friedman Steele http://www.myfoxchicago.com/story/22007918/chicagos-new-3d-printing-store-turns-your-ideas-into-real-objects , Mike Moceri, Jarrod Wolf, Mark Harris (is Matt Summy still there? — I checked and the answer is NO, he left in Oct. 2012 to become Vice President, Government and Regulatory Affairs, Comcast’ Greater Chicago http://tinyurl.com/ps3hnww ), Peter Pfanner, many people from potentially competing venues at places like U of I, entrepreneurs, some governmental and NGO people…. Before this last Wednesday, Justin Baggott, 42, had raised $36K in seed capital with $6K of that $36K coming from his friend CJ. His site www.jockbrokers.net combines two of his passions: sports and gambling. Jockbrokers is effectively a stock market for investing and trading in professional athletes. https://jockbrokers.com/aboutus/ Justin comes across as a good ole boy but his wife and business partner comes across as a librarian, making, I sense, for an interesting couple…. Justin told me Wednesday night at VentureSHOT www.ventureshot.com that he has one new investor ready to put $12K in for 2% and another investor is ready to pony up $6K for 1% equity. Justin says that the money is coming in at a $600K pre-money valuation. www.jockbrokers.net is located in the incubator at the SIU SBDC in Carbondale. They operate on a tight and limited budget of $3,130 a month. Wednesday may have changed the company’s trajectory because Justin and company just won a check for $10,000 due to winning the Growing Chicago $10K Business Pitch contest at Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp.’s Access to Capital conference held at Navy Pier on May 22nd. http://accesstocapital.com/chicago-event/ Open the report here… Forty four companies presented videos on Facebook for the Growing Chicago $10K Business Pitch contest and Facebook denizens voted their Likes and the list was narrowed to five presenters who came to Navy Pier on Wednesday and gave their pitches to the audience there. Conference attendees then voted and Jockbrokers came in 1st…. Don’t hold me to correct spelling here, but #2 was Visionmay or something like that, #3 was a male wetnap called Dude Wipes http://www.dudeproducts.com/dude-wipes/, #4 was a catering service called BBQ’D Productions (224-656-3658) and #5 was Evieday ? (I can’t read my own notes). The guy from BBQ’D Productions told me at the conference that he was the #1 vote getter in the preliminary voting before the finals at Navy Pier. Justin pooh poohed that by telling me the preliminary Facebook voting was just a popularity contest. Justin estimates that 600 people took part in the voting throughout the day and that includes people at the many sponsorship booths….. D&B Credibility Corp. is a spin off from D&B with about 600 people headquartered in Los Angeles (I think). They are holding these conferences in a number of U. S. cities, including Chicago, and I think someone said they’re going to Atlanta. Many employees have backgrounds in banking and finance, but one guy I talked to comes out of an internet startup background. They were charging just $49 for the day, so this was clearly not geared to be a money maker. Several of the organizers with whom I spoke were very noncommital about whether the conference will return next year. They described this as an advocacy group — advocacy for small business, for entrepreneurship, for alternative financing, bank financing, for micro lenders like ACCION http://www.accionchicago.org/ and FundWell http://thefundwell.com/ and some quick money places like https://www.kabbage.com/ and alternatives to Kickstarter such as https://www.centup.org/ (a charity) or http://www.indiegogo.com/ or even Kickstarter allies such as http://www.kickstarter.com/pages/seedchicago (Seed Chicago is an initiative of Mayor Emanuel’s Plan for Economic Growth & Jobs, developed by World Business Chicago to assess and expand Chicago’s economy.) The backers included many governmental operations and NGOs, plus many banks, and places like Briteseed http://briteseed.com/ , http://www.multifunding.com/ , charities like http://www.moxiejean.com/ , and many of the usual suspects like the WBDC, WBC, Built in Chicago, Hyde Park Venture Partners, the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, but notably not the CEC. All in all, heavy on banking, microlending, governmental organizations, alternative financing such as factoring and light on traditional venture capital….The 250 or so attendees were from all walks of life. One guy I talked to is a Chicago fireman who has his own event business. I saw a lot of diversity and remember, this was not a tech focused conference, even if tech related people and organizations did participate. I would not call the attendees as a whole unsophisticated, but a good portion of them were new to finance and resource issues….. The organizers told me that at least a dozen attendees walked away with checks after meeting with bankers. (I’d like to see those checks.)….Justin Baggott (618-201-6176) was in the World Series of Poker, I believe, and he told me he likes Baccarat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baccarat ,he told me that if you play Black Jack perfectly, the house still has a 3.5% edge. BTW, this good ole boy was also in the 1997 Illinois Scholar Bowl state champion. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/justin-baggott/20/677/237 … BTW, Phil Tadros confirms that BowTruss http://www.bowtruss.com/ now has two facilities, one at 2934 N Broadway and one at 406 N Wells Street. Remember that his partner here is Seth Kravitz. He also says that they have 37 wholesale clients and are growing quickly…. I heard Wednesday night that Alex Griffith left Paul Caswell’s Weave the People http://www.weavethepeople.com/ … Correction: Julian Pretto did not throw a party at the NRA show last week. He was not even there although some of his sales guys may have been there, he tells me. My source on that told me he was just kidding. I told him, Don’t kid me.

