Partners

Spring 2012 Chicago

Local Partners:

SingleHop is a dedicated and cloud hosting provider that offers highly scalable, on-demand infrastructure services to both end-users and resellers primarily under monthly contracts.  With clients in 114 countries, two Chicago-area data centers, and over 10,000 servers online, SingleHop delivers state-of-the-art hardware, server management customization and Infrastructure-as-a-Service.  While combining security and convenience to provide solutions for a wide range of enterprises, SingleHop remains an industry leader in providing customers with automatic provisioning, remote management and accessibility using a variety of personal devices.

SingleHop was established in 2006 and makes its home in Chicago, IL.  In 2011, the company was named #25 on the Inc. 500 list for the fastest growing companies in America, a significant leap from #58 the previous year.  

Dreamsoft is a 3D Interactive web development company with a staff of over 80 developers specializing in building products and services based around 3D  and web interactive technology. From 3D product configuration apps to 3D animated video, we have the ability to build tools and marketing material which can be extremely useful for most startups. Dreamsoft has a strong interest in investing our resources into startups for equity and would be interested to discuss these possibilities with any startup which can utilize our services on any scale.  

Dreamsoft was established in 2001, and  continues to pave the way in 3D interactive technologies.  Throughout our history, we have invested in multiple startups, including FitVision.com which exceeded 100,000 man hours on investment from Dreamsoft.  

Integrated Office Suites (IOS) is the new standard in executive office space in Chicago.  Located in the Harris Bank Building in the heart of the financial district, IOS offers the most impressive executive office suites in the industry with the most flexible and simple terms.  We provide a turn-key office solution so that you can concentrate on what’s important – growing your business.   IOS also offers a number of virtual office products for businesses on the go.  However, our focus goes beyond simply providing executive suites and virtual offices.  At IOS, we recognize that today’s businesses require more to succeed.  

IOS is devoted to the success of its clients by providing the most robust and stable communications and data systems, by offering an unparalleled level of receptionist and administrative services and by employing a business philosophy that is customer service oriented and that caters to the needs of our clients, because the last thing businesses need these days is just another landlord.   

Global Partners

If you are interested in becoming a Founder Institute partner and helping us launch the next wave of innovative technology companies, please contact Yoni Mekuria at yoni (at) fi (dot) co

Please note that partnerships are subject to change.

Featured Partners

• Microsoft BizSpark - Microsoft BizSpark is a global program that helps software startups succeed by giving them access to Microsoft software development tools, connecting them with key industry players, including investors, and providing marketing visibility to help entrepreneurs starting a business. Microsoft BizSpark is a worldwide partner of the Founder Institute, providing software, support, facilities, and mentoring to many entrepreneurs within the Fouder Insitute network. Learn more about our partnership here, and sign-up for BizSpark here.

• Elance - Elance, the world’s leading platform for online employment, is pleased to partner with The Founder Institute and present enrollees with a $100 credit in Elance services to help participating companies hire online talent to launch their startup idea. In addition, the highest rated company of each graduating class in the 2011 Fall semester will receive $1,000 in Elance service credit.

Legal

General

• LegalZoom - LegalZoom, the nation's leading online legal service, merges innovative technology with personalized service to deliver a simple, cost - effective way to take care of common legal needs. They are offering Founders an exclusive 25% discount on business formation.
• Northwest Registered Agent Service - Northwest Registered Agent is the fastest national registered agent service, offering a flat yearly rate and easy to use online forms. They also offer extensive online resources and tools, such as scans of all documents you receive without any forwarding fees. They are offering Founders 30% off Registered Agent services.

