4 ms·

it's not chicago, but it should be.

• rrival 19y ago
  What's the story with Chicago. You'd think with 37signals, feedburner and ... I can't think of a prominent 3rd, you'd get a local startup community slightly more active than TechCocktail...
  • far33d 19y ago
    Threadless is the third.
  • pg 19y ago
    One YC-funded startup is there: Inkling Markets. http://inklingmarkets.blogspot.com/2007/06/inkling-is-hiring.html http://inklingmarkets.blogspot.com/2007/06/inkling-is-hiring...
  • bmaier 19y ago
    Chicago is just getting close to reaching critical mass. The startups that succeeded here before did little to foster community. The startups here now are coming around to the idea of a start up community. It should be interesting to see how it plays out. The other problem here is that a bunch of the good hackers go to places like Citadel rather than do a startup.
    • rrival 19y ago
      Sounds like we should get a Chicago news.yc meetup going. I'm thinking something more frequent than Tech Cocktail, is there a Chicago OpenCoffee Club yet? I know someone's working on a StartupWeekend here: http://startupweekendchicago.wetpaint.com/ http://startupweekendchicago.wetpaint.com/
      • rwebb 19y ago
        Keith Schacht does chicagobeta meetups and gets very good attendance (http://chicagobeta.com http://chicagobeta.com). He also runs http://freshwaterventure.com http://freshwaterventure.com.
        • bmaier 19y ago
          Keith does a good job to develop community here though it seems beta is a bit stagnant. I believe he's still working on JobCoin as well as a pretty successful facebook app
      • bmaier 19y ago
        A news.yc meetup here would be great. OpenCoffee Club here has been ruined by MidPhase but theres no reason we can't set up a weekly or monthly meeting time at a coffee shop where news.ycers can come and go, with some way to identify ourselves like a post-it note on your laptop or something. Anyone up for it?
        • rrival 19y ago
          In
        • samb 19y ago
          let me know. i'm there. the whole midphase thing turned me off immediately. a cup of coffee does not require sponsorship...
        • bmaier 19y ago
          Campfire set up for organizing and just general ChiTown talk. http://ycombinator.campfirenow.com http://ycombinator.campfirenow.com if you want an invite mail cubend#gmail.com Works well as a message board or a chatroom. I'll be in there off and on all week
      • falsestprophet 19y ago
        I am from Chicago as well. As far as I can tell, there aren't many of Us here. I suggest replying if you are from the Area and leaving your email address if it is not in your yc profile.
• adrianh 19y ago
  Chicago's the best. You can live within walking distance of world-class restaurants, great music venues, convenient public transportation and the most breathtaking architecture in America -- all for a fraction of the cost of living you'd find in San Francisco, New York, Boston or DC. Then there's the demographic breakdown. If I'm building a Web application that I intend to market to normal people -- i.e., NOT the types of people who read 96 RSS feeds a day and obsess over TechCrunch -- I'd rather live in a place where my friends are, well, diverse. Chicago has a strong economy with no clear dominating industry. There's strength in diversity. Not that there isn't a tech scene here. The Tech Cocktail events (semi-regular gatherings of 500+ local tech people) have been well-attended, and the Chicago Python Users Group is a great bunch of people. During a recent Chicago visit, a Bay Area resident told me he was astounded by how much more active the Chicago Python group was than the Bay Area one. I have very little experience raising startup money, so I can't comment about the availability of VC or angel funding in Chicago. But are you really going to move somewhere just to get funding? What does it say about the quality of your idea if you feel like it will only succeed if you live in a certain part of the U.S.?
  • menloparkbum 19y ago
    I'm originally from Chicago. Chicago is great in some ways, but the attitudes of most business people (including those in "tech") are straight out of the 1950s.
    • adrianh 19y ago
      Then don't hire those people. :)