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Welcome to the member portal

When you’re logged into the member portal, you gain access to member exclusives, room bookings, and additional resources curated just for members.

Read through the Member Handbook to learn about what’s available exclusively to Polsky members.

Meet our mentors

Register for an upcoming appointment

We have carefully curated a cohort of mentors from a variety of industries to assist you in your endeavors. Each week, mentor’s schedules are updated so you can set up one-on-one meetings.

Perks

Member-Only Exclusives

As part of your membership, we are happy to extend exclusive offers from generous partners of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Room Reservations

Private rooms equipped with white boards and screens are available for all members. Whether you need a small huddle room or a larger conference space for an upcoming meeting, the Polsky Room Reservation system allows you to see what is available.

Google Cloud

We are pleased to announce that as a benefit of our partnership with Google, you are eligible for membership in Google’s Cloud Startup Program.  This includes $20,000 in Cloud and Firebase credit, access to Google engineers for office hours and in-depth 1:1 architecture reviews, 24/7 technical support, and invitations to exclusive local events. Submit an application to enroll in the Cloud Startup Program.

*Cloud Credits are available for startups based in approved territories who have not previously received promotional Cloud credits outside of the free-tier offering.

HubSpot for Startups

We’re excited to partner with the HubSpot for Startups Seed-Stage program to provide their marketing and sales software and education to eligible startups — at a startup friendly cost!

HubSpot is a software platform that helps you generate leads, close deals, and manage your pipeline. HubSpot offers a growth stack of products for customer relationship management, marketing, and sales: powerful alone, and even better when used together.

Apply for the HubSpot for Startups Seed-Stage Program
Discover how HubSpot can help your startup grow with marketing and sales software and education without breaking the bank. Learn how you can qualify, and apply today.

What you’ll get:

  • HubSpot CRM Free to manage your contacts, leads pipeline, and customers
  • 90% off HubSpot’s Marketing Starter, Pro, or Enterprise software, and HubSpot Sales Starter or Professional software, for the first 12 months, and 50% off for the next 12 months (Up to $40,000 savings over 2 years).
  • Startup Onboardingwith tech set-up (reduced one-time $300 cost), dedicated strategy consulting, and round-the-clock support.
  • Access to world-class inbound marketing and sales training, education, and experts
Hyde Park Art Center

The Hyde Park Art Center inspires creativity through dynamic art-centered interactions. Joint programming between the Polsky Center and the Hyde Park Art Center creates opportunities for innovation that serve our respective member and artist communities. The Hyde Park Art Center also offers Polsky members complimentary Art Center Membership, which includes the following:

  • Invitations to members-only exhibition previews and special events
  • $20 off regular tuition on 10-week studio art courses in the Oakman Clinton School & Studios at the Art Center
  • $10 off 5-week studio art courses in the Oakman Clinton School & Studio
  • $25 off Creativity Camp, the Art Center’s summer camp for kids
  • $20 off children’s birthday parties hosted at the Art Center

The Hyde Park Art Center offers free membership and discounts on classes when using the code PolskyMem. Add the Individual Membership prior to your cart before checking out.

Amazon Web Services
The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Free Tier enables you to gain free, hands-on experience with the AWS platform, products, and services. Some offers expire 12 months following sign up, and others that never expire. Create your free AWS account to sign up for Free Tier, then explore and learn with easy to follow tutorials for multiple use cases, and then start building on AWS.
Participants in the Polsky I-Corps program, the Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge, the Polsky Accelerator, and the Polsky Incubator have access to higher levels of AWS credits. Contact your Polsky program manager with questions.
SendGrid Accelerate

The SendGrid Accelerate Startup Program has been specially crafted for top tier startups, accelerators, VCs and incubators. As a dedicated team of business and technical experts that live and breathe startups, the SendGrid Community Development Team helps founders and their companies grow faster and smarter by providing comprehensive support, networking, and resources including access to SendGrid’sworld class email deliverability platform and engagement tools.

The Accelerate Program is offering a variety of benefits to Polsky startups, including:

  • $3,000 of credits (or $249.95 per month for 12 months) for free use of the Pro 300K Plan, which provides up to 300K emails per month on a dedicated IP for optimal deliverability
  • 6 months free access to Loader.io to stress test web apps & APIs with thousands of concurrent
  • connections
  •  Gain valuable insights from our experienced global mentors and tap into our worldwide network of accelerators and early-stage VC funds
  • Get up and running fast and at the highest level with our hands-on technical support, ongoing training, and valuable deliverability coaching

How to join Accelerate //
Follow the link below, indicate that you are a Polsky company, and we will be in touch!

