Initial Cohort of The Food Foundry to Feature Five Food Industry Related Businesses; Cohort to Participate in 16-Week Accelerator Offering Access to Mentorship, Advanced Curriculum, and Industry Resources.

Most of us will wear a few different hats throughout our lives. At 40, Donald Hyun Kiolbassa, President and Owner of Donald Hyun Kiolbassa, Attorney at Law, has already been there, done that, got the t-shirt, and (quite literally) wrote the book. In this post, Kiolbassa reflects on his entrepreneurial journey and what it truly means to grow as an individual and professional.

In January 2018, 1871 was selected by the Kauffman Foundation as one of six entrepreneurial support organizations nationwide to serve as a policy advocate for entrepreneurs. In partnership with the Kauffman Foundation, 1871 is using the grant to fund a three-year program that will convene entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers in one room to address the issues that are impacting entrepreneurs the most. The program features two policy forums a year to discuss the most relevant challenges facing entrepreneurs. Together, the objective is to find policy-driven solutions and amplify entrepreneurs’ and investors’ voices in Chicago, Washington D.C. and beyond. Read more about our grant from the Kauffman Foundation here.  

JOBS! Every week, we highlight a number of open jobs for our member companies. If you're looking for an exciting career in the tech industry or an opportunity to work alongside Chicago's best and brightest, then you've come to the right place. Here are the job openings for the week of December 11, 2018.

Conversion. Search Engine Marketing. Taglines. PPC. Brand experience. When you’re just starting out, the world of marketing and branding can seem overwhelming. There are so many approaches to getting your company and product seen that it becomes difficult to know where to start. At the fourth session of 1871’s Groundwork series -- a set of public workshops focusing on foundational topics for fledgling entrepreneurs -- Reva Minkoff of Digital4Startups, David Kelbaugh of Tacklebox Brand Partners, Shirley Yang of Muses, and Solomon Thimothy of Clickx broke down the best approaches to creating a strong branding and marketing foundation for startups.

“Just put one foot in front of the other.” If you’re building a business, you’ve probably heard this line more than once. However, Matthew Thor, a software engineer at Screencastify, takes the saying a bit more literally than his peers. As a runner who once came in 84th place at the Chicago Marathon (out of an estimated 45,000 participants), Thor is no stranger to endurance, initiative, and hustle. In this post, he talks about the importance of focus, balance, and competition.

JOBS! Every week, we highlight a number of open jobs for our member companies. If you're looking for an exciting career in the tech industry or an opportunity to work alongside Chicago's best and brightest, then you've come to the right place. Here are the job openings for the week of December 4, 2018.

We rely so heavily on smartphones and other connected gadgets, but what is it that enables those devices to function? One of 1871's newest members, Crown Castle, the company enabling much of your wireless world, gives us a glimpse into the realm of cell towers, small cells, fiber optics and all things shared communications. This blog is part of the company’s “Tomorrow’s Chicago Today” series, which begins with a panel discussion on communications infrastructure Wednesday, December 5.

"If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, then you don't know what you are doing." – Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Father of Quality Evolution. Dr. Deming's ideas of product quality largely inspired Japan's post-WWII economic boom in manufacturing. His celebrated 14 points for management have also stood as a standard for transforming business effectiveness since the 1980s. In this guest blog post, Wilma Paxton Doherty, a Senior Consultant at ON THE MARK, talks about how organizations can apply Agile thinking by using Dr. Deming's philosophies.

Women make up half of the total college-educated workforce in the United States yet only 29 percent of the overall science and engineering workforce. It’s an issue that Stephanie Hein, CEO of MakerGirl, is working to solve. In this article, she talks about why it’s important to show young women the value of STEM -- and have some fun in the process.