Through our Reinventing Industries series, TechNexus Venture Collaborative is highlighting key ventures innovating across various industries. This time, we turn our focus to the Future of Work - AI-powered hiring tools, collaboration platforms, gig-economy marketplaces, and vertical software all fall under this category. Over 100 early-stage ventures in Chicago have collectively raised more than $130 million in this space, leveraging technology to redefine how we work, collaborate, manage talent, and more.
The evolution of work
Covid-19 transformed the way organizations function and people work, driving a shift toward remote and hybrid models. This transformation created both challenges and opportunities, including finding new ways to engage employees, scalable solutions for screening an expanding pool of remote candidates, and sector-specific business operations software to modernize legacy industries. Worker engagement and overall employee wellbeing statistics are at ten-year lows, highlighting a need for better tools to hire and retain talent within organizations.
Startups are meeting these demands by developing tailored solutions. Vertical software is modernizing historically non-digital industries, while platforms for hiring and upskilling help companies attract, retain, and upskill talent in a competitive labor market.
Chicago’s role as a global business hub fuels this innovation. Home to major employers like Boeing, McDonald’s, and United Airlines, the city’s diverse economy and robust talent pool provide fertile ground for ventures innovating in this space. Anchored by institutions like 1871, mHUB, Workbox, and TechNexus, Chicago also benefits from a strong network of accelerators and coworking spaces. Chicago’s Future of Work startups are redefining the way we work.
Areas of innovation
- Hiring & Offboarding: The average cost per new hire is $4,700. External recruiters, job postings, background checks, and more all contribute to this expense. In a 2024 Harvard Business Review survey, 95% of respondents listed hiring and retaining talent as one of their top three priorities. Managing the on boarding & off boarding process efficiently is important to any organization.
- Classet - ($4.5M Round ‘23) has built an AI-powered job recruiter that can conduct screening interviews at scale
- Wiseful (Undisclosed Round ‘23) has developed an AI-powered candidate identification platform for posting jobs and identifying most qualified candidates
- For When ($4.6M Round ‘24) offers a comprehensive post-employment platform that streamlines offboarding and equips exiting employees with resources around healthcare, finances, and career transitions
- Retention & Upskilling: Quiet quitting, low employee engagement, and overall employee wellbeing has been declining in recent years. According to Gallup's State of the Workplace report for 2024, the percentage of employees who feel extremely satisfied at work has fallen to a decade low of 18%, while a decade high - 51% of employees are watching for or actively seeking a new job.
- Kindworks AI ($1.5M Round ‘23) has built a virtual agent designed to encourage short and simple daily acts of kindness between employees to improve connection and workforce engagement
- Qooper.io ($100K Round ‘23) is a mentorship and learning software to help employees connect with mentors, training guidance, other learning opportunities to enhance retention
- Storybolt ($1.6M Round ‘23) offers an AI-powered, all-in-one tool for crafting, promoting, and measuring learning experiences to enhance company team building
- Vertical Software: Outdated processes and non-digital industries are ripe for technological enhancement, and local ventures are disrupting these legacy industries.
- Albi ($8M Round ‘23) offers restoration management software that combines all core business function in one platform
- Route ($350K Round ‘23) is a business management software for the commercial cleaning industry
- Layer Up (Undisclosed Round ‘23) has built an operations software for small to mid-sized insulation contractors