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A new dialogue emerged yesterday surrounding the future of Chicago’s startup scene during the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center’s 2014 Startup Forecast. Lisa Leiter, a former Crain’s Chicago Business reporter and an emcee of the event, commented that a lot had changed since the first forecast three years ago -- a testament to the growth of a healthy Chicago startup scene that no longer hung its hat on a single company: “Back then, the whole event was focused on Groupon. If you paid attention today, how many times did you hear them mentioned?”
Groupon was in fact mentioned exactly once, by Adrian Holovaty. The Django web co-creator, EveryBlock founder and current co-founder of Soundslice looked at the strengths of different regional startup centers in the country such as Silicon Valley's specialization in consumer-facing tech: "But what exactly is the Chicago emphasis? Please don't say group coupons."
The strong diversity of Chicago's startup scene, he pointed out, was in fact a drawback in marketing the city to new entrepreneurs. He instead presented a new vision for the future with a retelling of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where the city dazzled the world not with a taller Eiffel tower as unveiled at the previous World's Fair, but with the world's first Ferris wheel.
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"The Eiffel Tower has already been built in Silicon Valley," he argued. Playing the same West Coast game of chasing venture capital and acquisition, he felt, was the wrong direction: "We’re Chicagoans, we're honest people - so why are we trying to play this BS game?”
Where Lon Chow of Apex Venture Partners at last year's startup forecast pronounced venture capital funding as lagging behind where it should be, Holovaty said he sees an opportunity instead for the city to "really pimp the fact that this is the best place in the country to have a bootstrapped startup."
He pointed out that the low cost of living and high concentration of culture is a natural environment for startups "not trying to take over the world" but that are driven by passion and creativity, "not tied down to anything." He encouraged bootstrappers to find him afterwards and make it a movement: “Chicago: Be Your Own Boss.”
Holovaty acknowledged that many in the audience might have different answers to question of Chicago's entrepreneurial
In her pitch, Lockett put forth plans for Leap Innovations, an ed-tech hub for building a pipeline of next generation education tech in Chicago, citing technological leaps that have left the classroom virtually untouched. Within the healthcare industry, Agarwal gave reason to look forward towards increasing opportunities enabled by better capabilities for information sharing and personalized care. During the tech panel, Greg Goff, CTO of Morningstar, along with Rama Prasad, CIO of GoGo, talked mobile and cloud computing strategies at their respective companies as well. Without surprise, Howard Tullman, serial entrepreneur and newly named CEO of 1871, returned to this year's forecast casting broader trends for the year and revealed that 1871 alumni may be keeping longer ties to the startup community.
To quote Daniel Burnham, chief architect of the 1893 Columbian Exposition: "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood." Entrepreneurs, investors and their partners must now respond to Holovaty's call for a redefined Chicago as groundwork continues to be laid down for technology making significant social impact in the city's soil.