Product

Product Planning

• Balsamiq - Balsamiq Mockups is the fastest and easiest wireframing tool on the market. They are offering Founders a 50% discount on a single - user license, and a 33% discount on a volume license.
• Protoshare - ProtoShare is a collaborative, web - based tool for prototyping web applications and sites. With ProtoShare's easy but powerful drag and drop components, anyone can quickly build a rich interactive prototype. They are offering Founders a free 30 day trial plus a 20% discount on annual plans.
• Weebly - Offering all Founders a free 12 - month subscription to Weebly Pro - the web's leading drag - and - drop website creation service.
• PlanHQ - PlanHQ is a web based business plan tool that turns your static document and spreadsheet into a dynamic and up - to - date overview of where you’re going and how you’re tracking. They are giving us 50% off all PlanHQ accounts for 12 months.

Product Development

• Microsoft BizSpark - Microsoft BizSpark is a global program that helps software startups succeed by giving them access to Microsoft software development tools, connecting them with key industry players, including investors, and providing marketing visibility to help entrepreneurs starting a business.
• Elance - Free credits to Elance - the leading place to hire expert freelancers, consultants, and outsourcers to do your work.
• Twilio - Twilio is a simple, pay-as-you-go web service that empowers developers to build voice and SMS applications. 8,000+ developers use Twilio - including start ups, Fortune 100 companies, and both major political parties. They are offering Founders a $133.70 credit.
• The Outsourcing Company - 35% off their leading Web Development, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay per Click (PPC), Conversion Optimization, and Social Media Marketing (SMM) services to help your company attract more clients.
• ProjectLocker - ProjectLocker is a leading provider of on - demand development tools for software developers. They are offering Founders a free one - year subscription to ProjectLocker Venture edition ($99 value).

• Codesion - Codesion (now a CollabNet company) is the leading provider of Subversion hosting, making web - based collaborative development secure, affordable and easy. They are offering Founders one year of Team Edition at 50% off.

• The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development - Customer Development is a four-step framework for helping startups discover and validate their customers, product, and go-to-market strategy, developed by Steve Blank and an integral part of Eric Ries' Lean Startup methodology. Focused on the Customer Discovery step, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development is an easy to follow guide for finding early adopters, building a Minimum Viable Product, finding Product-Market fit, and establishing a sales and marketing roadmap. FI Founders can get the ebook for free.

• Tropo - Enables you to make and receive phone calls, text messages and IMs from any web or mobile application, using a simple web API and pay-as-you-go pricing.  Tropo's cloud communications infrastructure easily allows applications to grow and scale, with reliability trusted by over 220,000 developers and half of the Fortune 100. Tropo is pleased to offer all Founder Institute enrollees 6 months of free Tropo service, up to $100/mo and 2 hours free consultation to help design your application. In addition, the highest rated company from each class will get hands-on assistance in designing and building their application from a Tropo engineer who will spend a full two days with them creating their app.

Project Management

• Apptivo Project Management - The Project Management App of the Apptivo Platform allows you to collaborate with all your team members globally. The Projects App is free and will always be free. There are no limits on the number of projects, clients and users you can have. 
• TaskPoint - TaskPoint (formerly PMP HQ) is an easy to use web - based online project management and collaboration tool. They are offering all Founders a free 6 - month subscription.

Testing

• nResult - nResult is an innovative software testing company, where they act as an extension of your team. They are providing discounts on any offered testing service, as well as a free consultation.

Infrastructure

Hosting

• MediaTemple - This premier hosting company is giving Founders 35% off their entire line of dedicated virtual private server offerings ("dv") - for both monthly and yearly packages.
• Name.com – Want a website? Get one in minutes at Name.com, your one-stop shop for website addresses, website builders, hosting packages, SEO, and website security.  They are offering Founders 50% off hosting packages and 25% off domain registrations.   