The May Report May 26th, 2013

The May Report: 5/26/2013: Neil Kane (312-404-3507), please call me! I don’t want to misquote you and you know how Martin O’Shield gives very slanted versions of a story –nonetheless a stopped clock is right twice a day. My questions are about what you, Nik Rokop and Sascha Deangeli and others supposedly said about 1871…

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The May Report: 5/24/2013: Three reports today, minimum: First, an important correction. When I reported the winners of the MIT-EF White Board Challenge on Tuesday afternoon, I had the nagging feeling that I had made a mistake. 3rd place had gone to Tribal Science (in the program guide, presenter number 9.) But I could not find a website for Tribal Science which was geared to tracking your exercise activity and I believe it included a device that could be attached to a skateboard. So, I looked at the cards I had collected and that’s when I mistakenly thought that Paul LaPorte’s http://www.shockatoo.com/ was the site for Tribal Science, but that did not sit with me. LaPorte’s site was for Wearable Tech, presenter #2. So, I called Nancy Munro Wednesday morning and she was not answering , then I called John Jonelis and he did not know, so I called Mike Fekety who said he did not know, but he would try to reach Nancy. Nancy did respond, but by that time I already knew I had been wrong because the presenter for Tribal Science was Dr. Mike Vasquez. Plus Nancy did say that the name of the woman who made the presentation for Sirago which took 1st place was Deniz Alpay. Deniz is a Northwestern med student, and her team has eight students, all of whom eat Ramen Noodles, Nancy joked, so the $3,000 will really help :-). So, just to repeat: First Place Sirago – Deniz Alpay and her team from Northwestern; Second Place – Coup City David Hazan (no website); Third Place – Tribal Science Dr. Mike Vasquez…. 2nd, I am still not going to put words in anyone’s mouth,and I have resisted pressures to report this for years but now that Mike Parker of CBS 2 has opened the door, let his report interviewing Terry Howerton, former ITA chairman, current ITA board member, and co-founder of TechNexus, www.technexus.com, speak for itself with respect to scouting: Gay Member Ban Overturned By Scouts « CBS Chicago http://chicago.cbslocal.com/video/8914431-gay-member-ban-overturned-by-scouts/ …. Open the report here… 3rd, Doug Stukel, to paraphrase you, you’ve shown us what kind of person you are and no one should have you as an ally. What standards does the European GXG First Quote Exchange [an EU Multilateral Trading Facility as defined in Article 4(15) of MiFID (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) operated by GXG Markets A/S. GXG Markets A/S is licensed and supervised by the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority as an EU Regulated Market as defined in Article 4(14) of MiFID] have that allow scam artists like you and Mike Profita to operate www.affluenceconnect.com and trade stock on the exchange? http://www.gxgmarkets.com/component/gxgcompanies/?view=gxgterms&id=67 … 4th, back to the real world: SPLAT: On Tuesday, May 21st, about noon, a young man, in his twenties named Jake decided to take his own life by jumping from the 32nd floor of the 50 East Chestnut Street building, the same building that Flip and Melissa live in. Jake’s body hit the patio on the 10th floor and laid there until 4pm when it was removed. The body must have bounced, one observer noted because Jake was on his back facing up with his legs hanging over a 2 foot high concrete barrier and his face deformed. The next day, Wednesday, the men in Hazmat suits came to clean the splattered brains off the patio. That’s what I know from an observer who lives high enough in a nearby building overlooking the patio to have seen the body lying there. This observer had met Jake a few times and also knows Harry, the doorman for Jake’s building. I know that Channel 7 (ABC) had a truck there, but from what I can tell, they did not do a report. Channel 2, CBS, did report it on their website, but not from on the scene reporting, just from a police blotter. CBS’ report has some things I did not know such as Jake’s last name (Huzenis) and his exact age (25). Aside from that CBS had the timeline wrong and was not at all specific about the address. There are reasons I’m writing this. News is news, tech related or not. My source here is furious with me for writing this because he suffered seeing the dead body, and the kid was in pain and his parents are very upset, plus how is it relevant to the tech community? I reported the suicide of Jack Pinnix in 2005 and he was the husband of Stephanie Covall-Pinnix, but he was bipolar and not on his meds, and more recently, having had my own encounter with a mentally ill guy who is homeless by his own volition, I firmly believe that mental illness is not discussed enough in our society. We don’t know, but mental illness may have played a role here. Plus, why is a Gold Coast highrise suicide swept under the rug? Shootings on the South and West side of the city are reported routinely every day… 5th, a tree that falls in the forest with no one around does make a sound, but a story not told or written — is that a story? There are many reasons I can’t sleep at night or that I do my best thinking when I am asleep, but today, I plan to get some unfinished things done. One night I woke up at 3am, started writing and it may be the craziest ‘article’ I’ve written covering everything from ‘How can you know go to cheese but not believe go to cheese?’ to Ockham’s razor, to the Mpemba paradox which states that Hot water can, under certain conditions, freeze faster than cold water, even though it must pass the lower temperature on the way to freezing…. to this, (and seriously, can someone explain this to me in plain English?): 1729 is known as the Hardy-Ramanujan number after a famous anecdote of the British mathematician G. H. Hardy regarding a visit to the hospital to see the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. In Hardy’s words: I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. “No,” he replied, “it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.” The two different ways are these:1729 = 13 + 123 = 93 + 103 The quotation is sometimes expressed using the term “positive cubes”, since allowing negative perfect cubes (the cube of a negative integer) gives the smallest solution as 91 (which is a divisor of 1729): 91 = 63 + (âˆ’5)3 = 43 + 33 Of course, equating “smallest” with “most negative”, as opposed to “closest to zero” gives rise to solutions like âˆ’91, âˆ’189, âˆ’1729, and further negative numbers. This ambiguity is eliminated by the term “positive cubes”. [Sorry, May here. This should be easy to understand but I'm completely lost.] … to this: The first perfect number is 6, because 1, 2, and 3 are its proper positive divisors, and 1 + 2 + 3 = 6. Equivalently, the number 6 is equal to half the sum of all its positive divisors: ( 1 + 2 + 3 + 6 ) / 2 = 6. The next perfect number is 28 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14. This is followed by the perfect numbers 496 and 8128.

