"What? I can't do it again?" hahaha

We had a great time! Thanks again to the BIC team, Rockit, and everyone who braved the flood to attend! - Michael, CMO, M2J Think Box

Nice post, Seyi. Scaling up just isn’t as sexy as being a startup... but the need to scale productively has never been more important to the local and national economies. The Kauffman Foundation found that young firms are leading the recovery in job creation with new positions accounting for four out of every 10 hires at startups (firms that are two years old or less) compared with 1/3 or fewer hires at established firms (Forbes, Nov 2012). To successfully scale a startup to a growth-stage company, expertise is needed in three key areas: Growth Strategy, Talent Attraction and Retainment, and Visibility. Locally, ITA sees hundreds of companies tackling these challenges in efforts to make their business visions a reality. On the plus side, we have a great community of experienced entrepreneurs who willingly share their expertise to support the folks further down on the growth ladder. We are thrilled to be part of this amazing community of companies, entrepreneurs, and economic leaders. Congrats to you on your business, too!

Seyi
Nice one; your point about scaling is well taken. Not so sure about the friendship issue though; seems to me that the best entrepreneurs have a very healthy schizophrenia about pals and competitors (and the old rule about "Don't compete with your customers" went out the window about 1985!!)
And while Bear Stearns was the ignition point, doesn't the financial meltdown have a lot to do with Master-Of-The-Universe bankers who could not see real risk if it bit them in a private place (which of course it did)?

Coincidentally, I just finished "Antifragile," as well. I've been a big Taleb fan since "The Black Swan" and he is a great thinker that all entrepreneurs should know. I hadn't considered the concentration of the seemingly "diversified" VC scene here in Chicago, but I think it's a great point. Well said!

Seyi - great post. You make some really salient observations. Your point about growth stage vs start up stage is interesting. I think what happens is that when a startup nails the product/market fit and starts to scale their attention (rightly so) turns from the Chicago community to focus on their national or global target customer. And then when they really start to grow and need to hire they turn their attention back to the community because they need to raise their profile to attract more talent and build out their team. And then when they get big enough their attention turns inward to building out their culture. So I agree with you we could all afford to learn more from the successful growth companies in our market but lets not make it an either/or proposition. And in fact, let's talk more about the milestones and challenges that are in between raw startup and scaling growth company. Getting to your first million in revenue, and then $5 million, $10 and then $100 million are all very different sets of challenges and priorities. It would make for an interesting post or panel to talk to entrepreneurs about what is important at each phase and what they personally focus on differently at each stage.

On your point about the local investors being a closed system, I was thinking just the opposite. So many of our break out companies have raised money from outside Chicago from blue chip venture investors that it seems like a very open and competitive market in this respect. Think about GoHealth, Narrative, MuSigma, GrubHub, Groupon, TrunkClub, Retrofit and a slew of others. The Built In Chicago data in this regard is more comprehensive than Crunchbase. Take a look - http://www.builtinchicago.org/companies/recently-funded

Anyway, great post. Thanks for continuing to contribute and lead the conversation. With entrepreneurs like you the Chicago digital community will continue to lead the way....

Very insightful post.