By Will SchmidtEverybody has heard of enterprise startups before. However, when I ask people what the difference is between an enterprise and non-enterprise startup, a lot of them are at a loss for words. That’s totally cool though – after all, there’s enough acronyms, jargon, and lingo in the tech world to rival that of a law office.You see, there’s a fine line between the two worlds of enterprise and non-enterprise startups. An enterprise startup is typically the largely unseen force at work behind the scenes. I’m talking about the stuff that various companies use for bookkeeping all the way to running and automating a payment service.There are countless examples of bigger corporations aligning themselves with enterprise startups because they’re seeking outside solutions that they don’t have to develop in-house. However, it brings with it an entirely different arena of hurdles for entrepreneurs to overcome when compared to non-enterprise startups. They’re not necessarily harder, just different.Regardless, these technologies are the heartbeat of a lot of big companies these days. Look no further than the widespread integration of Salesforce, PayPal, or Slack and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about here.In that light you’re obviously going to see a hefty amount of enterprise startup activity in ecosystems like Silicon Valley, New York, and Washington DC. However, there are a lot of other cities where enterprise startups also thrive – St. Louis, Dallas, and Los Angeles all come to mind.Let’s not forget the gem of the Midwest though: Chicago. Not only do they have amazing pizza, they also have an incredibly dense concentration of big name companies constantly seeking technological solutions to streamline their businesses. This celebration of the Chicago ecosystem is brought to you by @properties, the leading Chicago real estate brokerage serving both the city of Chicago and North Shore through dynamic marketing and innovation. Read more here.To that end, enterprise startups are thriving in the Chicago tech ecosystem. Here are 15 of them that proudly call Chicago home:

• TempoIQ: A platform to start creating IoT dashboards, mobile applications, and websites without writing any code. TempoIQ’s View IQ interactive application composer makes it simple to design and deploy real-time views into your IoT devices, applications, users, and data that’s shareable with your company, your partners, and your customers.
• Jellyvision: When you’re trying to untangle a big idea or make a tough decision, getting help from an expert beats trying to decode pages of jargon on your own. Jellyvision wants to find a way to bottle that person-to-person experience into a digital form via Interactive Conversations, Storybooks, and other unique formats.
• KnowledgeHound: A software platform that helps market researchers, marketers, and sales teams find, visualize, and analyze quantitative and qualitative consumer research studies. They believe sharing and reusing information to reduce waste and that the answers you need are already within arm’s reach.
• Apervita: Apervita is a community and marketplace for health analytics and data sets. The platform allows thousands of analytics and data sets to be deployed all at once. Its foundation was built on a powerful, yet simple goal: the democratization of health analytics
• Rippleshot: They take a big data, machine learning approach that is familiar to search, genetics, and advertising and apply it to the payment processing industry, helping banks, merchants and processors to proactively monitor suspicious activities and implement smarter fraud risk management strategies when breaches do occur.
• Scout Exchange: They apply a “Moneyball” algorithmic model to corporate recruiting to help make the recruiting process more accountable. It’s basically a marketplace between big corporations and search firms. Scout is also integrated within companies’ existing human resources software systems so they can send a job posting to the marketplace and recruiters can bid on them and submit candidates.
• kCura: kCura’s platform helps corporations, law firms, and government agencies manage and analyze electronic data during litigation and investigations. Their software is currently used by more than 127,000 users in 9,000 organizations worldwide, including more than 190 of the top 200 law firms in the United States, as well as all litigating divisions of the U.S. Department of Justice.
• project44: project44 is middleware that uses cloud-based freight web service APIs to instantly connect shippers and 3PLs to capacity by integrating their services into the Transportation Management System (TMS) you already use. The result is real-time freight transportation management.
• Geofeedia: Geofeedia is a location-based social media intelligence platform relied on by law enforcement agencies across the U.S. as well as bigger corporations. They effectively create geofences around a location of interest so users can maintain public safety at events, manage corporate security risks, and gather competitive intelligence.
• LinkCapital: The Chicago-based financial startup tailors loan refi’s to medical professionals like physicians, PA’s, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, and nurse practitioners. From there it offers better terms and rates than they can obtain elsewhere. With a data-driven web platform, Link is able to accurately evaluate the risk and pair that insight with flexible solutions that meet individual career goals and lifestyles.
• Main Street Financial: This is the company behind the product Oranj, which serves as a practice management application to help them offer a better client experience via collaboration and engagement. It combines the utility of aggregation and financial management under a one login umbrella, equipping advisors with the tools they need to engage clients.
• Braintree: A catalyst for the next-generation of commerce, Braintree provides a way to pay and get paid across any device. In 2015, Braintree’s global payment platform is processing more than $50 billion in authorized payment volume with thousands of online and mobile commerce innovators in more than 46 markets across the globe.
• Review Trackers: A scalable and easy to use program designed to help business owners manage online reviews. Reputation, much like everything else, has moved online, and while much of the social media focus has been on Facebook and Twitter, recent trends and studies indicate that user generated online reviews can be a far more powerful marketing and reputation tool.
• Epic Presence: A digital marketing agency based in Chicago that brings in targeted traffic without using any advertising. At Epic Presence they use proven content marketing and viral traffic formulas to achieve many different goals on behalf of their clients, including Direct Sales, SEO, Social Media, Lead Gen, and more.
• Tula Software: A software company that helps independent yoga studios grow their business. Using the software platform you can accept payments, manage memberships, share your calendars, handle registrations, track credits, and record attendances.