The city of Chicago is going through an interesting phase of public transportation changes, and it’s all thanks to Uber.

Chicago officials were supposed to launch a program on Jan. 29 this year that officially required all of the city’s 12,700 licensed cab drivers to connect to one of two “ride-hailing apps,” according to the Chicago Tribune. These two mobile apps, Arro and Curb, are part of a bigger “Chicabs” app program which was designed as a way to “help taxi companies claw back a customer base” that has increasingly turned to Uber or Lyft ride services.

The only tiny problem was that the city missed its own deadline. Many taxi drivers have not been keen on signing up for the program, but they have admitted that it’s a small step toward securing taxi company jobs.

As Crain’s Chicago Business reported, the ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft have caused taxi medallions to plummet in value. The average price of a taxi medallion in Chicago in 2014 was around $325,000, but this dropped to $229,000 in 2015.

As the city’s taxi industry fumbles, Uber has been making several changes to improve its services. ChicagoInno recently reported that Uber made adjustments to the way that passengers can choose their rides. Two services offered by Uber, uberPOOL and uberX, have been redesigned within the Uber app to allow passengers to request a “shared ride” or “your own car,” and estimated price differences are displayed together.

As many app developers will attest, even small changes can make a big difference in customer engagement. The majority of mobile app developers make improvements to an app at least twice a year, and many of these improvements focus on simple big fixes or changes for ease of accessibility.

Although Uber isn’t just focused on the city of Chicago, the company has made it clear that it sees a strong demand for its services and intends to continue growing — regardless of what the city’s taxi industry is doing.

“I-90 currently owns the title of the ‘nation’s worst bottleneck,’ costing residents 16.9 million hours of wasted time and a staggering $418 million in lost productivity per year,” said the company in a statement last year. “When it comes to cutting congestion and pollution in Chicago, technology is an important part of the solution.”

Startup competitions like the annual TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco have become high-profile incubators for nascent technology companies, separating the tech wannabes from the “unicorns” in the making. This April, five Chicago startups will head to Qingdao, China to compete in the Sino-US Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, which connects U.S. startups with Chinese investors.

A maximum of 20 U.S. companies and university teams will compete in the international competition, and already five startups from the Chicago area have been selected as finalists. Local startups Reliefwatch, Tovala, RiMO Therapeutics, Audiovert, and NETenergy received a paid trip to China after winning a regional competition held on Tuesday, Feb. 29 at the Chicago Innovation Exchange in Hyde Park.

In addition to 30 Chinese teams, participants from the University of Maryland, Virginia Tech, and San Jose State University will also compete. In April, the finalists will compete for $100,000 in prizes to help fund their ideas.

Startup competitions are just one of the new financing options entrepreneurs can use to get their idea off the ground. For instance, Audiovert, a finalist from Northwestern, raised $3,900 for its music tech startup on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo. RiMO Therapeutics, one of the other local finalists, was recently awarded $250,000 from the UChicago Innovation Fund.

Then there are organizations like Techstars, a global startup accelerator with a program in Chicago. Built in Chicago recently reported that Techstars Chicago graduate Infiniscene just raised $1.8 million for its cloud-based video game broadcasting service.

In the U.S., a quarter of all new businesses fail in their first year, while half will fail by their fourth year in business. Startup accelerators, competitions, and crowdfunding campaigns offer new ways for startups to raise capital in those crucial early years.

In the tech world, startups that go on to achieve a billion-dollar valuation are known as unicorns. Companies like Airbnb, Uber, Snapchat, and Pinterest are notable examples of this phenomenon. It’s an ambitious goal in a cutthroat industry, one that prizes innovation at all costs.

Yet because many of these startups are attempting to innovate on existing business models, that can make it difficult to perform traditional market research like benchmarking analysis. How do you compare your startup’s business model to the competition when there is no competition?

While there are more ways than ever for Chicago tech startups to raise capital, Infiniscene founder Stu Grubbs told Built in Chicago that ultimately, it’s old fashioned hard work that pays off in the end:

“Grubbs attributes much of the company’s success to its Midwestern work ethic, and the team’s passion for what they do. At Techstars, he said they got a reputation for coming in first and leaving last every day — including weekends.”