Jeff Hamilton talks about ITA and Midwest IT Talent

Posted on September 22, 2011 by admin

Guest blogger: Jeff Hamilton, Chicago Entrepreneur.  Jeff holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois and a Masters of Management from Kellogg Graduate School of Business, with a concentration in Marketing.

 

Chicago’s Technology Resurgence

Illinois has the 6th highest gap in the nation between open technology positions and qualified technology professionals.  With an ever expanding (thankfully!) tech company base, we must accelerate efforts to close this gap by enticing more of our local technical talent to remain in our great city and state.  The Illinois Technology Association (ITA) has launched the ITA Fall Challenge, an extraordinary initiative to inform graduates from the outstanding colleges and universities near Chicago that you don’t have to leave the Midwest to find the resources to develop the next great tech success.

As an Electrical Engineering graduate from U of I, I fell for the allure of the Silicon Valley.  The very name, Silicon Valley, conjures a technology mythos that now extends far beyond the pioneering semiconductor technology that initially defined the region.  In a few short decades the Silicon Valley went from technology mecca to global innovation archetype.  In the Silicon Valley everything was focused on creating new business: the people, the knowledge, the networks, the capital and the culture.  For many engineering graduates of Midwest and East Coast schools, the path to entrepreneurial success started with a pilgrimage to the Silicon Valley.

Fortunately, Chicago is no longer content to let the technical talent drift away.  Chicago’s entrepreneurial spirit has been revitalized with dramatic startup successes like Groupon and Grubhub.  Our technology community has produced industry shaping web technology like Ruby on Rails.  Entrepreneurs have significant resources to jumpstart their innovative ideas.  The ITA, along with the CEC, Excelerate Labs and several university programs for entrepreneurship now offer significant networking and collaboration opportunities as well as critical business guidance in finance, marketing, and legal needs of startups.    With this support entrepreneurs and innovators can quickly translate “back of the napkin ideas” into an actual operating businesses with greater success and speed.

I first learned about ITA when I started to work with Red Foundry.  What I love about ITA is the help and guidance they provide, and what seems to be an ‘a la carte’, off the shelf packages for startups from insurance for the employees to legal issue support.  ITA has also created a great collaborative networking environment.  You don’t need big bucks to gain access to their facilities and the great network, including advisors, and venture capitalist.  The ITA Fall Challenge bridges the awareness gap between talent nurtured locally, through some of the best CS/CE schools in the nation, and some of the amazing companies that call Chicago home.   Having spent my entire career working with and for technology companies, I’m delighted that Chicago now offers incredible support to the tech entrepreneur, including efforts to keep that homegrown technology in the Midwest, growing our economy, our network, and our great city.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Innovation + Technology = Apps for Metro Chicago Illinois

Posted on August 23, 2011 by admin

At the beginning of July the City of Chicago announced the “Apps for Metro Chicago Illinois” contest. This contest allowed the public to gain access to data from the city, to enable innovation and allow technologist to build apps. By opening up access to the data of the city technologist can look at that and stream line how we do things, allowing the opportunity to cut cost in different sectors. Developers will find ways to help residents be more efficient. This contest will allow innovation to be more effective. In the past technologist have been guessing at what people needed and now by having actual data, it allows them to build more effective apps.

Apps for Metro Chicago Illinois is the first competition of its kind. This competition is organized by the MCIC, the City of Chicago, the State of Illinois, and Cook County. The winners of the competition will receive $50,000 in prize money over three rounds.

Round One: Transportation. June 24 – August 15.

Transportation apps should improve the transportation experience for Chicago area residents and visitors and should touch the geography of the City of Chicago. Transportation is broadly defined to include all types of public and private modes of transportation: trains, subway, buses, highways, streets, autos, bicycles, pedestrian, taxi, water, etc. All submissions for the Transportation round should have been received by 11:59 pm on August 15th.

Round Two: Community. August 28 – September 30.

