Fireside: Chicago

Jonathan Ellis is the Founder and Managing Director of Sandalphon Capital. Sandalphon is a Pre-Seed and Seed stage venture capital fund focused primarily on the Midwest and invests in B2B SaaS, Marketplaces, Consumer Tech and Consumer Brands. The Sandalphon team is also behind midwest.tech/connect, a massive bi-annual virtual summit connecting Midwest startups with VCs, angels and other resources, at scale.

 

Prior to founding Sandalphon, Jonathan spent 10 years in investment banking, private equity and debt investing roles at Macquarie. Originally from the UK, he has lived in Chicago since 2007 and has been investing in Chicago startups as an angel investor since 2014. He holds a BSc (Hons) International Management from the University of Manchester and a Masters in Finance from INSEAD.

Kyle is the co-founder and CEO of Clearcover, the smarter car insurance company. Under Kyle’s leadership, Clearcover has raised more than $104 million to date and has launched in multiple markets - California, Illinois, Arizona, Ohio, Utah, Texas, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Missouri, Indiana, Pennsylvania with more on the way. Before founding Clearcover, Kyle was a founding member of American Family Ventures where he was responsible for sourcing, evaluating and structuring over 50 equity and debt venture capital investments in nationally-based tech startups. Prior to this role, Kyle was a corporate attorney focused on emerging company business matters at AlphaTech Counsel. Kyle has a law degree and an MBA from the University of Wisconsin.

Kaben Clauson is the CEO and Co-Founder of TruePublic. From growing up in Alaska, to living in South Africa, his curiosity for understanding the world's opinions led him to start TruePublic in 2018. With a revolutionary approach, the company is crowdsourcing millions of opinions Americans both inside and outside of companies. Their insights are being used by Fortune 500 companies, research institutions, and in major publications around the world.

Seth Armstrong leads Market Development growth for Deloitte’s Emerging Growth Company practice in the Central region. He has more than 15 years of experience serving global investors and venture-backed companies from numerous sectors including technology, media, telecommunications, energy, real estate, retail, manufacturing, transportation, insurance, and health care. In his role, Seth cultivates relationships across a broad network of investors and entrepreneurs and identifies opportunities to connect leaders to the businesses, resources, and tools they need to meet their objectives. 

Throughout his career, Seth has remained actively involved in various facets of the investor community with a deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges that face both venture capital and private equity firms as well as their portfolio companies. He is a founding member of Forerunner Associates and an active mentor at Capital Factory in Austin and VentureSCALE in Chicago. He has invested and sourced over $120 million into early to late-stage companies. In addition, Seth has held board positions and been an executive leader at nearly 30 companies.

Seth takes pride in the leadership and entrepreneurial opportunities he’s been afforded, having built teams across six countries and co-founded a fintech startup. Much of his career prior to joining Deloitte was spent establishing high-growth business strategies, optimizing operations, developing talent, and launching new products to market.

Seth has a passion for community service with a keen focus on empowering youth to develop the skills they will one day use in the workforce. Since 2019, he has been a board member of T4Youth (Tech4Youth), which focuses on providing support to under-resourced schools to ensure all students have access to STEAM. T4Youth has raised over $500k for Chicago Tech Academy and recently partnered with Code Nation to launch its very first virtual trickshot competition to support the kids that need it most – https://t4youth.org/

Jason VandeBoom is the Founder and CEO of ActiveCampaign. ActiveCampaign's category-defining Customer Experience Automation Platform helps over 100,000 businesses in 170 countries meaningfully engage with their customers. The platform gives businesses of all sizes access to hundreds of pre-built automations that combine email marketing, marketing automation, CRM, and machine learning for powerful segmentation and personalization across social, email, messaging, chat, and text.

Jason has been named to Crain’s Chicago Business 40 Under 40 list and was a 2019 Midwest finalist for EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year program. He is a member of Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), the Economic Club of Chicago, and serves on the board of the Future Founders Foundation.

Jon Morris is the founder and CEO of Ramsay Innovations, a management consulting firm focused on helping small to medium-sized businesses grow faster. Previous to starting Ramsay Innovations, Morris was the founder and CEO of Rise Interactive. Under Morris’ leadership, Rise received recognition for excellence in client service, innovative marketing campaigns, and commitment to culture, including acknowledgment from Inc. 500|5000 Fastest Growing Companies (nine-time winner), Ad Age (Best Places to Work in Advertising), Fortune Magazine, and more. Morris has been personally recognized as a leader in technology and innovation on the Techweek100 list and the Crain’s Chicago Tech 50 list.

