DSTL | Daily Roundup for October 29, 2026
Good afternoon. Halfway through another day. Did you know that today is National Internet Day? Well, now you do! (On this date in 1969 the first ARPANET message went from UCLA to Stanford; it crashed after two letters, which makes it the original MVP.) Let's get a run-down of what is happening in the ecosystem:
Illinois Innovation Network
IIN Newsletter | October 2026 — Illinois Innovation Network, Oct 21, 2026 (newest IIN post). The October edition rounds up hub activity across the 15-campus network, including the SIUE conference and upcoming fall programs.
Sustainable Foodware Seminar at The Plant | EnergySense (event listing) — Illinois Innovation Network, Nov 4, 2026. IIN's EnergySense program hosts a seminar at The Plant in Chicago on sustainable foodware for food businesses and manufacturers.
Illinois Energy Conservation Code: Efficiency, Renewable and Load Management Requirements | EnergySense (event listing) — Illinois Innovation Network, Nov 10, 2026 (virtual). A webinar walking builders and businesses through new Illinois energy-code requirements, relevant to construction and clean-energy firms.
IIN RADPro Lunch & Learn: From Internal Investment to External Funding Opportunity (event listing) — Illinois Innovation Network, Dec 1, 2026 (Zoom). IIN's research-development series coaches university teams on turning seed funding into external grants, the pipeline that feeds campus spinouts.
Illinois, on the Whole
Startups, founders & venture capital
What Midwest Startup Founders Actually Want — Start Midwest (opinion), Oct 28, 2026. Chicago's Holden Price of Civic Capital, after 50 founder conversations, argues Midwest founders need warm introductions to the right customers and investors more than more capital.
Exclusive: Formic raises fresh funding to put more robots on factory floors — Axios Pro, Oct 22, 2026. Chicago robots-as-a-service startup Formic closed a $50M round to scale automation deployments across U.S. manufacturers, the largest Illinois round of the week.
Midwest Startup Funding for the week ending October 23, 2026 — Start Midwest (repeat), Oct 24, 2026. The weekly tally shows $100M across five Midwest rounds led by Formic, with Illinois leading Q3 Midwest deal count at 27 rounds and $431M.
Legislation, grants & State programs
Career and Technical Education Enrollment Grows by Nearly 6 Percent at Illinois Community Colleges — Office of Gov. Pritzker / ICCB, Oct 27, 2026. CTE enrollment rose 5.9% this fall to 75,208 students, the fastest growth in nine years and a tailwind for the state's workforce pipeline.
DCEO grant deadlines: SSBCI Venture Capital TA, Clean Jobs Workforce Network, Energy Transition Navigator and Climate Works Pre-apprenticeship (due Oct 30); Innovation Vouchers and Economic Empowerment Centers (due Nov 6) — Illinois DCEO (grants page), checked Oct 29, 2026. Four workforce and venture technical-assistance NOFOs close tomorrow and the Innovation Vouchers program (company R&D with Illinois universities) closes Nov 6; the SBIR/STTR Match Program stays open through June 30, 2027.
Gov. Pritzker Announces $156 Million in Funding for Housing — Office of Gov. Pritzker, Oct 29, 2026. New and expanded BUILD-powered housing programs target affordability statewide, which employers increasingly cite as a talent-attraction constraint.
State says it will keep 25 mental health beds at Choate, expand regional jobs — Capitol News Illinois, Oct 26, 2026. The state scaled back its Choate downsizing and pledged to expand regional jobs in southern Illinois, a workforce question heading into the fall veto session.
Illinois businesses & inventions
Caterpillar Reports Third-Quarter 2026 Results — Caterpillar Inc., Oct 29, 2026. Sales and revenues hit $20.7 billion, up 17%, with adjusted profit per share of $7.20 and what CEO Joe Creed called a record backlog, good news for the Peoria-area and Decatur supply chain.
