Technori Podcast

The robots are coming. Actually, they’re already here. But they’re not what you think, says Karen Leavitt, Chief Marketing Officer of Locus Robotics. The Wilmington, Massachusetts-based company, founded in 2014, makes robots that enable e-commerce and B2B companies to maximize efficiency in their warehouses enabling them to compete in the dynamic world of e-commerce. The world of robotics has chan...

The struggle to get from work to the gym is real. Arnav Dalmia realized that all but the most dedicated gym-goers find it challenging to fit in regular exercise. So he originally founded Cubii to make it easier to be active while at work. The company’s mission has evolved from there. He first pitched the under-desk mini elliptical machines to the Technori Showcase in 2015, when the company was kno...

Managing food allergies requires a lot of time and effort — and information isn’t always available when and where you need it. As the mom of a daughter with life-threatening food allergies, Susie Hultquist knew this problem all too well. But it wasn’t until she struggled to identify whether her daughter could safely eat Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies that business inspiration struck. In 2015, Susie...

“In the senior living market, the old image is nursing home: the new image is active communities for older adults who can simplify their lives and spend their free time really enjoying themselves, their family, their friends,” says Nancy Koenig, CEO of Caremerge, which provides technology solutions for the senior living market. Like previous guests Jay Klauminzer and Elizabeth Harz, Nancy’s story...

VillageMD aims to improve the quality of care by easing the burden on primary care doctors. VillageMD Co-founder and CEO Tim Barry explains that focusing on the most costly chronically ill patients helps reduce pressure on the entire healthcare system. Founded in 2013, the company announced its $100 million Series B round in September. Here Tim explains the history and the mission of his company —...

The rising number of luxury apartment buildings is putting property managers under increasing pressure to entice new tenants — and to convince current ones to stay when their lease is up. When round-the-clock doormen, a state-of-the-art fitness center and a residential lounge are seen as standard, how can property managers set their building apart? Jude Chiy founded resident engagement platform Fl...

Do you ever wish you’d had the opportunity to invest in a company like Netflix or Facebook when they were just a fledgling startup? In the most simple terms, investment platform Republic was created to just that. The platform democratizes fundraising so that anyone can access investment opportunities in the startup ecosystem. The company has quickly built a name for itself — even though it is not...

It’s as true for tech as it is for war and football: sometimes the best defense is a good offense. But that requires everyone within an organization to understand the threat and how to counter it. Scott Kannry and Brendan Fitzpatrick, Axio’s CEO and VP of Cyber Risk Engineering respectively, understand this challenge. Axio’s goal is to help organizations neutralize cybersecurity threats through a...

Moving to the cloud can be intimidating for people accustomed to storing all their data on hardware. Enter Mitch Greenwald and his company Cloudbakers, which helps small to medium-sized businesses translate the vision of cloud-based storage into reality. As a Google Premier Partner for more than eight years, Cloudbakers has worked with financial services, technology, healthcare and other businesse...

According to the American Hospital Association, 3.6 million people miss appointments with healthcare providers every year because they can’t make it to the clinic or the office. In some cases, it’s due to a lack of public transportation options or an inability to afford a taxi. Regardless of the reason, Mindi Knebel, Founder and CEO of Kaizen Health, is tackling the issue head-on. Kaizen’s goal is...

Established companies often wonder what it takes to create true digital transformation — the kind that helps your customers and your bottom line. Hub Group is a great example. Founded in 1971 on the outskirts of Chicago, by Joyce and Phillip Yeager. The couple saw the potential of intermodal shipping, in which containers are transported from one place to another using multiple types of transportat...

Eleven states (including Illinois) and D.C. are in various stages of legalizing recreational marijuana, and in 2018 the cannabis industry was estimated to be worth $10.4 billion — even though the drug is still restricted at the federal level. As the market becomes increasingly viable and appealing, ahem, budding cannabis entrepreneurs are faced with the challenge of moving an underground operation...

At its core, marketing is one person saying to another (or many others), ‘hey, check this out.’ And it’s that small but powerful sentiment that’s at the heart of PromoShare. The company teams up with clients looking to put on a live event. Their users find events they’re interested in and sell tickets to their friends using the PromoShare platform, which tracks how many people they’re bringing in...