Community apps should help residents and visitors improve their experience of Chicago metropolitan communities and must touch the geography of the city of Chicago. Communities are broadly defined as neighborhoods, blocks, streets, parks, or any contiguous geographic area where individuals would collectively share experiences; or collections of individuals who share a common interest. All submissions for the Community round should be received by 11:59 pm on September 30th.

Round Three: Grand Challenge. October 15 – December 2.

The Grand Challenge round has the widest scope: apps can be built along any theme as long as they benefit Metro Chicago. The Grand Challenge round will have twenty finalists. Ten of these finalists will consist of the Apps that won 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place in the (previous) Transportation and Community rounds. Finalists are encouraged to improve upon their “previously winning” app for its consideration in the Grand Challenge. Five additional apps will be chosen by a panel of judges and another five apps by public voting. Feel free to re-submit your App for re-consideration in the Grand Challenge if it didn’t make it to the finals in the previous rounds, but there’s no “automatic entry” of previously-submitted apps. All submissions for the Grand Challenge should be received by 11:59 pm on December 2.

The twenty finalist apps will then be voted by a panel of Grand Challenge Final judges.

The first round is now over and the winner will be announced at Social Dev Camp Chicago on Saturday 27th.

What apps would you develop? How do envision apps improving our city?

Posted in awards, chicago, innovation, technology, voting | Leave a comment

Let’s keep the momentum going for the Illinois technology industry

Posted on June 10, 2011 by admin

Let’s keep the momentum going for the Illinois technology industry

A couple of weeks ago we held the ITA Citylights Awards Gala.  We are proud to say it was a big success, with a record number of nominees, finalists and votes.  The number and quality of nominees were truly record setting, resulting in a very competitive year for every award offered.  And don’t get us wrong – we loved it!  It’s great to see so much enthusiasm around our growing industry.   We really saw the community come together and celebrate the amazing companies who call Chicago home.  But now CityLIGHTS is over.  How do we keep that momentum and energy going?

There is a lot of enthusiasm around technology, and the industry is rapidly growing.  ITA recently published the Pulse of the industry Survey and it is clear that the industry will continue to grow, with forecasted sales growth, hiring, and capital expenditures planned.   As a community, we need to work together and ensure these goals are met if not exceeded.

One way ITA is helping to keep people focused on the success of IT companies achieve their goals is through forming partnerships.  ITA just partnered with the CEC (Chicago land Entrepreneurial Center) to support some of the companies that applied to Excelerate Labs 2011 summer class. Excelerate Labs ran into a similar scenario as ITA Citylights. With a limited number of companies in each class, there simply wasn’t the capcity to support all the deserving companies so Excelerate Labs came to ITA and CEC and together we are working with a select group of invited companies to help them achieve their vision. Thanks to this partnership ITA and CEC are working together to help another 40 companies, keeping the momentum going.

Other support sources dedicated to growing the community include the Illinois Innovation Network, which was recently announced by Governor Quinn, as a way to help start ups grow. It seems that government is also starting to notice growth in the industry and they are now trying to create a cocoon of companies or civic organizations to further help entrepreneurs, and upcoming companies.   The CEC, entrepreneurial centers at local universities including Polsky at U of C, Coleman Entrepreneurship Center at DePaul University, and the Northwestern Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation are also great sources, providing support for the growing tech industry.  Networks such as Built in Chicago, TechNori, Tech.Li, and others continue to celebrate the advances of the industry.

How do we leverage the many sources of support for the growing industry?  Working together, collaboratively, with the sole purpose of supporting the economic recovery of the region and building the economy of Chicago’s future we can accelerate the realization of the goal.

Do you think working in a more coordinated fashion can help the technology industry grow?

 


Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Chicago tech community continues to grow. We need to keep pushing.

Posted on May 5, 2011 by admin

One of the most exciting things about being a part of the Chicago tech scene is getting to witness firsthand how it continues to grow.  We had a record number of CityLights nominations this year and the caliber of the finalists is outstanding – both the number and the quality of the companies continue to grow.