As a leader in the digital marketing community, Morris has mentored several entrepreneurs, with a significant focus on the University of Chicago’s New Venture Challenge, a renowned business plan competition where Rise itself got its start. Morris has shared his expertise as a guest speaker, presenting on main stages and at workshops and webinars for organizations such as Search Marketing Expo, Search Engine Strategies, American Marketing Association, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, Forrester Research, Online Marketing Summit, iStrategy, and Vistage. 

Morris earned an MBA with high honors, graduating first in his class from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and a bachelor's degree from Kenyon College.

Rasheed Hammouda started his career in Financial Services covering investment and economic topics as a freelance journalist, contributing to trade publications including ETF Strategy and writing a standing column for Egypt's largest English newspaper. In 2015, he co-founded Bridge Financial Technology where he leads the company as CEO today. 

Bridge's vision is to build a better financial advisor by transforming financial data into actionable insights, elevating the work of advisors and the technology companies that serve them. Bridge works with over 200 wealth management firms, a dozen FinTechs, and partners with financial institutions including Fidelity, Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade. They are backed by FINTOP, MissionOG, and UMB Corporate Capital amongst other leading angels and FinTech funds.

Howard Tullman is the General Managing Partner of two early-stage venture capital funds, Chicago High-Tech Investment Partners, LLC and G2T3V, LLC which focus on identifying and funding disruptive innovators. He was most recently the founding Executive Director of the Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship as well as the first University Professor appointed at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. He was previously the CEO of 1871 (a Chicago-based tech incubator which was the home of 500 digital startups) and which, under his guidance and leadership, tripled in size and was named the Number 1 private business technology incubator in the world. Prior to his role at

1871, Tullman was the Chairman and CEO of Tribeca Flashpoint College and the President of Kendall College. 

Tullman is a graduate with honors of Northwestern University and of its School of Law where he served as Chairman of the Editors of the Law Review and he is admitted to the Illinois Bar and to the Bar of the United States Supreme Court.

Tullman is a world-class serial entrepreneur and has successfully founded more than a dozen high-tech startups in his 50-year career and created more than $1 billion in investor value as well as over 10,000 new jobs. He is a tireless supporter of entrepreneurs and a mentor to many startups, growing businesses of all sizes, political leaders and government agencies as well as a board member of several of Chicago’s fastest-growing tech companies.

He has written over 30 books and writes a regular weekly column on The Perspiration Principles for INC. Magazine which reaches over 2 million website visitors a week. He lectures on technology trends, innovation, entrepreneurship and change management all across the world as well as at the Kellogg School of Management and the Law School at Northwestern University where he is an Adjunct Professor.

William “Bill” Himmelstein graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a BSBA in marketing and management and a minor in psychology. He started the Tenant Advisory Group, LLC, in July 2008 after gaining experience at several of the major commercial real estate firms in Chicago. Bill has been a tenant representative broker for over 20 years, focusing his efforts on working with professional service firms, technology based companies, manufacturers and private practice physicians. He is a designated Certified Commercial Investment Manager (CCIM) and a Managing Broker. Bill is often described as being extremely honest. He acts with a high level of integrity, accountability, responsiveness and determination in achieving the best possible deal terms for all of his clients. He has completed well in excess of 300 transactions in his career with a value of over $1 billion. He has been guest professors at UIC, DePaul and Columbia Colleges. He has spoken in front of crowds as large as 5,000 people. He's spoken on behalf of the City of Chicago. He's spoken to the American Bar Association. He's hosted a digital real estate show through Advisor TV and was a founding member of both the Coleman Circle for Entrepreneurs and the Chicago Leadership Alliance. He is part of a team developing over $150M of hotels across the country. He has invested in and served on the advisory board of over a dozen early stage technology based companies.

Fun facts: The smartest thing he has ever done, according to Bill, was to marry his wife, Diana who was a neuroscientist when they met. They welcomed their first son in January 2013 and their second in February 2016!

Jace Mouse is the CEO and Vice Chairman at PerkSpot, an employee discount and recognition program offered to over thirteen million employees at some of America’s top companies. Jace grew up on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma and has brought his work ethic and resourcefulness with him to Chicago. Jace has had stints in Fortune 500 at State Farm Insurance and Orbitz, as well as online businesses at Cars.com, iExplore, and Cappex.com.

Since joining PerkSpot in 2013, Jace has been instrumental in more than doubling PerkSpot’s workforce and growing the business and its partnerships, leading to consistent year-over-year growth and a substantial increase in total users.