37 ms·

University of Chicago isn't a bad school. I am, however, straining to think of another Chicago research university. But then compare it to Stanford+Cal+UCSF and

University of Chicago isn't a bad school. I am, however, straining to think of another Chicago research university. But then compare it to Stanford+Cal+UCSF and it just isn't a fair fight. An underrated advantage in SV is its top tier legal and capital talent. WSGR, Cooley, Fenwick, ... are outstanding. For VCs you can start with Sequoia at the top and work your way all the way down to angels. L+S did a demo in Andy Bechtolsheim's garage and walked away with a check for $250,000. That just ain't happening in Chicago.

strange_quark 9y ago
UChicago is an excellent school, right up there with Stanford and the Ivys, and you're forgetting Northwestern, UIUC, Wisconsin - Madison, Michigan - Ann Arbor, Purdue, and plenty others.
- CalChris 9y ago
  There's a good reason I've never met anyone from the University of Chicago in Silicon Valley. It doesn't have an engineering school. I have met two people from Moscow State University (quite a bit further, no?) in Silicon Valley. It does have an engineering school.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    It has a CS program, but it's not a great CS program. Aspiring engineers in Chicago tend to go to Champaign or Madison. UIC has a competent, serious research-university engineering program that is adequate to the region but not a standout on the national scale. (Northwestern, the other top-tier Chicago school, does have an engineering program). We should probably dispense with the notion that regions "need" engineering schools to feed a tech industry. That is probably not generally how it works. Portland has a thriving tech scene, but not many people travel for engineering school in Portland. Boston has world-class engineering schools, and an anemic tech scene.
    - CalChris 9y ago
      My brother got his PhD in physics at Champaign. And of course, Chris Lattner did LLVM at Champaign (and then came to SV). Good school.
      - wolf550e 9y ago
        UIUC has a strong and famous CS department: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Computer_Science,_University_of_Illinois_at_Urbana%E2%80%93Champaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Computer_Science...
    - tptacek 9y ago
      I drove 'wglb to our Matasano reunion (which is amazing) yesterday night and he pointed out to me that UChicago has a seriously excellent theoretical computer science department; it's just not as competitive a applied science program.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    There are dozens of us! Dozens! As CS is under physical sciences rather than engineering, we come away with less differential equations experience than those in the engineering tradition, but also much more systems programming. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Lots of people went to big tech companies - we may just have lower risk tolerance/entrepreneurialism than Stanford. The graduate rankings for CS aren’t great, but the CS faculty are teachers first and researchers second; this may be to your advantage as an undergrad who is not eyeing a career in academia. It has 5500 undergraduates, and until the last 5 years or so, less than 100 of them were CS students. So yeah, you won’t see as many of us out in the world as you will graduates of a school with 25k students. It’s also a global institution in a cloister 7 miles/45+ CTA minutes from the nearest part of Chicago that white professionals set foot in (extremely segregated city); its effect on the city as a whole is going to be muted. People come from all over the world and then promptly disperse all over the world.
    - CalChris 9y ago
      I finally visited Chicago a few years ago. I probably can't handle your winters but otherwise, it's a great city, accent on city. My brother made sure he shot baskets on Obama's court. I sail, and unfortunately, we (family thing) got there about two weeks before the boats got put into the water; so no beer can racing for me. I hope Chicago or Saint Louis gets Amazon's second HQ but not at too great a cost.
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    I graduated from University of Chicago. I'm here :)
tptacek 9y ago
Chicago is one of the legal and finance centers of the entire country. Unlike SFBA, it's a trading center (it was the heart of the HFT phenomenon). Some of the largest law firms in the world are headquartered here. What you're really trying to say is that there's no venture capital market here. That's true. (And, as a result, there's no real venture law here). Venture capital is a rounding error in the global financial markets. Don't extrapolate lack of VC to lack of capital. Obviously, none of this is helpful for tech companies that want to raise a round in Chicago. If you plan on raising, you should probably at least start in SFBA or NYC.
- CalChris 9y ago
  No, I'm not saying there's no VC in Chicago. But SV had about 2000 'funding rounds' in 2016. Chicago had about 200. SV just dominates VC and you need VC not just C to start companies. http://static.crunchbase.com/reports/annual_2016_yf42a/crunchbase_annual_2016.pdf http://static.crunchbase.com/reports/annual_2016_yf42a/crunc... But this isn't the 70s+80s anymore when frankly you had to be in SV. Nowadays there are tremendous advantages to being here but you can be successful elsewhere. Instead, today SV competes for the market rather than owns its.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    We're actually saying the same thing: there is no serious community of VC funding in Chicago. I'm just saying that's not because Chicago isn't a capital/finance center.
    - CalChris 9y ago
      Pretty much the same thing. As for the topic, I think Thiel is a pompous twit. What I will say is that places like Chicago can be quite competitive by being less competitive and more organic. Here, it's I'm doing Snapchat meets Uber. Not quite Dot Com but awfully close. A YC side effect. If you've got a real idea, it doesn't become real by being here despite here having huge advantages. Was Zuckerberg wrong for picking up his toys and moving to a rental in Palo Alto? Not really. But Xero isn't here. Hell, Xero isn't even American. So it's kind've like Hollywood. For a few decades, they had tremendous advantages. Now Hollywood competes and other cities do production and location work. But Hollywood is still central to the industry and will be for the foreseeable future.

strange_quark 9y ago

UChicago is an excellent school, right up there with Stanford and the Ivys, and you're forgetting Northwestern, UIUC, Wisconsin - Madison, Michigan - Ann Arbor, Purdue, and plenty others.

