Chicago Venture Summit

I am a bit drained today as I was at the Cubs game last night.  It was a tough way to end the season.  The Cubs played decent baseball, but not blowout baseball all the way down the stretch and into last night.  2 runs in 22 innings of playoff baseball isn’t going to get you anywhere.

The 4th Chicago Venture Summit is on today and I will be there late.  Yesterday, Holberg Financial pitched at the Fin Tech break out session.   Fintank ran that session and did a pretty good job of explaining why Chicago is a Fin Tech hub.  WLV is also investors in Megalytics, and in CFX/OFN.  They made a good case why Chicago will be the center of the universe in the future when it comes to crypto.  It is a place where some very big companies are being built as we speak.

One thing that I would like the organizers of the summit to do is bring in pension funds, fund of funds, endowments and other pools of capital that invest in venture funds.  They need to see what’s going on here so they can either invest in funds that are based here in the Midwest or encourage their current funds to start spending time investing capital here.

We need to tell our story.  Chicago is different than both coasts and the kinds of companies that are being built here are very different.  They attack different problems and they do it in different ways. The people are different since the ecosystem is dominated by Midwesterners.

Without the capital in the local funds, it’s hard to grease the gears to make it go.