The May Report May 24th, 2013

The May Report: 5/24/2013: Three reports today, minimum: First, an important correction. When I reported the winners of the MIT-EF White Board Challenge on Tuesday afternoon, I had the nagging feeling that I had made a mistake. 3rd place had gone to Tribal Science (in the program guide, presenter number 9.) But I could not…

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The May Report: 5/21/2013: GrubHub merges with NYC based Seamless to create a company with more than $100MM in revenue and a combined network of more than 20,000 local takeout restaurants across the U.S. Matt Maloney will be CEO of the yet to be named new entity and Seamless CEO Jonathan Zabusky will be president, while Mike Evans will be the COO of the combined entity; the merged firm will have 650 employees to start; 3rd place at the MIT-EF White Board Challenge went to Paul LaPorte’s http://www.shockatoo.com/ for $500, 2nd place went to David Hazan’s Coup City, still on the drawing board, which is a growing simulation game where users play fun, interactive, and social games to grow coupons that can be redeemed at brick and mortar stores. Unlike other games today, CoupCity rewards its players time and effort! The more you play, the faster coupons grow, the better coupons you are offered, and the more coupons you can gift to others. CoupCity is a game-changing concept that rewards its players’ time and effort with real world value, ushering in a new-era of reward based mobile gaming for $1,500 and 1st place went to a group of 8 Northwestern medical students who have developed a better way to do biopsies — and no, all 8 did not present, for $3,000. Howard Schultz visited the Starbucks on Rush Street last night; Apparently, they’ll let anyone into the NRA evidenced by the fact that Julian Pretto was able to throw a party there; Ola Ayeni resurfaced at the MIT-EF WBC with a firm called www.myeateria.com as he claims http://www.text2store.com/ is still in operation; Jim Orrico was there and he has licensed his wheelchair lift plus now he has www.engineeraminute.com ; Steven de Mar must be looking for things to do since he’s resurfaced recently, but he still won’t tell me what what he sold InfoRamp to ANET for; how did Sheldon Rosenfield get into the NRA?; Tech Nexus is lookin’ good and the offices have an appealing layout with a big space for Forte Group and a big sign for Clean Energy Trust; Correction: Cibola is not closing, says Mahrinah von Schlegel, Managing Director, Cíbola and we’ll have to figure out the appropriate penalty for Martin O’Shield for disseminating false information — now is that the pot calling the kettle black or what?

