Thanks to all the folks who made it out to the CEC's 2012 Startup Forecast last Wednesday at the CHASE Auditorium. We had a great morning of talks and discussion on important startup topics - here's a recap:
- Howard Tullman on Social Media - who talked about the trend to hyper-personalization and how free isn't cheap enough, how businesses need to deliver value and be authentic in the social media world, the rise of one-to-one transactions, and the importance of measuring everything. He wrapped up with points on building a lean startup that can create distinctive technologies that can scale.
- Harper Reed on Building a Tech Team - who talked about creating a garden of talent and the need to prune away the poor performers so they don't influence the entire team. He recommended to always be closing when trying to add awesome talent to your team - get them to buy-in to your vision - it's not always about the compensation, it's about working with other talented folks on solving big problems. Harper also encouraged debate and arguments as a means to getting to the best outcome - as well as regular team breakfast meetings before getting down to work.
- Brett Goldstein on Innovations in Government - who shared the City of Chicago's use of big data in solving big problems. The City collects a massive amount of data and as the Chief Data Officer, Brett is trying hard to corral that data (like chickens) out of the many city silos - check out their new Data Portal as evidence of his progress so far. He talked about the importance of our local tech community in helping to make Chicago into a data city and realizing Mayor Emanuel's vision of a open, participatory government.
- Matt McCall on Capital - channeled Steve Jobs in his black turtle-neck and kicked off with comments on Chicago 5.0, how it is our our time, our turn and had the audience repeat yell it out in unison. He talked about the perceived battle between angels and VC's, but that in Chicago we are finding ways to collaborate and support our entrepreneurs more effectively than in other places. Matt discussed the massive move to SoLoMo (Social, Mobile, and Local) and how you've been youtubed with the ubiquity of always-on, consumer generated video.
- Entrepreneurs Panel - with a panel of Neal, Brittany, Chuck, and Matt, how can you not have an awesome discussion? We focused on the best stories of 2011 and their predictions for 2012 - some nuggets were that we will likely see a couple more IPO's come out of Chicago next year, that the focus on building our talent (especially technical) will be all-important, that more talented entrepreneurs will choose to move to Chicago or stay here after school because of the incredible cluster of startups we have, that we need to do a better job of going to other parts of the country and telling our stories - and most importantly, that we will stop talking about us getting closer to other parts of the country and just accept that we are an incredible startup town.
- We wrapped up with comments from the Co-Chair of the CEC, Jim O'Connor Jr, of MVC Capital who encouraged patience in 2012 and that we need to focus on building a lot of great sustainable businesses.
Other exciting events last week was Mayor Emanuel speaking at the Economic Club dinner about making bold plans and reinventing Chicago. Before that, I had the great opportunity to speak to the Harvard Business School's Entrepreneur Club led by Alex Meyer - their members are interested in getting more involved in Chicago's startup community through mentoring and some angel investing. I heard the Tuesday's ITA Holiday Party was a blast as well as Technori's birthday party the same night. On Friday, I hung out with folks from Braintree, Local Offer Network, InContext Solutions, Code Academy, Target Data, and OnShore - it's companies like these that will make Chicago the best place to build a startup in 2012!
Thank again to all of those who came out to the CEC Startup Forecast and to JP Morgan Chase for sponsoring and hosting us!
