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Brian Barnes is founder and CEO of M1 Finance, a personal finance platform designed to improve how you invest and manage your money. Brian grew up in a family that taught financial literacy from a young age and after being unable to find the personal finance platform he wanted to use, Brian decided to build M1. Today, M1 Finance offers consumers free stock trading, passive automated investing, low interest rate borrowing and soon, seamless checking accounts. Brian joins to talk about his path to launching M1, the best advice he has been given, how his role has changed as the company scales and how he sees the personal finance industry developing over time.NextUp Chicago is brought to you by Hank Couture and Dylan Richter. DoorDash veterans by day, podcast hosts by night.

Corbett Drummey is founder and CEO of Popular Pays, a platform designed to help brands connect with content creators to execute social media marketing campaigns. The idea for Popular Pays started while Corbett was working in a "real job" at an advertising agency in Chicago helping brands coordinate marketing campaigns. Soon after quitting to pursue the idea full time, Popular Pays got accepted into the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator and now, after roughly $12M in funding, they're building out a marketplace making it easier than ever for brands to collaborate with social media influencers. Corbett joins to talk about his path to launching a company, the challenges they faced while scaling, why they stayed in Chicago after YC and where he sees the booming influencer marketing industry going in the coming years.NextUp Chicago is brought to you by Hank Couture and Dylan Richter. DoorDash veterans by day, podcast hosts by night.

Natalie Shmulik is CEO of The Hatchery. A food incubator born out of a partnership between Accion and the Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago. Their 67,000 square food facility will offer shared and private kitchen space, coworking space, programming for the community like "How to Start a Food Business", access to financing, support and above everything, a community for entrepreneurs. Natalie joins to talk about the experiences that lead her to the CEO role, what it's like building a startup for startups and how they plan to help make Chicago epicenter for food startups.NextUp Chicago is brought to you by Hank Couture and Dylan Richter. DoorDash veterans by day, podcast hosts by night.

Sterling Douglass quit a promising actuarial career in 2014 to start a company. His first venture, a software solution allowing bar-goers to close out their tab via app, failed, but that experience lead to the idea for Chowly. Chowly helps restaurants integrate 3rd party delivery orders directly into their Point of Sale and with a recent $5.8M Series A, Sterling's company is poised for serious growth. Sterling joins to talk about staying motivated in the early days (time), hiring the right people to scale a team (time), fundraising (time), his favorite Italian Beef (time) and more.NextUp Chicago is brought to you by Hank Couture and Dylan Richter. DoorDash veterans by day, podcast hosts by night.