We talk a lot about the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Chicago. A lot of people have put a lot of hard work and thought into the scalable start up ecosystem. That's great. My own personal opinion is that like a great novel, Chicago has reached that plot inflection point. Either the rest of the book will trap you and engross you-or it will suck and you will put it down to do something else.
We have a lot of sizzle right now, and need more steak.
A part of that is developing the fabric and depth of the ecosystem. In this case, I am talking about Mom and Pop businesses. They have an extraordinarily difficult time in Chicago. I wrote about this in Crain's here.
Scalable start ups are cool. They create jobs, and if successful can create wealth. Mom and Pop's make the living environment better. They create community and make the city "sticky". A great environment makes it more desirable to live here. As they say, you don't come here for the weather but you might stay in Chicago because it's such a great restaurant town, or cultural town, or because you really love the donut shop and dry cleaner you go by everyday.
I think that children can learn great lessons from working in a family business. They learn responsibility. They learn about the market. They learn how to listen to and value customers. Mom and Pop's take the same amount of risk that scalable start ups do. They just have different goals. Instead of changing the world or being disruptive to a business model, they just want a better lifestyle for their family.
If we are going to support entrepreneurs, let's support all entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurial community needs to tell the city to stop stomping on Mom and Pop businesses. Chicago needs to end regulations and taxes and make it easy to do business here. Just go up and down major streets all over the city and take note of all the vacant business property. There is a legit reason for that. No one has a good economic incentive to occupy it.