The May Report May 21st, 2013

The May Report: 5/21/2013: GrubHub merges with NYC based Seamless to create a company with more than $100MM in revenue and a combined network of more than 20,000 local takeout restaurants across the U.S. Matt Maloney will be CEO of the yet to be named new entity and Seamless CEO Jonathan Zabusky will be president,…

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The May Report: 5/20/2013: Acquity Group has been bought by Accenture for $316MM — not sure how the Chris Dalton gang fared in this because years ago, they were bought out by a Hong Kong based investment group; that deal was announced late Friday afternoon and the Acquity Group stock (AQ) jumped quite a bit this morning, up $6.89 to $12.85 or up 115% http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/05/20/stocks-to-watch-yahoo-websense-acquity-group/ ; if you look at the history of the firm, they went from back-end retail e-commerce to design to now both back and front end, sort of like Duo Consulting http://www.duoconsulting.com/ ; Michael and Sonny, this may be a case where the Irish beat the Jews; now for something really important: Ray Markman made it through 90 minutes on Saturday morning at the Joe Levy group in Skokie without falling asleep! :-) Open the report here….

The May Report May 20th, 2013

The May Report: 5/20/2013: Acquity Group has been bought by Accenture for $316MM — not sure how the Chris Dalton gang fared in this because years ago, they were bought out by a Hong Kong based investment group; that deal was announced late Friday afternoon and the Acquity Group stock (AQ) jumped quite a bit…

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The May Report: 5/15/2013: Maria Christopoulos Katris, you never responded to my email asking about why you left out TechCocktail and Frank Gruber in your comments to Michigan Avenue Magazine http://michiganavemag.com/living/articles/chicago-startup-businesses and now you will have to spend two reports in the TMR Stockade because Frank Gruber has just raised $2.5MM from Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project!! Maria, do you think your buddy Matt Moog could do that for Built in Chicago? Congrats, Frank and all the people at TechCocktail! Don’t even think of going there. I have had lot of problems since April 22nd when for the first time I fell in the shower and the CFD had to come and get me up and on April 27th when the elevator was out and I had to climb 42 stairs but made it 41 stairs up before glide landing on the 4th floor and even though Burt and Marty (fellow tenants) were helping me and we had chairs on each landing for me to rest at, we still called the CFD; the elevator has been going out intermittently since April 27th which caused me to miss Technori’s After Party (4/30) and LES (5/2), but I was able to make Anna Agata Bilinska’s graduation from Loyola with two majors last Friday morning, May 10th, and that school is literally on the lake — walk ten feet east of the student center and you’re deep in Lake Michigan!; the speaker at the evening graduation was the woman from Twitter who taught Pope Benedict how to tweet; I did hang out under the south side overhang at Union Station Thursday night while it rained until 12:20am when I went home; I also went to the Driehaus Foundation Awards for investigative journalism event on May 7th put on by the BGA (this year they gave awards of $10K, $5K, and $3K) and there are some interesting things to say about that including that Steve Miller is on their board and a Gold Sponsor and Jan Grayson, former head of DCCA, is also a board member; Joe Mansueto, JB, Bruce Rauner, Chris Kennedy, John A. Canning, Jr., Ronald Gidwitz, Lester Crown, Brenda Russell, Christie Heffner, and my old buddy Brenda Russell from UIC are on the Civic Leadership Committee; then there were my two trips to the ER at St. Joseph’s Hospital, one for epistaxis http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/863220-overview and one for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otitis_externa for which I am taking antibiotic drops, but it still bothers me and either hurts or itches but I can’t scratch it; but don’t pre-judge my productivity Ann Flood from www.meetFOAF.com or Glen Andrianov of http://onlyadate.com/ and others from the April 17th BiC event at Rockit, including Jay Gustafson of http://loclean.com/ or Keira Sagner at http://krsagner.com/; today I got sidetracked by going over previous years of the nominees and winners of the ITA City LIGHTS Awards and have been finding some interesting things; Doug Stukel and Mike Profita continue to be up to no good and owe big money to consultants, plus they’ve changed their nane to https://www.affluenceconnect.com/ and this is taking place largely in Europe

The May Report May 15th, 2013

The May Report: 5/15/2013: Maria Christopoulos Katris, you never responded to my email asking about why you left out TechCocktail and Frank Gruber in your comments to Michigan Avenue Magazine michiganavemag.com/living/articles/chicago-startup-businesses and now you will have to spend two reports in the TMR Stockade because Frank Gruber has just raised $2.5MM from Tony Hsieh’s Downtown…

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