To start this week, I'm going to go back to the BuiltInChicago Leaders event on the Thursday before last because I realized I had met some other great folks that I didn't mention in last week's post. This is a credit to the excellent group the Matt and Maria brought together. At my table at the event was Kristen Parsons from the lunch sponsor Silicon Valley Bank, Tom Ryan the CEO of Threadless, and Nick Stojka Co-founder of Sertifi, not to mention old friends Lon Chow of Apex and Jared Golden from Apparel Media Group. And in the small world category, I ran into my Roscoe Village neighbor - Craig Steensma lives a few houses down from me and is the Founder of eshots.
Now on to this past week, first thing Monday opened with the news of my old company, Google, acquiring a local legend of tech entrepreneurship, Motorola - or at least the Mobility side of things. Many things have been said about this proposed acquisition, but from my experience with both companies, I think it's a great deal. It solves some challenges that Google had - especially in terms of patents - and Motorola brings not just the handset hardware expertise, but the TV set-top box and tablet expertise as well - huge growth areas for Google's Android platform. Android will continue to be an open platform, but now Motorola's hardware specifically will be that much more integrated with the OS and create even better experiences for users and for developers on the platform. I'm hopeful that Google does run this as an independent entity and continues with Motorola's large presence in Libertyville - these folks are too important to the Chicago-area and Illinois technology community.
Now on to my weekly wrap-up:
Monday morning, I was down in Hyde Park with Professor Steve Kaplan and the ChicagoBooth leadership team talking about social media along with my old Google colleague, Brent Hill, who is now running the central region for Twitter. That afternoon I moderated a panel on networking and business etiquette at the UIUC Startup Bootcamp held at the Illini Center - we got to talk to a lot of talented young entrepreneurs and I'm looking forward to partnering with the folks in Champaign more in the future.
Tuesday was at Excelerate Labs - spending time with Jordan from BuzzReferrals and Jason from ASpaceApart (now Shortlist). Tuesday night was our Hyde Park Angels IT/Digital media committee meeting and we saw pitches from DailyDigital, Chute, and Business Travel Alternatives.
On Wednesday, I spent time with Sandy Daffe and the team at Junior Achievement talking about the CEC's Future Founders program and ways to partner. JA Chicago is the biggest chapter in the country/world and impacts 400,000 students annually in the area across grade school, middle school, and high school. Teaching entrepreneurship at an early age is a key part of their program and it's all funded by local companies. I also met up with Darren Green, a professor of Venture Capital at Northwestern and lawyer to a number of local startups. And that afternoon I got to see the cool stuff the MentorMob guys are working on - a referral from Steve Miller at Origin Ventures. On Wednesday night, I hosted the CEC's Board of Directors and Community Advisory Board at HUB51 for a summer networking social event. It was awesome to see so many of our supporters attend and talk about the exciting momentum the Chicago startup community has right now.
On Thursday, we were over at Groupon interviewing Andy Mason for a video we're creating for the Momentum Awards dinner - it was great to catch-up with him and see old friends like the CFO of Groupon International, Mark Hoyt who's been a long-time supporter of the CEC at past stops like Motorola and CareerBuilder.
On Friday, I wrapped up a busy week with a breakfast with Jeff Nelson, Executive Director of Urban Students Empowered, a incredible local non-profit that leads underperforming students in low-income schools to enroll in and graduate from college. And Friday afternoon I visited Matt Matros founder of Protein Bar - he's opened a place in River North and has big plans for additional expansion.
I also talked with the StartupAmerica folks on Friday and heard about their work around the country and the national energy and velocity around entrepreneurship - they agree that there's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur than right now!
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