Guest Podcaster: Brooke Bechtold

Have you ever thought something so simple as buying a coffee would significantly change a person’s life? Sound implausible? Think again.

HummbleBragg, a new Chicago-based podcast, is proud to tell the story of Curt’s Cafe in Evanston, IL. A small, but warm and inviting café, it’s a magnet and mortar to the community it serves. But more than the coffee it brews, the real mission of Curt’s Café is cultivating promise.

Guest Author: Brendan Neuman

Creative enterprises start with ideas, and those ideas – initially – are brought into the world through founders and entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, one person’s ideas don’t make for growing, sustainable, and agile businesses. Instead, creativity, and the value it brings to organizations, is a team effort. While every individual holds creative potential, that potential depends on an environment and culture built for creative risk taking.

Guest Author: Lewis Lee, CEO, Aon’s IP Solutions

Guest Author: Gehrig Kunz

Blockchain is a paradox. The technology made famous by bitcoin has simultaneously boundless disruptive potential and boisterous skeptics. Like most things, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle. As a startup founder, the question that really matters to you is often left unanswered – what can you really do with blockchain today?

Guest Author: Ben Schack, Head of Digital Partnerships at BMO Harris Bank

On April 27th, we announced the launch of WMN•FINtech: A Women in FINtech Initiative by 1871 and BMO Harris Bank. This is the fourth collaboration for BMO Harris and 1871, and the first time we have focused exclusively on US-based companies with a woman founder or cofounder.

Guest Author: Travis Claytor, President & Owner, TC Strategic Communications

It’s safe to say that although we are still in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, the way that we operate and how we accomplish even the simplest of tasks has been forever changed. Our lives are changing, business is evolving, and the way we connect with people across the globe will never be the same. Most people are working from home, balancing a crazy schedule as personal and professional lines blur.

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, your company may have mandated that you work from home for the time being. Though you’re probably not new to remote work, this situation is a bit different: we have no idea when we will be back in the office and, in the meantime, we can’t work anywhere but from within our homes.

We’re invested in Chicago, beyond the walls of 1871. It’s in our community’s best interest and our own to keep seeking out ways to support and enable innovation from the outskirts to the epicenter and back, so that our impact is decentralized and, therefore, more inclusive to Chicagoland as a whole.

1871’s latest initiative - entitled “PYROS” - provides member companies and founders with multi-stage, tailored resources, tools, mentors, workshops, curriculum, and peer groups based on their startups’ business development needs.