The Merrick Momentum Award recognizes the top up-and-coming company that is on the cusp of being an established enterprise and significantly impacting the Chicago economy. The winner of this year’s Merrick Momentum Award will be announced on October 9, 2014 at the Seventh Annual Momentum Awards Dinner.
1871 interviewed each of the award finalists to learn more about the exciting Chicago companies that the Momentum Awards Dinner celebrates. Learn more about kCura here:
Tell us about what kCura does.
kCura are the developers of the e-discovery software, Relativity, which is used for managing large volumes of electronic evidence during litigation and investigations. Relativity has more than 100,000 active users worldwide including the U.S. Department of Justice and all of the top 100 law firms in the United States. The company’s been recognized as a “Leader” in leading analyst firm Gartner’s 2014 E-Discovery Magic Quadrant.
We’re about three things: our software, our users, and our team. We want to build an organization committed to providing our customers with great e-discovery software and customer support.
How long has kCura been around and how did it get its start?
We began kCura in 2001 as a software consulting firm. During that time, we were hired to build a document management system for a law firm. We shifted our business exclusively around solving e-discovery problems with that software in 2007 and haven’t looked back.
How is kCura connected to Chicago’s entrepreneurial community?
For one, we like to foster the entrepreneurial spirit internally; we maintain a commitment to new ideas and collaboration while bootstrapping ourselves from a small three-person consulting firm to an industry-leading software company with over 400 team members. Externally, we stay connected through great organizations and programs in the entrepreneurial community such as the Illinois Technology Association, Built in Chicago, Techweek, and Chicago Ideas Week. It’s important that we stay connected, and we love hearing how other entrepreneurial companies are doing while seeking input and feedback as we focus on long-term sustainability.
We also try to be entrepreneurial in our approach to giving back, and hope to continuously involve the community in those efforts. For example, we recently partnered with Chicago Public Schools to launch the kCura Gives / CPS Technology Grant, which not only invests $250,000 of our funds into selected schools over a three-year period, but invites other entrepreneurial businesses to get involved with funding sustainable technology efforts in local schools. It’s really exciting, and we’ve built a repeatable playbook not only for our use, but also to help other companies contribute to grants like this one in order to level the playing field for Chicago students. We hope a program like this can provide awesome long-term results for our schools and continue to connect the community.
What does Chicagoness mean to kCura?
It means we stay true to our roots. We’re a Chicago company that was founded here and constantly pull from the diverse talent pool that calls the city home. It also means having that Midwestern, friendly vibe—work hard, play hard, if you will—while staying connected to the excitement and innovation in the local tech scene.
It can also mean reminding ourselves how great the city is. The brightly colored corner meeting rooms in our office are each named after Chicago neighborhoods, while our conference rooms are labeled after the great landmark buildings of our city. As we look out the windows of our downtown location, we’re inspired by the great city where we live, work, and play.
