Kaplan Institute Exec Director Howard Tullman Speaks Briefly to THINK Chicago Students

1871 CEO Howard Tullman Speaks on 1871 to Students from Think Chicago

1871 hosts students for ThinkChicago Job Fair

1871 CEO HOWARD TULLMAN SPEAKS TO NEFGen STUDENTS FOR THINK CHICAGO

1871 CEO HOWARD TULLMAN SPEAKS TO THINKCHICAGO STUDENTS AS PART OF CHICAGO IDEAS WEEK

1871 Announces First Winners of the Chicago College Startup Competition

1871 Announces First Winners of the Chicago College Startup Competition

Selected college startups will receive free membership, access to a full range of 1871 programming and a unique support system

CHICAGO (July 31, 2014)— 1871 announced the first winners of its inaugural Chicago College Startup Competition Thursday morning, in conjunction with ThinkChicago. The competition provides one year of free membership to 1871 for nine grand prize winners and three months of free membership for two runners-up. This year’s winners were chosen from a talented group of expanding businesses that were founded in colleges across the country.

“The Chicago College Startup Competition is an important tool for attracting and keeping the most talented digital entrepreneurs, designers and developers in Chicago,” said 1871 CEO Howard A Tullman. “This year’s selected college startups will benefit not only from 1871’s extensive range of programming, but also from their extended immersion in the 1871 entrepreneurial ecosystem.”

CCSC was launched by 1871 in conjunction with and in support of the efforts by Mayor Emanuel and Governor Pat Quinn to attract and retain businesses in Chicago and Illinois. Both the Mayor and the Governor have identified young business owners, especially those from colleges around the nation, as a key group to attract and retain in Chicago.

“Small businesses are the backbone of Chicago’s economy and these young entrepreneurs are creating the small businesses of tomorrow,” Mayor Emanuel said. “I congratulate the winners of the Chicago College Startup Competition on their accomplishment and expect to welcome them back soon, when they decide to grow their businesses here in Chicago.”

“We have been proud to assist 1871 as it continues to bolster our economy by reaching out to young entrepreneurs,” Governor Pat Quinn said. “We congratulate the winners of this competition and look forward to their contributions to Illinois commerce as they advance in their careers.”

In addition to receiving free membership at 1871, chosen companies will have access to the full range of 1871 membership benefits that include frequent mentorship opportunities, specialized education programs, and access to potential partners and investors.  1871 has also created a unique “Upper-Classmen” support system for the new college startups, which is composed of current 1871 companies that began as college startups.

Grand Prize Winners

Spectrom - University of Wisconsin - Madison – Spectrom brings photorealism to 3D printing by creating an add-on device that automates the production of full, multicolor objects in a fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printer.

Hutster - Miami University, Ohio – Hutster is a student subletting marketplace that instantly connects students to help guide them through the subletting process.

Timing and Racing Around the Clock LLC – Northwestern University - T.R.A.C. seeks to simplify the running experience through innovative radio frequency identification (RFID) timing equipment.

Lumonik – University of Chicago – Lumonik delivers extremely accurate human hydration monitoring devices to the mass market. The initial product, the Hydraband, comes in the form of a color changing bracelet that monitors human hydration levels in real-time, thereby allowing users to actively prevent dehydration.

Hashtagr – DePaul University – Hashtagr is a social search engine that aggregates hashtag posts from Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Vine, Facebook, Google+, and other resources into a simple user interface.

Omicron – George Washington University – Omicron uses mobile and online tools to help young people expand their access to financial markets.

Fitness Cubed – University of Chicago – Fitness Cubed is creating "Cubii," an under-the-desk exercise device to address sedentary behavior in the workplace. Cubii comes with a mobile app that allows users to keep track of their exercise and connect to various fitness trackers. Fitness Cubed recently completed a successful Kickstarter campaign to help fund Cubii.

Share Transport – Northwestern University – Share Transport is a cloud-based service for maximizing any company’s transportation efficiency. Relying on analytics to optimize the logistic operation, Share Transport uses its extensive database to find matches for everyday transportation requirements.

Carbon Cash – Michigan State University – Carbon Cash is a behavioral energy efficiency app targeted towards renter-occupied housing, including college students. Carbon Cash informs users how much electricity they consume, teaches them how to use less with educational quizzes, and rewards them for saving through both psychological competitions with peers and monetary incentives.

Runners-up

Monkey Bars – Illinois Institute of Technology – MonkeyBars coordinates crowdsourced innovation challenges (Hackathons) that help companies and organizations improve the way they learn, think and grow. Their products range from external crowdsourced consulting initiatives to internal culture of innovation projects.

AnonyMonkey – University of Chicago – AnonyMonkey's app offers a way for high school and college students to share emotions semi-anonymously in groups that are centralized around each user's campus.

About 1871

1871 is an entrepreneurial hub for digital startups. Located in The Merchandise Mart, the soon-to-be 75,000-square-foot facility provides Chicago startups with programming, access to mentors, educational resources, potential investors and a community of like-minded entrepreneurs that help them on their path to building successful businesses. 1871 is the flagship project of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center.

               REMARKS OF 1871 CEO HOWARD TULLMAN 

Good morning and welcome to Chicago and 1871. I’m Howard Tullman the CEO here at 1871 and I’ll be telling you more about 1871 in a little while. For now, I just want to tell you how excited we all are about Think Chicago and especially about our CCSC competition and the great first class of winners that we’re announcing today.

