Aug 4, 2011

When I moved from Atlanta to Chicago about a year ago to start my own company and explore a new city, attending the inaugural midVenturesLaunch was my first exposure to the local startup technology scene. The event, highlighted by Brad Keywell’s keynote, was an affirmation that I was in good company helping Chicago transform from a flyover afterthought...

Jul 21, 2011

As a 28-year old in the summer 2011, it’s a funny thing to look back on the dial-up days of the Internet . I first gained Internet access as a tween-ager in the mid-90’s courtesy of my parents’ first desktop PC, a Gateway 2000, and a now ironically defunct company called Prodigy. Getting online entailed selecting a local phone number from a drop-down...

Jul 7, 2011

Every week or so I get a message from a friend, family member or ex-coworker along the lines of “My third cousin’s pet sitter wants to get into the green industry, and I was hoping you would talk to her about getting a job.” The presumption being that the over-generalized ‘green’ or ‘energy’ industry is expanding so quickly that a glut of...

Jun 23, 2011

The majority of big business executives still hold the misguided view of ‘green’ initiatives as luxurious public relations tactics rather than opportunities to operate more efficiently (although they’d only admit it behind closed doors),but startups are characteristically lean, and consequently ‘green’, by nature. After all, it’s pretty easy to...

Jun 2, 2011

Back in 2003, brothers Adam and Chad Saffro founded Real Time Freight Services, originally setting up shop in the Technology Innovation Center at Northwestern in Evanston, IL and providing a SaaS platform for shippers and transportation companies to communicate more efficiently and effectively.  With Adam in charge of business development and Chad keeping his...