You’ve decided to run a race. Maybe it’s a 10K or maybe you’re one of those nuts who has signed up for the Chicago Marathon. Either way, congratulations! Now, how are you going to train and stay motivated? Tech helps us in so many areas of our lives — from watching movies to ordering takeout to answering emails — and it can help make you a better runner, too. Matthew Knippen, CEO and co-founder of...

Melissa Hartwig Urban, co-founder and CEO of Whole30, was the first guinea pig for her diet. “I was eating pretty healthy whole foods, I was exercising a ton: but what the Whole30 showed me in that first self-experiment were all the ways that I was using food to comfort, reward and punish myself, and to self-soothe to relieve anxiety,” she said of the origins of her diet plan, which has become a m...

Even before the rest of us were blown away by the Maps app, David Mindell was working on delivering even more precise location information. In addition to his various appointments in aeronautics and robotics at MIT, David has been involved in dozens of underwater research explorations, including the search for the Titanic. It was the navigational challenges that come with being underwater — where...

Securing an insurance policy that covers your needs is one of the most important items for businesses at all stages, but it’s also one of the most arduous. That’s where CoverWallet comes in. Co-founders Rashmi Melgiri and Inaki Berenguer were looking for an industry that could benefit from moving online when they landed on insurance. Neither had worked in the industry before: both have MBAs from M...

How do we ditch the dull parts of our day jobs? According to Sean Chou and Catalytic — and numerous sci-fi authors — it’s by giving the boring tasks that make us feel like robots to actual robots — or, specifically, to artificial intelligence. Catalytic takes the existing data processing software like Salesforce, Excel, Quickbooks etc. and helps you run them as one, cutting out back and forth, and...

Joe Hernandez aka Disruption Joe joins the podcast in-studio at WGN to talk about the latest trends in Chicago tech and diving into all things blockchain. His belief in Chicago's ability to become a center for blockchain innovation led him to create the Voice of Blockchain in 2018. 1,000 people came to Navy Pier to learn about and promote the technology behind bitcoin for the first major event. In...

Take a look at a property that is for sale and of course, you’ll see its best attributes on display. It’s pristine and uncluttered, shiny and inviting. Glimpse behind-the-scenes of most real estate offices, and you’ll see the total opposite. This is no secret to anyone in the industry, including Jake Marmulstein who is building a business that aims to tame the chaos for real estate companies. Grou...

If there’s one industry that’s both very old and highly innovative, it’s food. We’ve been eating since before we could talk in more than grunts — but what we want to eat, and how and where we acquire food, continues to change rapidly. One company trying to balance that long history with the need to innovate is wholesale food distributors Gordon Food Service. The company traces its roots back to 18...

When you’ve already worked at Google for over a decade, co-founded a successful startup, used your talents to help a non-profit, and earned degrees from Stanford University and Harvard Business School — what’s next? For Minnie Ingersoll, the answer was venture capital and a move away from Silicon Valley. After graduating from Stanford with a computer science degree, Minnie joined Google in its ear...

If you’ve lived through a Chicago winter, the idea of paying someone to let you stand in a machine that gets cold enough to give you frostbite seems dubious at best. But CryoBar owner Sara Latham is convinced that that’s exactly what many of us dealing with injuries, stress and even chronic illnesses need to feel better. For the uninitiated, CryoBar offers treatments based around the belief that s...

Strategic growth requires a People+People™ plan. Simply put, you can’t have one without the other. As sales grow, so does your need for a talented workforce. Here’s the bottom line: It takes the same strategies to attract and retain clients as it does employees – and you need a healthy, engaged pipeline of both to achieve business goals. Join business leaders from all industries to connect and gai...

Chet Kanojia’s entrepreneurial ventures often have a theme of pushing back against the “big guy” — and for good reason. As a kid growing up in Bhopal, India, he was profoundly affected by the Union Carbide plant disaster, which exposed more than 600,000 people to harmful gasses and resulted in 15,000 deaths. It is the world’s worst industrial disaster and Chet was around 12 or 13 when it happened....