Name: Printavo

Legal: Printavo, Inc

Location: Chicago, IL

Founded: 2012

Founder(s): Bruce Ackerman 

Website: https://www.printavo.com/

Social Media: 8966 followers on Instagram, 3062 followers on Twitter, 2099 followers on Facebook,  and 213 followers on LinkedIn

Industry: Workflow Management Software 

Size: $4.8B (Source: Grand View Research) 

Projections: Expected to grow at a CAGR of 27.7% from 2019 to 2025 (Source: Grand View Research) 

Introduction

Printavo is a simple cloud-based software that helps shops streamline workflows and grow their businesses. Customized explicitly for print, embroidery, promotional product and sign shops, Chicago-based Printavo helps companies reach the next level. With Printavo, shops use a single tool to simplify scheduling, invoicing, payments, and approvals. 

The Product

Designed to help shops manage all processes central to running businesses, Printavo eases workflow management, documentation, accounting, and collections. The solution empowers print shops to grow their businesses with improved efficiency, enhanced productivity, reduced costs, and delighted clients. 

Printavo helps employees, irrespective of their location, to stay updated on the current workflow status with a clear calendar detailing what’s due for the month and color-coded order statuses. Clarity on workflow status helps employees move forward and take the next actions towards fulfilling customer orders seamlessly. Additionally, the software allows for creating separate production deadlines and customer due-dates to distinguish internal processes for better management. 

Rather than cluttering mailboxes, Printavo enables shops to message their customers directly for clarifications, quotes, and creative approvals. The platform securely stores these messages and approvals alongside other customer information, be it history, billing, or shipping information, that is readily accessible on demand.

Printavo also empowers businesses to collect payments seamlessly with features to send automated payment requests, follow-ups, and secure links to pay for orders. The links ensure a faster collection of payments and facilitate collection in over 138 currencies. 

Furthermore, businesses can gain from the analytics offered by Printavo to understand their business and identify growth levers better. Detailed analytics on revenue, expenses, sales per client, sales per employee, and sales per product line help businesses deep-dive into their performance and identify areas for improvement. 

Printavo Merch accelerates growth for print shops by offering an integrated platform for brands to create online stores within minutes. The store helps shops increase sales by selling custom-print merchandise online for team orders, company orders, or fundraisers. 

With over 1000+ integrations with software solutions such as Quickbooks Online, SanMar, Stripe, Google, and more, the platform helps businesses save time and enhance productivity. 

Origin and Founding Team

Printavo was founded in 2012 by Bruce Ackerman. Running a collegiate screen-printing business based at the University of Illinois, Bruce observed that tracking the status of jobs became challenging as the company grew. He realized that none of the existing apps met the requirements of print-shops to track orders, monitor status, and provide clarity on the next steps. The solutions available then were complicated and expensive, and he felt the need for a simple software to keep track of orders as they came in. 

This gap led him to build Printavo, a seamless solution to organize workflows efficiently so that all employees and clients are on the same page. With a mission to make businesses productive, Printavo helps them by automating and customizing operational processes to reduce costs and project turnaround time.

The post Printavo – Shop and project management software, simplified appeared first on Techweek.

Name: Truckies

Legal Name: Truckies LLC

Location: Chicago, IL

Founded: June 2019

Founder(s): Kristina Covarrubias

Website: https://www.truckie.online/

Social Media Following: 8 Followers on LinkedIn 

INDUSTRY – US Trucking Industry

Size: $796B in 2018 (Source: Statista)

Introduction

Truckies is a management and navigation tool for truckers. The platform locates available parking space for truckers to help them save time on an otherwise time-consuming process and ensure that they are compliant with rules and regulations.

According to the website, there are 300,000 documented parking spaces for commercial trucks in the US. Yet, 39% of truck drivers spend an hour or longer looking for a place to park their trucks. With Truckies, Founder and CEO Kristina Covarrubias aims to solve this key problem for truck drivers and fleet owners across the US and save them lost time and money.

The Product 

Truckies facilitates the process for truckers and small-business trucking companies to locate parking spaces, file their vehicle taxes, and manage registration and compliance. 