Apart from a good idea, a killer work ethic, a great team and a lot of luck (some of which you make yourself), it takes 4 things for a new business to grow and succeed:

(1) Cash – and today there’s tons around. We’ve had more than $5 Billion worth of exits of Chicago-based businesses just in the last year. So money’s no big deal.

(2) Customers – startups sometimes lose sight of the fact that you’ve got to sell something to someone and those somebodies are customers and there’s no better city for a diverse customer pool (large and small) than Chicago. Here’s a dirty little secret – there are no B-2-B customers on the coasts – they’re all here in the real world. Willie Sutton said he robbed banks because that’s where the money was. People come to Chicago to do business because this is where the customers are.

(3) Talent - that’s why we are here today. Attracting and retaining the best and the brightest talent to 1871 to start and grow their businesses (and to Chicago to start and grow their families) is our mission and – so far in just 2 years – we’re killing it. But there’s nothing that you can’t do harder, longer or better so we’re doing everything we can to create the best platform in the country to launch your next great idea.

And finally, it takes a Mayor who gets it.

It’s my great pleasure to introduce my friend Rahm Emanuel. I’ve been his supporter, his client, his landlord, and even an occasional critic (and you can guess how that worked out) for over 20 years. An old movie mogul (Samuel Goldwyn) used to say: “I want people to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs.” Rahm wouldn’t go that far; he just likes me to think of him as a friend who’s always right.

And remarkably, since he’s been running our City, things for the tech community and for the 250 new businesses starting out here at 1871 simply couldn’t have been any better. So please join me in welcoming a GREAT supporter of entrepreneurs and innovation, a tremendous leader, and a good friend – our Mayor. 

1871 and ThinkChicago:Lollapalooza plus Chicago College Startup Competition

I have always been interested and involved in the intersection of music and technology. In the 90s, I helped build RollingStone.com, TheSource.com, and DownbeatJazz.com as well as a little site called Tunes.com. These days I’m still involved with music businesses like Music Dealers in Chicago that seek to combine the world's obsession with technology with its never-ending love of all things musical.

In my new role as the CEO of 1871, Chicago’s startup hub for digital entrepreneurs, my focus is mainly around supporting and promoting our city’s next generation of technology leaders and helping to position Chicago as one of the primary technology economies in the world.  To do so, we need not only to support our growing entrepreneurial community, but also to attract more people who want to make Chicago their home and the home of their new business ideas.

The city’s rich and deep musical history across so many genres is an asset that few other places in the world can rival and, as every business migrates its materials, marketing and assets from the old analog world to the exciting new world of digital and video everything, music will be an increasingly crucial part of telling every company’s story because, as the whole world knows, silent movies and videos suck. If this isn’t already beyond obvious, just take a walk thru any tech venue anywhere (especially at 1871) and look around. Those white ear buds growing out of every set of ears in the place tell the whole story of just how connected music and technology are today.

So this week, the city and 1871 are announcing two major initiatives that focus on the powerful and magnetic attraction of music, which we believe, will help us attract large numbers of new, bright and talented young people to the city's technology economy.

The first is the expansion of ThinkChicago: Lollapalooza, Mayor Emanuel's annual technology-driven recruiting event for young people from around the nation. This year, 125 of the greatest computer science and engineering students will come to Chicago, visit 1871, meet and get inspired by some of our brightest new startups, and spend three days experiencing Lollapalooza. While they visit, they’ll also hear from some of the City’s most successful entrepreneurs who will participate in a series of presentations. Last year’s lineup included Obama for America 2012 CTO Harper Reed, Siri founder Dag Kittlaus, and GrubHub co-founder and CEO Matt Maloney. Suffice it to say, Lollapalooza has for years been a wonderful advertisement for our city, and ThinkChicago: Lollapalooza allows it to be extended into an advertisement that will drive these talented individuals to become the next generation of leaders for our incredible tech industry.

At 1871, we’re doubling down on this effort. In conjunction with ThinkChicago: Lollapalooza, we’ll be announcing the first class of collegiate businesses to win the 1871 Chicago College Startup Competition (CCSC). There will be up to ten winners – all expanding businesses that were founded in colleges across the country – who will be awarded a free year membership at 1871. The catch? They just have to move here for a year. The hook? We think once you’ve seen what Chicago has to offer, there’s no going back. It’s the Hotel “Chicago” to paraphrase The Eagles. “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!”

To me, this is an important part of the next phase of the development of the Chicago technology economy. Mayor Emanuel has called for us to create an additional 40,000 tech jobs in Chicago by the end of the decade. Many of these new jobs and positions will come from our already thriving companies. But many others will come from young business founders and technologists who move here with an idea and a growing business and try and make it big by accessing our amazing resources, investor community and talent pool.

This is the first time that either 1871 or the city of Chicago will be proactively recruiting technology startups from outside of the Chicagoland area to join our city's tech community. We hope to identify unique businesses across an array of industries and disciplines that can benefit from the unique support of the 1871 community as well as the thriving tech sector in the city. There’s no reason to believe we won’t uncover the next Facebook or Dell, both of which, like many great startups, were started in dorm rooms.

As I said, music and technology have forever been mixed. Lollapalooza is a great reason to come to Chicago -- one of many reasons people should come and visit Chicago, especially in the summer. Here's hoping we can continue to use this outstanding summer event as a springboard for a generation of opportunity and (hopefully) the attraction of many new Chicagoans.