Startup Grind is an event series and website designed to help educate, inspire, and connect local entrepreneurs. Each month we welcome an amazing speaker who shares their story with our community and tells us what worked, what didn't, and what they'll do differently next time. It's an amazing opportunity to learn from the best, network with other members of the startup community, and improve your chances of entrepreneurial success.

The Chicago Lean Startup Circle is a group of smart and driven high-tech entrepreneurs that have learned how to discover customers and build products they want. Lean Startups (which can include for profit and not for profit organizations, new product/innovation organizations within larger companies and even government agencies) achieve success faster than most because they get out of the building to talk to customers, validate business model assumptions as quickly and cheaply as possible, use ag …

This is a group for anyone interested in learning and/or exchanging ideas directed to intellectual property (IP) issues common to Startups and strategies to implement best practices for IP rights protection and leverage the valve of the IP for the benefit of the Startup. All skills levels are welcome. The group was started in order to meet people interested in exploring IP issues common to Startups. Looking forward to exploring strategies and best practices with anyone interested.

Obama for Technology | Technology for Obama was created on My.BarackObama.com in February 2007 shortly after Barack Obama announced his intentions to run for President of the United States of America (POTUS). We are the "original" Technology for Obama group (just Google "Technology for Obama" or "Obama For Technology" and watch the videos, etc). Because I organize several Meetups, I've decided create this "Technology For Obama" Meetup Group to help get President Barack Obama reelected in 2012. M …

Chicago Food Tech offers a variety of meetup events to bring together restauranteurs, food and technology changemakers and innovators with diverse backgrounds in order to create dialogues surrounding new business models, showcase opportunities, challenges, synergies, and forecast food technology's future.

This is a group for anyone who is a Technology Professional and interested in learning how to stay relevant and wants to learn more about hiring and career trends for technologists in the Chicagoland area. We will profile tech companies/startups, the most marketable tech skills, tech interview techniques and more.

The TTG Learn - Pitch - Network groups is intended for those individuals that are interested in keeping current with technology, social/new media and new ventures in the Chicagoland area. Once a month, we have lunches where we discuss a topic related to technology, social media, mobile, small business issues and/or marketing. Starting in October of 2012, we also have monthly lunches where companies that are seeking funding can practice their pitch and get feedback which will help them improve th …

The intent of this group is to encourage and develop relationships between small business owners and suitable investors. Monthly meetings will be focused on short presentations that provide timely and applicable lessons for starting, developing, and funding new business concepts. This group is solutions-oriented, and it embraces a no-nonsense approach towards immediate and actionable relationships, partnerships, and conceptual fruition.

We are a group of first or second generation Business Owners, Executives and Entrepreneurs that meet to discuss topics relating to starting up a business, scaling, selling, and planning for our exit from our business. We meet once a month. Each meeting has a presenter on a topic that Entrepreneurs want to learn more about. Some of our Past Topics include: Selection of a Business Entity, Acquiring Venture Capital, What to know about your Employment Agreements? Top Ten thing to know in being Acqui …

Join Other Entrepreneurs Who Eat Problems For Breakfast. * Compare Notes * Exchange Ideas * Learn from Others’ Mistakes * Brainstorm with Peers * Find Partners * Small Group Atmosphere * Serious Conversation Bootstrappers Breakfasts® are for founders of early stage technology startups. It is a chance to compare notes on operational, development, and business issues with peers. These breakfasts were designed for entrepreneurs to share ideas and leverage thoughts with other folks who are serious …

Founder Sensei is a voluntary mentorship program for founders who want to improve themselves and the businesses they create. Mentors act as facilitators with small groups of founding teams to help them through their journey to startup success. By combining the Art of Customer Development, Business Model Design and Agile Engineering together with fellowship and mentor support, entrepreneurs can discover what is missing in their startups and how they can take their businesses to the next level.

Enterprise technology is changing the face of large organizations by bringing efficiency, increased profitably, and employee happiness. The Chicago #EntTech Meetup works to foster innovation in enterprise tech, build a community of learning, and promote the best and brightest within the space. Organized by Manifest Digital and Acceleprise

Venture Connects provides entrepreneurs, both seasoned and starting out, with opportunities to investment capital, strategic business partnerships and other essential business services needed to cultivate growth. Venture Connects does this through an online platform and in-person partnerships. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, investor, or business looking to help startups, Venture Connects bridges the gap and is the one stop source to assist your business. www.ventureconnects.biz

Imagine if there was a place, where at one table an entrepreneur meets her next $100,000 investor. A designer meets a new client, a web developer with a great internet startup. A Ruby engineer meets a charismatic founder that excites him with her vision, so much so that he can picture leaving his day job for the exhilarating experience of working tirelessly for technology stock options that could be worth millions one day... We're building this community. --- Part of the Tech Happy Hour Allia …

