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$1.6B in funding and $7B in exits: Chicago tech just had its best year ever

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Re: $1.6B in funding and $7B in exits: Chicago tech just had its best year ever

#31

Post by godzillabrennus »

the_vincedent wrote: post #18

As a Chicagoan and software engineer, here's my honest opinion of tech in Chicago: it's a sad, sorry place to be right now. I grew up in Chicago, went to college in Chicago and work in Chicago. It's been a roller coaster love-hate relationship for 30 years. There's two major reasons I say it's so sad and sorry: a total lack of experienced, aggressive VC here, and a massive deficit of university-business partnership.…

Seth Kravitz the cofounder of TechNori (http://Technori.com) deserves a lot of credit for trying to fix a lot of this. 1871 is a nifty place as well but to get VC funding outside of that place a serial entrepreneur named RJ has set up http://ventureconnects.com to fix the gap. There is an exciting startup community in Chicago! Outside of the ones mentioned in the article these are worth mentioning:

http://Markitx.com http://StageBloc.com http://Bikespike.com http://Firemeibegyou.com http://Visuhire.com http://WeDeliver.us http://Spartzmedia.com http://Rscu.com http://Mjinews.com

Re: $1.6B in funding and $7B in exits: Chicago tech just had its best year ever

#32

Post by icebraining »

_random_ wrote: post #14

It's interesting what would be 80s/90s person assumption? "1.6B in funding! Oh boy, robots, life extension, hover cars!" "Err, no. But you will be targeted with ads about food delivery and HR services much more precisely!"

Remember, you're talking about the 90s which had as a flagship startup a company that sold pet food. Broadcast.com alone was purchased for $5.9B (eq. to $8B of today's money), and all they did was stream video over the Internet.

Re: $1.6B in funding and $7B in exits: Chicago tech just had its best year ever

#34

Post by dmritard96 »

rhino369 wrote: post #24
mathattack wrote: post #3

Chicago's a great city, and I've spent a lot of time there. But.... - It's cold. - The academic environment itself is better in general business. Two top MBA programs, but the best engineering school is far down state. - It has winter. - The ecosystem supports growth, but not hypergrowth. Companies like BaseCRM do well starting there, but move to Silicon Valley when it's time to explode. - Snow without mountains - No…

Illinois, Purdue, Wisconsin, Northwestern and to a lesser extent Michigan dump tons of engineers into Chicago.

Yes although arguably dumps just as many into the valley and NYC

Re: $1.6B in funding and $7B in exits: Chicago tech just had its best year ever

#35

Post by rayiner »

bunderbunder wrote: post #13
ingenieros wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not as socially, ethnically or culturally diverse as many other tech hubs." Chicago has world class museums, music venues, restaurants and ethnic enclaves like Ukrainian Village, Maxwell St., Devon, Pilsen.. and you mean to tell me there's more diversity up in the bay area? LOL

Just looking at racial demographics, the level of diversity is about the same, it just skews differently. The % white and latino are about the same, but Chicago has as many black folks as San Francisco does asian folks, and vice versa. San Francisco's quite a bit more wealthy, though - median household income upward of $73k vs $47k. Perhaps that contributes to more of a perception of diversity for certain folks. Chic…

> San Francisco's quite a bit more wealthy, though - median household income upward of $73k vs $47k.

That $2k-ish per month is entirely eaten up by the cost of housing. Median rent for a 2BR in SF is $4,000/mo. Chicago is a little over half that. Not to mention much lower taxes than in California.

Re: $1.6B in funding and $7B in exits: Chicago tech just had its best year ever

#36

Post by dmritard96 »

the_vincedent wrote: post #18

As a Chicagoan and software engineer, here's my honest opinion of tech in Chicago: it's a sad, sorry place to be right now. I grew up in Chicago, went to college in Chicago and work in Chicago. It's been a roller coaster love-hate relationship for 30 years. There's two major reasons I say it's so sad and sorry: a total lack of experienced, aggressive VC here, and a massive deficit of university-business partnership.…

No mention of Northwestern. While not always ranked super high on USNWR, its full to the gunnels of smart people that sometimes stay in the city. Although in my experience, if they are into startups rather than HFT/corporate gigs, they just pick up and move. Culturally its just not as friedly for new enterprises. When you tell someone you quit your job to start a company, they look at you like you are crazy, as if you didn't already know that.