When people think of leading companies in Chicago, they tend to know Groupon and Grub Hub because they’re consumer facing. There are a lot of other companies however, that may not have the brand recognition but are just as good – EchoLogistics, SoCore Energy, Medtronics are just a few examples of companies driving innovation in their industries.  Non-tech groups like the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) are utilizing technology to improve consumer satisfaction, through the CTA Transit Trackers.

The technology industry as a whole is growing for a variety of reasons. This is partially because success breeds success – Seeing startups like Groupon evolve into phenomenally successful companies gives the whole industry a bit more confidence to try. This has translated into an increase in investment.  Illinois companies received $432M in investment in the first part of 2010 vs. $180M for all of 2009 . The Chicago tech community has also come together to increase awareness of our successes. Organizations like ITA, Built in Chicago, and others have come together to shine the light on our entrepreneurial successes. Events like the upcoming TechWeek, Executives’ Club of Chicago Tech Summit, and the annual ITA CityLIGHTS all help to grow the awareness of the local technology ecosystem, further pushing Chicago into the forefront of tech on a national basis.

What’s most exciting is how far-reaching our entrepreneurial successes have become. It’s consumer facing. It’s B2B, B2C. It’s mobile. It’s cloud technology. It’s clean tech. And these startups are the ones creating the new jobs that are needed to fuel our economy and propelling us towards a full recovery.

Viewing all this growth, it’s a very exciting time to be in Chicago. The level of performance continues to increase. We just need to keep pushing.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

2010 CityLIGHTS Rising Star winner GrubHub.com gives us an update – and get ready to vote on 2011 ITA CityLIGHTS Awards finalists April 14th!

Posted on April 8, 2011 by admin

Last year, the ITA CityLIGHTS Awards honored GrubHub with our Rising Star award, for emerging from its start-up phase to achieve remarkable distinction. Mike Evans and Matt Maloney launched the company out of Mike’s apartment just six years earlier to “make ordering food easy and more convenient for people.” With their ascent now history – and this year’s Awards just around the corner – I decided to catch up with Mike for a quick recap of the last year.

Q: What are some of highlights of the last year?

A: Since winning the Rising Star Award last April, we’ve been hard at work. In November 2010, we secured $11 million through the Series C round of investment, led by Benchmark Capital, the investors behind OpenTable, Yelp, Zillow and eBay.

Last month, we raised another $20 million. This new round came after preemptive interest, and just four months after our Series C round. The Series D round of funding was led by DAG Ventures with participation from Benchmark Capital. We’ve raised $34 million to date.

Q: What is in store for 2011?

A: GrubHub is currently in the top 13 metro markets with over 13,000 restaurant menus on our site. We have one of the largest networks of independent restaurants. Within the next three months, we’ll list over 80,000 menus. By the end of this year, we plan to be in over 26 cities.

The new round of funding will further strengthen our momentum and enable us to expand our investment in R&D, acquisitions and mobile applications, while increasing our reach into new markets.

Q: Aside from advertising to consumers or clients, how have you raised your company’s visibility?

A: Sure, we’ve become more visible over the last year. But, honestly, this isn’t something worth seeking out. Building great products and serving a need is a better focus. High-quality products that serve a genuine market need will naturally get you visibility.

Q: What do you see going on in the Chicago tech industry right now?

A: We’ve stepped up to a new level in Chicago and the rest of the country is taking notice. The amount of entrepreneurial activity in the city right now is astounding. Eight of the 10 companies that went through the Excelerate Program got funding. And they deserve it. The amount of funding and talent flocking to Chicago right now is proof that something special is going on here.

Q: Besides a vacation, what is your top need today?

A: More great employees. As we expand into new markets and grow the company, we are continually adding to our staff. Tapping into Chicago’s amazing talent pool, we are hiring for everything from developers to rockstar customer service reps.

Q: As a past CityLIGHTS winner who obviously knows about success, how do you feel the technology community fares with less-than-successful ventures?

