THE SECOND CITY HAS TECH AND ENTERTAINMENT MOJO
Eventric’s mission is to develop incredible apps and services that connect and help run the live entertainment industry. We do that in the fine City of Chicago. No longer Carl Sandburg’s “Hog Butcher for the World”, Chicago is showing that it is finally creating a sustainable community for the type of technology innovation that other locales like Silicon Valley, NYC, and Austin TX are known for.
A site called Built in Chicago was created by Viewpoints founder Matt Moog about 18 months ago and it really showcases the depth and breadth of this community. Chicago has always had its share of IT technology companies headquartered here but until the last few years it was dominated mostly by large B2B companies (consulting/systems integration firms like Accenture, where I started) and Motorola.
Now we have really innovative and impactful firms like 37Signals, who develop hugely popular and useful apps like Campfire as well as one of the web’s most popular development framework – Ruby on Rails. We have mega successful public exits like Groupon – which is even more notable because a couple of the founders (Brad Keywell and Eric Letkofsky) are taking $100MM of their money and putting back into the startup community through their investment vehicle Lightbank. (That’s something that just doesn’t happen here normally.)
And don’t you forget Mr. Skin, our Wicker Park neighborhood ping-pong mates and perhaps Chicago’s least-known-locally-best-known-nationally Internet media company.
We’ve always enjoyed our location for access to the live entertainment/music industry. Although we aren’t considered an epicenter like Nashville, NYC, and LA – we’re in that second tier and our central location and status as a first tier market means that we get a lot of industry visitors to our town (and our office).
We also have tech-related entertainment companies run here like cool ticketing upstart FanFueled and of course taste makers/curators Pitchfork Media. And musically this town wouldn’t be what it is without entrepreneurs like Joe Shanahan from Metro, Tom Windish of the Windish Agency, Gregg Latterman of Aware Records/Management, Jerry Mickelson of Jam Productions and of course Lollapalooza.
One thing that makes a local startup community work is investment from “angels” or individual small investors. These investors typically fund startups at the earliest, most vunerable stages. (Later and larger investors tend to be institutional funds like Venture Capital.) Angel capital is how Eventric was funded and I can happily say that most of our investors come from Chicago. Local can make a difference and we’re both grateful for the support and glad to be a part of what’s happening in Chicago.