The platform is currently in its beta stage and its website mentions that it will be launched soon with features such as navigation, reporting, and management tools, in addition to parking assistance. ​Through these features, both independent truckers as well as small and mid-sized trucking companies will be able to track and manage their fleets, and plan fleet movements more efficiently to erase blind spots and solve the problem of information mismatch in the trucking ecosystem. 

Origin and Founding Team 

Truckies is founded by Kristina Covarrubias, a software developer with 16 years of experience.

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Name: Poolside

Legal: Poolside, Inc 

Location: Chicago, IL

Founded: 2018

Founder(s): Maureen Burns and Rachel Brandenberger

Website: www.poolside.co 

Social Media Following: 67 Followers on Instagram, 141 Followers on Facebook,  723 Followers on Twitter, 59 Followers on LinkedIn

Industry – US Staffing Solutions Market

Size: $148.1B in 2018 (Source: Statista) 

Projection: $157.8B by 2020 (Source: Statista)

Introduction

Poolside helps restaurants find the right fit for their establishment. Its proprietary staffing platform helps restaurants attract and retain talent by building a connection between them and the talent they hire based on time availability, motivations, goals, and most importantly skills. In addition, it also provides restaurants a continuous pipeline of talent through its in-built marketplace.

The Product

Poolside is bridging the gap in the staffing solutions space specifically for restaurateurs and talent. It helps find the right fit for both parties through efficient staff scheduling to meet workflow requirements and the feasibility for employees. The platform helps the restaurants create job-postings based on best practices such as writing effective job posts and descriptions, explaining work culture, and other details. They match the job posting with prospective hires based on their individual goals, priorities, and availability. Poolside also offers a scheduling platform that understands the restaurant’s work requirements and the talent availability to promote smooth scheduling and mutual understanding of each other’s needs.

Origin and Founding Team

Poolside is co-founded by Maureen Burns and Rachel Brandenburger, who were former colleagues at Doblin, a design firm owned by Deloitte.

Maureen Burns is the CEO at Poolside, while Rachel Brandenburger serves as the VP of Product and Design at the company. 

Performance and Trends

Co-founder, Maureen Burns was one of the 10 women selected to participate in 1871’s WiSTEM 2018 Fall Class – a 12-week program that provides support to startup founders in the form of mentorship, introductions to investors, curated programming, and workshops.

The post Poolside – A staffing platform for restaurants to source and hire talent appeared first on Techweek.

Name: Omnetrium

Legal Name: Omnetrium Inc.

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Founded: 2016

Founders: Rosemary Hackett and John Hackett

Website: https://omnetrium.com/ 

Social Media Following: 26 Followers on LinkedIn, 41 Followers on Twitter

Industry – Banking and Financial Services Software (Global)

Size: $24.6B by 2020 (Source: Statista)

Introduction

Not many know that over half of the population in the United States buys lottery tickets regularly to the tune of $70 billion each year. While the chance of winning is exciting, those dollars spent on tickets are lost forever. Playing on this idea, Omnetrium was designed to help banks build stable core deposits and customer relationships. Users need to open an account on their phone and digital tickets will be automatically issued and entered in all subsequent drawings.

The Product

Omnetrium partners with banks to support organic customer growth through its software that increases stable core deposits and enhance customer engagement. It enables banks to develop a custom award program using prize-linked savings accounts and build robust client relationships. 

Once you sign up, the cloud-based platform seamlessly integrates with leading digital banking platforms. Secure, scalable and extensible, it helps you design, manage and market a custom game to power your growth goals. 

The prize-linked savings account works just like a regular savings account, with one great additional feature: every dollar deposited gets you a digital ticket that is automatically entered into monthly, quarterly and annual drawings for cash and other prizes. 

Origin and Founding Team

A graduate from Northwestern University, Rosemary Hackett comes with extensive experience in technology leadership roles and IT consulting. She has expertise in leadership, business intelligence, information systems and resource management.

John Hackett – who is also Global Head of Product Marketing at Northern Trust Asset Management – has to his credit experience in strategic business development, product development, marketing and sales for global investment firms. He is known for his ability to lead multi-disciplinary teams and develop innovative solutions to drive new businesses. 

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