Startup Forj has just raised a $15 million-dollar Series A funding round and announced a merger with Web Courseworks that will come together under the Forj brand. Forj was founded in 2021 to create a B2B SaaS platform for communities of practice. This AI-driven software creates opportunities for engagement, learning, and making meaningful connections between…
How to connect with Chicago’s startup ecosystem
Desiree Vargas Wrigley runs TechRise and P33 Chicago, a startup community and pitch competition that supports women and BIPOC startup founders with generous funding. We recently reported on the organization, but wanted to circle back to get more details out on how you can get involved in these programs. Wrigley says that the organization set…
Forj raises $15 million and announces merger
Startup Forj has just raised a $15 million-dollar Series A funding round and announced a merger with Web Courseworks that will come together under the Forj brand. Forj was founded in 2021 to create a B2B SaaS platform for communities of practice. This AI-driven software creates opportunities for engagement, learning, and making meaningful connections between…
How to connect with Chicago’s startup ecosystem
Desiree Vargas Wrigley runs TechRise and P33 Chicago, a startup community and pitch competition that supports women and BIPOC startup founders with generous funding. We recently reported on the organization, but wanted to circle back to get more details out on how you can get involved in these programs. Wrigley says that the organization set…
6 Ways to Secure Funding for Your Startup
This article is a guest post by contributor Dean Burgess of Excitepreneur.net. The opinions herein are the sole perspective of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Cronicle Press. If you have a guest post you would like to share with Cronicle readers on the topics of startups, technology innovation, and social…
QualSights raises just under $8 million for IoT AI consumer research platform
According to Chicago Inno’s exclusive interview with insiders, QualSights has raised just under $8 million in a Series A. The report states that the biggest challenge for the new startup is to keep pace with its own success, using the funding to accelerate hiring. FINSMEs reports that the tech platform provider had raised $7.7 million…
Chicago’s TechRise supports entrepreneurs with generous pitch competition grants
Chicago is still growing as an emerging tech hub. Meet P33, an organization that is supporting entrepreneurs that are historically underrepresented. P33 is a non-profit focused on driving inclusive, global tech and innovation leadership in Chicago. Its initiative, TechRise by P33, is a pitch competition that supports underrepresented tech founders from Chicago and strives for racial, gender,…
How Is Your Company Weathering the Economic Shift? Send Us Your Tips.
Cronicle has heard from a number of tech companies, startups, VCs and talent across Midwest tech that a sea change is underway. How companies think about finances and investments is changing. No one wants to say we’re in an all-out recession yet, but there is still hesitation over previous growth plans reflecting the uncertainty over…
Chicago Startups Continue Fundraising Streak
Built in Chicago reports this week that it has been another busy month for the windy city’s tech scene, with executive hires, acquisitions and several fundraising rounds. Reverb hired Bradford Shellhammer, former vice president of eBay, as chief product officer. Codeverse was acquired by Nerdy. And two startups closed multi-million-dollar funding rounds to expand production…
Chicago’s Fly.io Closes $37 Million in Funding, Is Hiring
Chicago’s Fly.io helps small companies launch and run applications with a global network of servers with low latency and affordable prices, solving the problem of finding servers for independent developers or small startups. This is because Fly.io helps companies and developers deploy app servers close to their users. On Thursday, Fly.io announced the closing of…
record-breaking VC investment draws 43x investment dollars to Michigan
Michigan is a flyover state no longer. Even in the midst of a pandemic that shut down swaths of business, venture capital was still at work. Why should the average person or even tech worker care about money that doesn’t end up in their pocket? Venture capital doesn’t just enable new businesses to get up and running instead of having to move to other states where funding is easier to find. It also attracts investment dollars to the state. The Michigan Venture Capital Association says that for every $1 invested by venture capital in the state, $42.87 is attracted from investment outside of Michigan. That’s big news.
Ford Cuts Jobs To Fund EV Investment
In an unusual move, Ford Motor Co. is planning to cut up to 8,000 jobs in the next few weeks in order to boost profits to fund the push into electric vehicles. According to Crain’s Detroit Business, the job cuts come in the newly formed Ford Blue unit that produces internal combustion engine vehicles and other salaried jobs throughout Ford. This is according to insiders, and plans have not been finalized and could still change.