By Neal Sáles-Griffin, Managing Director of Techstars Chicago

The world is moving forward and reconnecting. Our focus at Techstars Chicago continues to be making meaningful connections for our founders to mentors, business partners, customers, potential hires, and their fellow program members.

As investors, the essence of our job is to produce outsized returns on our capital. But a great return on investment is a byproduct of the success of our companies. Taken further, the success of our companies is a byproduct of the success of their customers.

This customer-centric focus is where we shine as a team. Over the next thirteen weeks, our founders will begin mastering customer discovery tools such as the Jobs To Be Done framework. They'll hone their abilities to sell more faster. Each of our CEOs will be poised to raise their next round of funding if they need it. And they'll understand what growth levers matter most as they re-invest their profits for scale.

Our experience sourcing and interviewing the founders this round was our best yet. We have eight companies hailing from the midwest along with teams from London, Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and Sacramento.

You can follow us on Twitter at @nealsales and @bradschnitzer if you’d like to observe their journey over the next three months. We also hope to see you at demo day on October 14th. Thanks for reading, and please join me in welcoming our next class of Techstars Chicago companies!

Buoy

Sacramento, CA

Dynamic pricing for vacation rental hosts buoy.us/

The Collaboratory

Chicago, IL

An information discovery and curation engine for researchers thecollaboratory.ai/

Equipt

London, UK

Equipt levels the playing field for untapped talent by helping them learn skills and get jobs from leading companies joinequipt.com/

Eventnoire

Chicago, IL

Eventbrite for the Black community eventnoire.com/

HiddenLogin

Detroit, MI

Alias Manager: A Unique Identity for Every Site hiddenlogin.com/

Kichezz

Tel Aviv, Israel

An online kitchen showroom that allows brands to grow by using data driven and effective advertising kitchen-compare.co.il

Peep Connect

Kansas City, MO

The new way of marketing for mom/pop shops. peepbusiness.com/

Slingshot

Pittsburgh, PA

Slingshot places high school prodigies at startups out of Techstars, YC, CMU, Stanford, and MIT. Slingshot is paving the way for what the future of K-12 education, college, and talent acquisition will look like. slingshotahead.com/

SplitPass

Chicago, IL

Marketplace to buy & sell unused memberships, packages, subscriptions and much more splitpass.com/

Tastebase

Los Angeles, CA

The home base for food lovers to discover new tastes from up-and-coming brands tastebase.com/

TinnCann

Cincinnati, OH

TinnCann is a curated marketplace that enables 1:1 video calls between enthusiasts and the experts who they admire most. tinncann.com/

WeSparkle

Minneapolis, MN

Helping solopreneurs save time + increase sales via a simple tech stack + AI Sales Associate wesparkle.co/

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