Re: $1.6B in funding and $7B in exits: Chicago tech just had its best year ever

#37

Post by encoderer »

My impression is that in Chicago -- and really everywhere outside the SF BA and NYC -- has much weaker comp for engineers.

It makes sense, really. By far the majority of SE jobs in these places are in IT departments writing line of business software. These are Java and .Net shops usually and anecdotally it seems they pay from $60-90k.

The companies where engineers are profit centers -- web startups and software companies, etc -- are desirable and attractive. Importantly, these are usually high margin businesses. In competitive markets, these companies meet engineer scarcity with attractive pay and equity packages. In places like Chicago, for every opening at 37 Signals you have 5 applicants from places like Crate & Barrel.

This is unfortunate especially because even here in SF I think engineers are not yet paid what they are worth. I reach this conclusion by looking at the margins of software companies and profitable internet companies. You can clearly see the value software engineers are creating.

To be clear, I'm sure there are thousands of highly paid software engineers in the greater Chicago area. it's a very big city and there is a lot of money there. Hell there may be thousands of highly paid engineers in finance alone. Chicago is certainly the heart of trading in this country. I'm generalizing.

Re: $1.6B in funding and $7B in exits: Chicago tech just had its best year ever

#38

Post by deet »

encoderer wrote: post #37

My impression is that in Chicago -- and really everywhere outside the SF BA and NYC -- has much weaker comp for engineers. It makes sense, really. By far the majority of SE jobs in these places are in IT departments writing line of business software. These are Java and .Net shops usually and anecdotally it seems they pay from $60-90k. The companies where engineers are profit centers -- web startups and software compa…

Why do you have this impression?

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, but curious where this idea came from.

Re: $1.6B in funding and $7B in exits: Chicago tech just had its best year ever

#39

Post by kasey_junk »

xasos wrote: post #16
kasey_junk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be very curious to see actual statistics around that. This is a belief that is highly subject to selection bias. I myself don't like the Bay Area for my own perception of the lack of diversity there, but again I would not be surprised if that is my bias showing through. (and for instance I live in a neighborhood that has a history of multi-ethnic families that goes back to before that was socially acceptable near…

Chicago is pretty segregated as whole. The North side is predominantly Caucasian and the south side (save for a few neighborhoods) is predominantly African-American and Latino.

Sure Chicago is segregated (though I find the North/South boundary, like all generalizations misses a considerable amount of complexity) but this is true of all US cities.

San Francisco for instance is segregated pretty dramatically with the Asian population (and a mixture of Latinos) pushed to the western edge and the white population centrally located. Not to mention the elephant in the room of Oakland.

When we start talking about diversity of other sorts such as income, education, nationality etc the picture is similar.

That is to say, my experience of San Francisco was one of homogeny, the opposite of my experience of Chicago. But I've experienced Chicago more broadly as well, so as I say I'd like some numbers to backup the assertion that San Francisco is more welcoming of inter racial families.

Re: $1.6B in funding and $7B in exits: Chicago tech just had its best year ever

#40

Post by trentmb »

tedkalaw wrote: post #28
xasos wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the statement the most (also a Chicagoan). Chicago isn't a tech hub, and people need to stop saying it is. Why is it that our flagship university (UIUC) sends more people to Silicon Valley/Seattle than Chicago, which is only 2 hours away? They need to focus on bringing in some more mature tech companies (engineering teams, for one), and that can help potentially bring some more startups here.

There's actually a UIUC alum center in SF - http://www.sfbayillini.org/ . The last estimate I heard was that there are somewhere around 40,000-50,000 UIUC graduates in the Bay Area. I grew up in Chicago, graduated from UIUC, and I live in SF and work in Silicon Valley. When I moved here, I didn't need to make any new friends if I didn't want to - when I got here, my entire friend group and extended UIUC social networ…

Dumb question- is the SF alum center open to non-CoE folks?

I was a math major that took a handful of CS classes... and am in desperate need of employment, but no one seems interested in giving entry-level dev work.

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