A: We are beginning to realize that failure isn’t a bad word. There used to be a big stigma associated with going for it and falling short. Now we are beginning to embrace these experiences as learning experiences that help us build better the next time. That is the nature of startups… some work out, some don’t. They are high risk and high reward.

Q: Be honest: Is the award in your office, in your home, or in front of a door propping it open?

A: The award is actually sitting in our front lobby. Winning the Rising Star Award was truly an honor for us. When Matt and I started GrubHub, it was just the two of us. We are now at 100 employees with plans of doubling our staff by the end of this year. The award represents all the hard work the GrubHub team has put into the company.

Are you a past honoree? Share with us what has happened since you won the ITA CityLIGHTS award! Are you a member of the Illinois technology community? Start voting April 14, when the ballots open for the 2011 ITA CityLIGHTS Awards. A record 20,000 people voted last year! Winners will be announced May 12 at the 12th Annual ITA CityLIGHTS Awards Gala. Reserve your seat now!

Find out who will be a finalist for the 2011 ITA CityLIGHTS Awards on Monday, April 18th and get ready to vote!

Posted in awards, voting | Leave a comment

Want to find talent for your company? Start early

Posted on March 15, 2011 by admin

We hear from member companies all the time that they can’t find quality technology talent for their organizations and can’t grow because of it.  At a recent discussion held at TechNexus, ITA hosted U.S. Senator Dick Durbin to talk about the local technology scene with 15 CEOs of Chicago-based startup and growth stage companies.  The topic of talent shortage came up right off the bat. Entrepreneurs are finding  it difficult to find good technology talent. They want true technologists – computer scientists, computer engineering majors who are fans of technology, true coders – not underemployed workers who have been retrained in the use of technology.

It’s a shame, really, because in reality Illinois is filled with student talent. University of Illinois is a big school for computer engineering and computer science; IIT is another big source of talent, DePaul has some great students as well.  Northern Illinois, Southern Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana… the list goes on and on!  The problem is that the big companies, the Microsofts and Googles of the world hire these kids and there simply aren’t enough of them to fill all the openings.  And that’s true on a national level!

Part of what we need to do is educate the students that are attending the top universities on the local technology industry and make them aware of the opportunities that are available. They don’t have to leave Illinois to work in tech or startups. When we visited several schools as part of the Fall Challenge, we told them about companies like Grub Hub and model metrics, and found that the students didn’t know anything about them. Beyond Groupon, there was no understanding of the companies that are local. All the students were very surprised to learn how many local companies are looking for technologists.

We need to connect these students with companies early. Being on-campus, working with the Deans of the universities, meeting the professors and students as they are pursuing their careers will really make a difference!  The early bird gets the worm, and by being proactive in hiring young talent Chicago companies can position themselves to nourish their businesses with first pick of the crop.  And that takes time, the toughest commodity there is for growing businesses!

We are doing what we can to bridge the gap and connect these eager students with Chicago companies. Fall Challenge is one such program we did last year – we went to the computer science and engineering career fairs at nine universities and told students a little about the tech industry locally, took their resumes if they wanted to be considered for positions, and invited them to take a series of challenges based on real world problems faced by some of the sponsoring companies. The final challenge winner got $5,000 cash, just to make sure we go their attention! We have since placed 10 of the finalists with member companies in Chicago as a result of this challenge.  These students would not have known about these companies without our efforts, and the companies wouldn’t have had access to this great talent.

In addition to working through programs like Fall Challenge, companies can use other strategies, like reaching out to alumni groups and using social media and word of mouth to share open opportunities. These extra steps may seem like more work than the usual alternatives, but it will pay off in the long run.  Building awareness of the company, educating current and future graduates on the many opportunities that are right here in Chicago with some truly amazing companies and entrepreneurs will help generate more awareness for future graduates.  And maybe, just maybe, we can keep more of the talent our universities create, to build our economy, instead of other states.  So it might not happen right away, but building that awareness early really will allow your business, and the local economy, to reap the benefits of being the early bird.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 1 Comment