CalChris 9y ago
There's a good reason I've never met anyone from the University of Chicago in Silicon Valley. It doesn't have an engineering school. I have met two people from Moscow State University (quite a bit further, no?) in Silicon Valley. It does have an engineering school.
- tptacek 9y ago
  It has a CS program, but it's not a great CS program. Aspiring engineers in Chicago tend to go to Champaign or Madison. UIC has a competent, serious research-university engineering program that is adequate to the region but not a standout on the national scale. (Northwestern, the other top-tier Chicago school, does have an engineering program). We should probably dispense with the notion that regions "need" engineering schools to feed a tech industry. That is probably not generally how it works. Portland has a thriving tech scene, but not many people travel for engineering school in Portland. Boston has world-class engineering schools, and an anemic tech scene.
  - CalChris 9y ago
    My brother got his PhD in physics at Champaign. And of course, Chris Lattner did LLVM at Champaign (and then came to SV). Good school.
    - wolf550e 9y ago
      UIUC has a strong and famous CS department: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Computer_Science,_University_of_Illinois_at_Urbana%E2%80%93Champaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Computer_Science...
  - tptacek 9y ago
    I drove 'wglb to our Matasano reunion (which is amazing) yesterday night and he pointed out to me that UChicago has a seriously excellent theoretical computer science department; it's just not as competitive a applied science program.
- closeparen 9y ago
  There are dozens of us! Dozens! As CS is under physical sciences rather than engineering, we come away with less differential equations experience than those in the engineering tradition, but also much more systems programming. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Lots of people went to big tech companies - we may just have lower risk tolerance/entrepreneurialism than Stanford. The graduate rankings for CS aren’t great, but the CS faculty are teachers first and researchers second; this may be to your advantage as an undergrad who is not eyeing a career in academia. It has 5500 undergraduates, and until the last 5 years or so, less than 100 of them were CS students. So yeah, you won’t see as many of us out in the world as you will graduates of a school with 25k students. It’s also a global institution in a cloister 7 miles/45+ CTA minutes from the nearest part of Chicago that white professionals set foot in (extremely segregated city); its effect on the city as a whole is going to be muted. People come from all over the world and then promptly disperse all over the world.
  - CalChris 9y ago
    I finally visited Chicago a few years ago. I probably can't handle your winters but otherwise, it's a great city, accent on city. My brother made sure he shot baskets on Obama's court. I sail, and unfortunately, we (family thing) got there about two weeks before the boats got put into the water; so no beer can racing for me. I hope Chicago or Saint Louis gets Amazon's second HQ but not at too great a cost.
- pcwalton 9y ago
  I graduated from University of Chicago. I'm here :)

tptacek 9y ago

Chicago is one of the legal and finance centers of the entire country. Unlike SFBA, it's a trading center (it was the heart of the HFT phenomenon). Some of the largest law firms in the world are headquartered here. What you're really trying to say is that there's no venture capital market here. That's true. (And, as a result, there's no real venture law here). Venture capital is a rounding error in the global financial markets. Don't extrapolate lack of VC to lack of capital. Obviously, none of this is helpful for tech companies that want to raise a round in Chicago. If you plan on raising, you should probably at least start in SFBA or NYC.

CalChris 9y ago
No, I'm not saying there's no VC in Chicago. But SV had about 2000 'funding rounds' in 2016. Chicago had about 200. SV just dominates VC and you need VC not just C to start companies. http://static.crunchbase.com/reports/annual_2016_yf42a/crunchbase_annual_2016.pdf http://static.crunchbase.com/reports/annual_2016_yf42a/crunc... But this isn't the 70s+80s anymore when frankly you had to be in SV. Nowadays there are tremendous advantages to being here but you can be successful elsewhere. Instead, today SV competes for the market rather than owns its.
- tptacek 9y ago
  We're actually saying the same thing: there is no serious community of VC funding in Chicago. I'm just saying that's not because Chicago isn't a capital/finance center.
  - CalChris 9y ago
    Pretty much the same thing. As for the topic, I think Thiel is a pompous twit. What I will say is that places like Chicago can be quite competitive by being less competitive and more organic. Here, it's I'm doing Snapchat meets Uber. Not quite Dot Com but awfully close. A YC side effect. If you've got a real idea, it doesn't become real by being here despite here having huge advantages. Was Zuckerberg wrong for picking up his toys and moving to a rental in Palo Alto? Not really. But Xero isn't here. Hell, Xero isn't even American. So it's kind've like Hollywood. For a few decades, they had tremendous advantages. Now Hollywood competes and other cities do production and location work. But Hollywood is still central to the industry and will be for the foreseeable future.