VentureSHOT Entrepreneur Collaboration Community brings together extraordinary entrepreneurs to help them grow their businesses and enhance their levels of success. This community was launched and is run BY Entrepreneurs...FOR Entrepreneurs. We REALLY know the issues entrepreneurs face in growing their businesses and our vision is to help hundreds of entrepreneurs achieve greater success through collaboration with their peers, mentors and unique, powerful collaboration sessions. Click Here For P …

This group is for Chicago Area developers and designers of all makes and models to get together and drink alcohol (or some other poison), showcase their work, share tips and techniques, and find full time and contract work opportunities. We invite group members to submit ideas to talk about.  Bring a laptop or a tablet, a sketchpad or an etch-a-sketch.  We don't care. We are technology agnostic and just want to have drinks and meet other folk who know our woes.

Entrepreneurship permeates the culture of the Digital Age. The advent of the Digital Age has democratized innovation and entrepreneurship. Never before has it been more possible for anyone from anywhere,  with  a great idea and a burning desire to succeed,  to make it big, and,  in the process, change the world in a relatively short period of time. HP, Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Yahoo,  eBay, Amazon, Google, Facebook and many, many, many other iconic companies all started with just …

Tech In Motion is an event that originated during Chicago's 1st annual Tech Week. The event went so well we decided to continue to do more. The basic idea of the group is to explore how to create a company from an idea and what it takes to become a successful business. We will explore this process by focusing on three critical areas and inviting a panel of experts talk about each phase: Idea, Build and Go. We will be speaking about the full life cycle of an idea from inception to profitability. …

Let's keep it true to the name! Happy Hour for Tech Power is what it sounds like. We will get together and enjoy the fine locales of Chicago. It will be run in conjunction with ChicagoHour to offer as many networking and happy hour opportunities as possible without diluting the experience. Prizes of all sorts will be part of it too. Why? Well, who doesn't like free stuff they can use!

At Idea Lemon, we understand that there is potential in everything that life doles out. Be it lemons, limes, or lychees, with a little effort you can turn these singular items into something great & we aim to be the juicer that gets you there. Idea Lemon is more than just networking, it's KNOWLEDGEWORKING. Our goal is to not only bring people together, but to bring together their brainpower as well. Providing a forum to share perspectives and explore your passions in a powerful, thought-provokin …

A curated set of events that we encourage everyone to attend!

BuiltInChicago.org is an awesome community of entrepreneurs, engineers, marketers, developers, designers, investors, technologists and academics working hard to create the next big web or mobile business. Our mission is to connect, educate and promote the growing digital community in Chicago. And we want you to JOIN today. This group will be used to help connect members of the community in person. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions: adam@builtinchicago.org

CEO Space is the world's oldest, largest & most successful network for CEOs, Entrepreneurs and Visionary Investors. We are an entrepreneurial training and world class business networking organization, providing MBA level ~ training, development and an immersion experience of cooperation that result in income acceleration through exponential business growth. Come experience our “Community of Cooperation” and extend this special invitation also to your partners, associates and other entrepreneurs …

digitalundivided GROW Chicago is a monthly meet up of digital companies founded/co-founded by black women working together to GROW their tech-based companies from Idea to MVP to Growth and then Exit. Sponsored by digitalundivided, a company that builds forward thinking initiatives that change the digital space.

- Bringing together data scientists, computational scientists, and folks interested in data analytics, scientific computing, and visualization. - Promoting data computing as a way to enhance computational outcomes and add value to the bottom line. - Fostering a collaborative culture between government labs, industry, the non-profit sector, and academia in the Chicagoland area.

We think Chicago is the best city in America and we want to change the way people live in the city. In each and every neighborhood there is a story. I'd like to find people who would like to create a new way to tell that story thru NFC (Near Field Communication). Whether its food at a local dive or a park that describes how the Chicago Fire started, lets figure out a way to use NFC to engage people, their experiences and their lives for the better. Heck, Chicago deserves it. We would like to bri …

Welcome to Co-Founders Wanted of Chicago Meetup group! Maybe you are a serial entrepreneur, maybe you are a developer, and maybe corporate life is not for you. Have you been doing searches on CoFoundersLab.com? Tasted a startup, or want to startup your own business? Co-Founders Wanted of Chicago serves as an in-person matchmaking service for co-founders. Did you know VCs prefer co-founders over one-man startups? There are lots of benefits to starting a business with someone who complements you. …

We are the technical folks at 1871. We're here to share ideas, code, questions, disaster porn and strong drinks. All 1871 members who touch code or infrastructure are welcome to join. Our startups live and die by our ability to build solutions quickly across a large surface area of problems. When you find yourself outside familiar territory, you want a trusted group of colleagues to turn to. When things blow up, you want someone to tell you how they blew up worse and survived. Let's build that.