I’m often asked how I’m able to consistently find interesting companies to cover. It’s all about what I call the always looking approach. If you open your eyes, you start to realize that your life is full of cues that can lead you to interesting employers. One of my favorite exercises is to walk around downtown Chicago and look at all of the billboards and signs. There’s always something new and interesting. But what about the company that makes the the signs? That’s Watchfire. They’re a Danville, IL based company that got its start as ” Time-O-Matic, an industry leader in innovations like the Time and Temperature signs that became landmarks at banks and downtown corner stores across the nation.” Now they’re in the business of LED signs of all shapes and sizes. A lot of people think that they’re not affected by outdoor advertising. I can almost guarantee that’s not true. One of Watchfire’s big products is the Price Watcher sign for gas stations. You can’t tell me that you don’t pick a gas station based on the prices shown on those signs!
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Have you ever had a nasty cut, scrape, or blister that didn’t quite need stitches but needed more than a band-aid? I’ve had plenty, and my go-to remedy is New-Skin. It’s super painful to put on, and it smells terrible, but it does the job. While New-Skin is a great at home solution, it’s not meant for surgical situations (at least as far as I know). There’s a whole class of surgical sealants, and Neomend is an Irvine, CA based company that is innovating in the space with their Progel technology platform. It’s “a resorbable hydrogel with a unique, accessible molecular structure that makes it ideal for development of novel medical devices like surgical sealants and adhesion barriers.” Hopefully you know what that means, because I don’t.
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In case you didn’t get the drift from out post on Best Made Company, artisan craftsmanship is in and mass manufacturing is out (unless it’s done by Apple). But what if you could combine the two? You’d have the technology of mass manufacturing, but the closeness to the process of something that is handmade. That’s what MakerBot Industries is making possible. They’re a New York, NY (Brooklyn) based company that has been “producing an open source 3D printer to democratize manufacturing.” All you need is a CAD drawing and one of their Thing-O-Matic 3D printers, and you can print pretty much whatever object you want in plastic. I think they might have finally figured out Santa’s trick.
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New York,
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web development
When I was a kid, there were two kinds of visits to the doctor’s office: ones where I had to get a shot and ones where I didn’t. Children will never be able to understand how lucky they are to have the opportunity to get poked in the arm with a needle so that they can be vaccinated. Tomorrow’s kids will be even luckier to get poked if Liquidia Technologies keeps innovating. They’re a Research Triangle Park, NC based company that is “developing engineered particle-based vaccines and therapeutics that have the potential to dramatically improve the quality of human life.” Liquidia Technologies was founded in 2004 based on discoveries made by a Professor Joseph DeSimone of UNC, and since then they’ve raised a ton of financing.
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