Email

• SendGrid - SendGrid replaces your email infrastructure so you don't have to build, scale, and maintain these systems in-house providing reliable delivery, scalability and real-time analytics along with flexible APIs.  They are offering founders 6 months of free service

Software

• Scalr - Scalr is open source software that allows you to create and manage a super - scalable web infrastructure that provisions and configures everything - from cache to database - to handle spikes and lulls in traffic demand. They are offering us free service until your first round of funding.
• BrowserMob - Ensure your website can handle heavy user loads with BrowserMob's low - cost on - demand load testing service. They are offering Founders $300 worth of tokens for load testing.
• New Relic - New Relic is the leading provider of on - demand application performance management solutions. They are offering Founders 50% off any subscription to their premier SaaS product, New Relic RPM, for a full year.
• Grasshopper - Sound professional and stay connected with Grasshopper, the Virtual Phone System for entrepreneurs. Get an 800 or local number, create employee extensions, forward calls, and get voicemails via email for only $9.95 a month. They are offering Founders a $150 credit after your first month of service.
• Zipcar - Zipcar is the world's largest car sharing and car club service. Zipcar for Business membership gives you (and your employees) self - service access to vehicles in dozens of cities across the US, Canada and the UK. For FI companies, Zipcar will waive the standard $75 corporate set - up fee to open a Zipcar for Business account, which provides deeply discounted weekday rates, half off the annual fee, and more.

Team

Recruiting

• NeoHire - The premier online media and technology recruiting agency is offering Founders 75% off their services (or the hard cost, whichever is less) and free consultation.
• The Resumator - 6 months of Grow Plan access (up to 10 open jobs) to the leading applicant management and job listing software.
• Zirtual- Zirtual connects busy professionals and entrepreneurs with dedicated personal assistants called "Zirtual Assistants" from within a trusted network of University students & college grads.  They are offering founders a $100 credit towards a dedicated Zirtual Assistant when you purchase an hourly package at Zirtual.com.

Collaboration

• vSee - vSee is one of the most powerful and easy to use video/remote collaboration tools available, used by leading companies like IBM, Intel, and NASA. They are offering Founders one free year of 20 Professional licenses for their teams ($12,000 value).
• PBworks - Over 50,000 businesses have chosen PBworks to implement knowledge management, extranets, project management, and a host of other business processes and workflows. They are offering Founders a 50% discount off all their packages.

Marketing & Sales

Branding

• Blogmutt - Blogmutt is the best blog writing service on four paws. If you struggle to keep your business blog full of relevant, timely posts...well... they can help. You get to pick your favorite post from those written for you, one a week for $79 a month. No contract, cancel anytime. They have a group of excellent writers who write about very specific, niche businesses all the time. They are offering Founders 30% off of the first month's subscription.
• Portal A Interactive - Portal A Interactive creates tutorial and marketing videos to help companies articulate their core services while promoting their brand. They are offering our Founders 20% off, along with a free consultation.

Public Relations/ Strategic

• PRNewswire - Free 12 - month membership, plus over $2,000 in free and discounted services.
• SeisMK- A division of The Morris + King Company (MKC), SeisMK expands MKC ’s already renowned digital PR and social media services to benefit brands seeking to engage in resonant conversations with media, users and other influencers. They are offering Founders a free 2 - hour consultation from SeisMK principals.
• UpRight Marketing - UpRight Marketing consultancy helps you win repeatable sales so you can scale your business and develop trusted customer relationships. They are offering Founders a 50% discount on a 2 - day coaching session to design your strategic marketing plan - and a 30% discount on sales messaging services - both are a $1500 value.
• MyPRGenie - Offering 3 months free of press access and release postings ($900 value).

Online Marketing

• MailChimp - MailChimp provides email marketing for more than 350,000 subscribers that range from small startups to Fortune 500 companies. They are offering Founder Institute companies 6 months of free service. 
• SEOMoz - SEOmoz is the web’s premier destination for SEO education, tools and information. They are offering Founders an exclusive 40% discount on SEOmoz PRO, their award - winning suite of SEO tools and utilities.
• RestEngine - RestEngine is a social application messaging platform that provides email - based notifications, requests and viral techniques for social apps. They are offering our Founders free setup, and 10,000 free monthly emails (for the first 6 months - $500 value).
• My BetaList - My BetaList offers a viral subscription form that can be used by startups in the pre-launch phase to incentivize sign-ups to spread the word about the startup. In addition, founders can submit their startup for publication to reach an audience of beta users. They are offering founders free use of My BetaList.
• Cloudsponge - Email is still the most effective way to share.  CloudSponge addresses the friction point of making users type email addresses into referral forms by offering a simple copy/paste widget for your website that lets users populate your referral form with email addresses straight from their address books.