Illinois regulators move to bring video gambling under self-exclusion program — Capitol News Illinois, Oct 22, 2026. New Gaming Board rules would extend self-exclusion to video gambling terminals and open the door to cashless wagering technology for the state's terminal operators.
Gov. Pritzker Provides $11.4 Million in Savings During the 2026 Back-to-School Sales Tax Holiday — Office of Gov. Pritzker, Oct 26, 2026. 2,284 Illinois retailers took part in the August tax holiday that saved shoppers $11.4 million, a data point on consumer traffic for small retailers.
Around the Horn
SIU-E Center for Sustainable Communities and Entrepreneurship
SIUE Business Insights: Yohan Choi, PhD (research feature) — SIUE News, Oct 28, 2026. An SIUE School of Business study examines how tariff cuts and foreign competition shape U.S. manufacturers' risk-taking, useful insight for Metro East manufacturers navigating trade shifts.
Distillery Labs (Peoria)
Winning Wednesday Workshop: Panel with CWTC – Community Workshop and Training Center (event listing) — Distillery Labs events, Dec 2, 2026. A new Winning Wednesday panel connects Peoria entrepreneurs with CWTC's workforce and inclusive-employment resources.
Fail Club: Christina Schatsiek (event listing) — Distillery Labs events, Dec 16, 2026. The Fail Club peer-learning series adds a December session where a local founder shares setbacks and lessons.
Fail Club: Lynette Fernandes (event listing) — Distillery Labs events, Jan 20, 2027. Fail Club programming extends into 2027, keeping founder-support offerings on the Peoria calendar into the new year.
EIU East-Central Illinois Hub
EIU, community partner events: October 29 through November 8, 2026 (event listing) — Eastern Illinois University, Oct 28, 2026. EIU's weekly roundup lists an Entrepreneurship Club workshop (Nov 3), Booth Library's 3D Printing 101 (Nov 2) and Podcasting 101 (Nov 5), small maker and small-business touchpoints for Coles County students.
ISU | Bloomington-Normal Hub
Federal leaders meet student entrepreneurs, university and city officials in Bloomington — WEEK/25News, Oct 29, 2026. SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler and Rep. Darin LaHood toured Illinois Wesleyan's new Petrick Idea Center and outlined SBA plans to back university-based incubators with counseling and funding.
See also Illinois State University.
NIU Center for Community Sustainability
NIU students gain real-world experience through internships (general NIU news) — NIU Today, Oct 28, 2026. Three NIU students describe internships at Behaim ITS and Mitutoyo, a workforce-pipeline story linking DeKalb-area employers to university talent.
Failure of the day: Iridium's $5 Billion Satellite Phone Network Goes Bankrupt Nine Months After Launch and Sells for $25 Million — bad.technology (Iridium filed for bankruptcy Aug 13, 1999). Lesson: Schaumburg-based Motorola spent a decade and $5 billion building a 66-satellite network for a $3,000 brick phone that cheap cellular had already made unnecessary; validate the market continuously, because the world keeps moving while you build.
Affirmation of the Day: Thursday is proof that I can carry an idea further than the week tried to let me; today I will finish one thing well, ask one person for help, and trust that steady work compounds into something nobody can take credit for but me.
App of the Day: Things 3 — Cultured Code's award-winning personal task manager that turns to-dos into projects, areas and a clean daily Today view across iPhone, iPad and Mac (4.8 stars from about 28,000 U.S. App Store ratings; $9.99 one-time, no subscription).
Useless Tidbit: Before Caterpillar, Peoria built cars: J.B. Bartholomew's Glide automobile was manufactured in Peoria from 1902 to 1917, after which Bartholomew turned to farm machinery and trucks at the Avery Company. (Source: Peoria Magazine)
Well, there is the daily run-down. Check out what is happening across the ecosystem, share good news, celebrate the wins, and be a good human.
As always, thanks for tuning in to the DSTL Daily Rundown!