Stripe

Stripe simplifies payments for startups. Whether you’re creating a software subscription service, an on-demand marketplace or an e-commerce store, Stripe’s payments platform helps you build and scale your business online.

As a member of the UChicago NVC / Polsky community, Stripe offers you:
+ $20,000 fee-free processing (some restrictions apply)
+ Atlas incorporation for $250 (normally $500)
+ Early access to new product features and exclusive Stripe events
+ Priority-level service

To redeem this offer, click this link: https://stripe.com/contact/startup-offer?code=c15kn
To get started with Atlas, click here: https://atlas.stripe.com/invite/sp-c15kn

Proto.io

Create fully interactive high-fidelity prototypes for your app with Proto.io, no coding required. Members can use the coupon code POLSKY-24M-50-EDU for 50% off plans up to 24 months.

ChartMogul

ChartMogul helps thousands of companies — from single-person startups to multinational scale-ups — turn their revenue data into a source of insight and growth. Gone are the days of figuring out what you want to track and manipulating data in Excel or SQL. With ChartMogul, we show you the metrics subscription businesses need to understand, so you can track performance and get on with running your business. The Polsky Exchange startup offer entitles your startup to a $50 /month discount on any of our plans for 1 year using the coupon code cm_offer_polskyexchange_2018.

Zendesk

Zendesk gives you the tools to deliver better customer service. It takes minutes to get going and it’s easy to manage, so you can stay focused on other priorities—like growing your business. Polsky Exchange members can begin a Zendesk Support trial and are eligible for a monthly credit of $218 for 12 months (equivalent to 2 seats of Zendesk Suite professional plan or used across our Support, Chat, Guide, and Talk products) using the coupon code ZUPP19.

Microsoft for Startups
The Microsoft for Startups program offers free services including 12 months of Azure free to qualified startups. This includes access to Microsoft Docs for quickstarts, API references, and code samples, ppen source code editing with Visual Studio Code, and on-demand assistance from Devchat.
Pilot

Pilot puts premium bookkeeping within reach of every business. The company is building a reliable, time saving, bookkeeping solution that recognizes the individual strengths of both software and people — and then brings them together. Thanks to Pilot, customers are getting their time back, so they can get back to business and achieve success. Additionally, Polsky Exchange members that sign up a 20% discount off the first 6 months of bookkeeping.

Lorman Education Services

We are pleased to announce that as a benefit of our partnership with Lorman Education Services, you are eligible to receive discounted All-Access Passes to their library of educational resources.

Lorman is a leading provider of corporate training and continuing education courses for startups, enterprises and working professionals. Their library includes 5,000 courses and 15,000 products that cover HR, Legal, Accounting, Tax and Engineering topics, among others. A majority of the courses are 90-minute deep dives into business topics that are critical to the successful creation, operation, compliance, and growth of companies in an ever-changing regulatory environment.

All-Access Pass features
●      Full access to 15,000+ on-demand courses, videos, slide decks, MP3s, and other resources.
●      110+ live courses held monthly
●      Customized Learning Paths for your team’s unique professional needs
●      Administrator and team tracking capabilities
●      Dedicated account manager

Polsky Exchange pricing

  • Individual: $299 – use discount code PolskyPassand priority code 19291
  • Teams of 3+ users: $199 per user –  contact Lorman at 715-855-713
The Innovation Clinic

The Innovation Clinic provides general, project-based legal assistance to start-ups and venture capital firms both within and outside of the University of Chicago ecosystem. The Innovation Clinic is staffed by second- and third-year law students from the University of Chicago Law School, and is supervised by Emily Underwood, the director of the Clinic.

Questions? Please contact Emily Underwood

Flatiron Design Program

Become a client of the Flatiron Design Program and and Flatirion School designers will help you solve your business problems, all on our time. Flatiron School incorporates hands-on training that prepares designers to tackle the professional realities of working as digital designers. Modeling afer real collaborative team environments, you’ll meet with designers to provide project briefs, feedback, and receive iterative and high quality deliverables. They get the experience they seek, you get the business and design deliverables you need.

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