When the Chicago Business Journal called, the reporter’s angle wasn’t really funding. It was this: has AI made it easier to start a company?
Real talk - yes. Wildly.
I’m a sales guy. A techy one, but a sales guy. A few years ago, building what we’ve built would have meant a big engineering team and a lot more money than I had. Instead I built the first version myself with AI tools, landed paying customers, and then handed it to a real CTO. I told the reporter I built an enterprise-grade platform for probably 1/25th of what it would have cost three years ago. I still can’t quite believe that’s true.
In October 2026 the Chicago Business Journal reported that Elanor Labs, a Chicago company that scores every recorded sales call to show how well reps actually sell, closed an oversubscribed $1.1 million round from 14 angel investors led by David Shorr of CreditNinja and Mitch Kovitz of Focus Partners.
What the Chicago Business Journal covered
The article ran on October 20, 2026 under the headline “Chicago startup Elanor Labs closes $1.1M round with AI-powered sales grading tool.” Here’s the short version, in my words. The full piece is at bizjournals.com.
- THE ROUND - $1.1 million, oversubscribed, from 14 angels. It was led by David Shorr, co-founder of CreditNinja, and Mitch Kovitz, founder and CEO of Kovitz Investment Group and chairman of wealth at Focus Partners.
- THE PROBLEM - sales teams measure activity and quota attainment, and neither one tells you how good a rep is at selling.
- THE PRODUCT - Elanor analyzes reps’ recorded calls and scores the behaviors behind them. Our software is Revenue Behavioral Intelligence™.
- THE TRACTION - more than 100 reps use Elanor every day across 27 companies piloting it.
- CHICAGO - I plan to make Chicago the hub. Insurance and freight brokerage are two of our biggest verticals, and this city is full of both.
- THE BIGGER TREND - the reporter tied our story to a Carta report showing seed and Series A startups running leaner than they did in 2020, because AI made building cheaper.
Why measure how reps sell?
Because nobody does.
Sales is the most measured function in business and the least measured craft. We count dials, meetings and pipeline. We track quota. But the 40 minutes where the deal is actually won or lost? Gut feel. Whichever call the manager happened to hear.
Elanor listens to every recorded call, scores it against a rubric built for that type of meeting, and rolls it up into an RBI Score for each rep, each team and the whole company. Then she shows exactly which moments to coach, with timestamped clips, within minutes of the call ending. Here’s how it works.
Why 14 angels instead of one fund?
Raising from 14 angels was highly intentional. Every person on our cap table wants to help, believes in me, and picks up the phone to make an introduction. That is worth more to a company at our stage than a bigger check from someone who sees us as a line item.
What comes next
The money goes toward perfecting the scoring engine. The product is the whole bet.
We’re growing the team here in the Chicago area and going deeper with insurance agencies and freight brokerages, where the gap between the best rep and an average rep is enormous.
If you’d told me five years ago that a sales guy would be building a software company out of Chicago, I’d have laughed. Building in 2026 is wild.
If you run a sales team and your reps’ calls are recorded, reach out. We gotta chat. Book a demo and we’ll run Elanor on your own calls.
Frequently asked questions
Sources: Chicago Business Journal, Oct 20, 2026: Chicago startup Elanor Labs closes $1.1M round with AI-powered sales grading tool; Carta: Startup Compensation H1 2025