Feedback/ Analytics

• UserTesting.com - UserTesting.com enables you to quickly and inexpensively discover where and why users get confused on your website, by utilizing a large panel of users who record their screen and voice as they use your site. They are offering Founders 2 free user tests - a $48 value.
• UserVoice.com - UserVoice is the premier user feedback system for websites. They are giving Founders 12 months of any UserVoice plan for a very special price.
• Unbounce - Unbounce is the fastest and most powerful D.I.Y. Landing Page Platform. They are giving FI companies 80% off any plan.
• Mixpanel - Mixpanel is a real - time analytics platform that tracks how users interact and engage with web applications. Mixpanel goes way beyond Google Analytics and provides extremely detailed analysis that companies generally have to do all in - house. They are offering Founders 2MM free event credits (a $200 value).

Sales

• CureCRM - CureCRM provides the leading software that enables you to access relevant sales conversations anywhere. They are offering Founders 50% off of one year of their Pro Service.

Support

• Assistly - Get 1 full-time agent seat free + an additional 15% discount off all additional seats. Offer awesome customer support by connecting your email, Twitter, Facebook, live chat, and phone support in one easy-to-use interface. Assistly also offers an instantly customizable Help Center that companies can add to any website (for self-service FAQ and contact forms).

Finance

Accounting

• Intuit - 30% off Quickbooks Online Plus - the #1 small business financial software.

Credit

• FoundersCard- FoundersCard is a members-only community for leading entrepreneurs and innovators. Members receive unprecedented rates and benefits from the world's top travel, lifestyle, and business brands, as well as access to frequent members-only networking events.  For a limited time, Founders may apply at the preferred annual rate of $199 (60% off the standard rate of $495). This rate will be lifetime guaranteed.

Fulfillment

• Apptivo Invoicing - The Invoicing App of the Apptivo Platform allows you to generate invoices and get paid online. The App integrates with many other Apps in the Apptivo platform. The Invoicing App is free and will always be free. There are no limits on the number of invoices, number of customers, and number of users you can have.
• Total Merchant Services - The leader in the merchant bankcard business is offering our companies an "Interchange - Plus" pricing model on merchant transactions - a cheaper and more transparent pricing structure typically available only to high - volume businesses.

• Chargify - Chargify helps startups and small businesses bill their customers and grow their bottom line. It’s a powerful billing platform and recurring billing application. They are offering Founders a $150 credit after your first month of service.

Modeling

• FusionCharts - FusionCharts v3 helps you create animated and interactive Flash charts for web and desktop applications, and works with all databases. They are offering Founders a 25% discount on all purchases from their site.
• Liquid Scenarios - Providing The Institute with Liquid Scenarios software for real time capitalization table and investment scenario modeling.

Fundraising

General

• Lightserve - This leading technology consulting firm is providing Founders with three free months of service and extended discounts on Lightserve's banking - grade Virtual Data Room software.
• Roebling Partners - Roebling Partners is an expert valuation firm that helps startups comply with the newly - mandated IRC 409A and FAS 123R regulations for stock options. They are offering Founders $1,000 off their already low $3,000 compliance package for Series A and earlier companies.
• TheFunded.com - Offering premium Membership for all participating Founders.

Events

General

• Conference Guru - 50% off already discounted conference and event tickets.
• Jobnob - Jobnob connects start - ups and job seekers both online and through events, seeking both traditional and alternative compensation. Jobnob.com has over 7,000 talented job seekers from Ivy plus schools, and they also hold in - person networking job fairs across the country. They are offering Founders 20% off.
• SVASE - The Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs is the largest and fastest growing nonprofit in Northern CA dedicated exclusively to helping entrepreneurs across all technology sectors find VCs. They are offering Founders a 25% discount for membership.