4 ms·
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 jus
by 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 agoWe'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 agoPretty 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.