HINDSIGHT - WRITE SOMETHING WORTH READING ABOUT OR DO SOMETHING WORTH WRITING ABOUT
Showing posts with label cnbc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cnbc. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Tech Leaders Talk Chicago’s Strengths, Weaknesses at iCONIC
Tech Leaders Talk Chicago’s Strengths, Weaknesses at iCONIC
Jim Dallke
Chicago Inno
19 May 2015
Three of Chicago’s most influential business leaders took the Chicago Theatre stage Tuesday to speak—mostly glowingly—about Chicago’s emerging tech scene, but also admitted where the city needs to improve when it comes to establishing itself as a leading tech hub.
J.B. Pritzker, 1871 CEO Howard Tullman, and World Business
Chicago CEO Jeff Malehorn spoke at Inc. and CNBC’s iCONIC conference to discuss
Chicago’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Each hit on topics that might be well
known by those who’ve been in the Chicago tech community for a while, but the
talk introduced the city’s tech ecosystem to out-of-town attendees.
First, Chicago tech has seen a huge evolution in the last 10 years, Pritzker said, with one of the biggest changes being the city’s growing acceptance of failure. A failed business would be ridiculed on the front page of the newspaper a decade ago, whereas today startups are beginning to embrace failure, and you’re seeing that will serial entrepreneurs in the city, Pritzker said.
Chicago is also starting to slowly shake its conservatism in
business, particularly when it comes tp VCs investing in startups, Pritzker
added. More venture dollars are coming to Chicago tech companies, and local VCs
are willing to take more of a risk.
But Chicago tech companies have retained positive aspects of
that conservative business mindset, Pritzker added, in that they have
profitability and revenue in mind from the get-go, a characteristic that
separates Chicago from many Silicon Valley startups.
Tullman added that a distinct characteristic of entrepreneurs today is that they want to make a difference.
“Entrepreneurs want to not just make a living, but make a
life,” he said. “Money alone is not going to make you happy.”
Malehorn said it’s that mindset sets Chicago apart from
other tech hubs, as many entrepreneurs take part in civic causes.
“If you adopt a civic cause, you’ll stand and out,” he said.
“And if you don’t adopt a civic cause, you'll stand out.”
But Chicago has a ways to go before it reaches the level of
a tech hub it wants to be, the panel acknowledged, and one big area of
improvement is retaining tech talent. The University of Illinois produces more
engineers per year than the next four top engineering schools combined,
Malehorn said, and many leave for companies on the coasts.
“We need better connectivity to our university systems,”
Malehorn said. “We want engineers to think about Chicago as their first stop
when building their career.”
And inevitably, the question of if Chicago can be the next Silicon Valley came up, to which Priztker responded: “We don’t want to be the next Silicon Valley,” and a quiet applause grew from the crowd.
“We aspire to be a great tech hub with great entrepreneurs.”
Welcome Iconic Tour to Chicago and 1871 – The Startup Success Community
Welcome Iconic Tour to Chicago and 1871 – The Startup Success Community
The Iconic Conference is here in Chicago this week. Inc. and CNBC have put together a solid line up of successful entrepreneurs, academics, authors, and more to tell their stories, share a point of view, and inspire us to achieve greatness. The attendees will surely walk away from this event with some great ideas about what to do differently to secure their entrepreneurial success.
There will be plenty of tours today of the co-working spaces around the city. There will be logos of the successful companies that got their start in that space. They will talk about how their space is unique, different, and enables startups to be successful.
Unfortunately, inspirational presentations and co-working spaces don’t create great companies. If that were all it took, the success rate for venture backed startups would be much higher.
Startups are a team sport!
It’s kind of a strange because usually you think about startups as 1 or 2 guys in their garage starting the next Apple. Sure, lightning can strike but two guys in a garage can be a very lonely existence with a very low likelihood of success.
It takes a community to create successful companies. It takes:
- Early adopter customers that share your vision and take a chance on you
- Mentors that share your passion and want to enable your success
- Teachers that provide you with the skills you need to start and grow a business
- Investors that understand what it will take to win
- Entrepreneurs that want to help each other by sharing experiences, resources, and ideas
Haka Products is very fortunate to be a part of 1871 here in the city of Chicago. Howard Tullman and the team at 1871 understand what it takes to create successful companies. They are enabling our success by creating a community that brings together all of the elements above.
1871 isn’t just a space. 1871 isn’t an incubator. 1871 is a community of people with a shared vision of creating successful companies here in the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois.
Each month, members are provided with a huge list of workshops and office hour mentoring sessions. And each month, we have taken advantage of those workshops and mentoring sessions to address current challenges. I have had the opportunity to meet attorneys, intellectual property experts, sales leaders, marketing experts, investment advisors, and many more. I have also met with senior leaders at big companies in the Chicago area who have a passion for innovation and startups.
My team isn’t just the employees that work for Haka Products. My team consists of all the customers, mentors, advisors, and the 1871 team that have helped us get to where we are today and who want to see us succeed.
Welcome Iconic Tour to the City of Chicago. Here are four things you must do while you are in town:
- Bring a jacket – it’s Chicago in May
- Catch a game – we’re a sports town
- Grab some deep dish – we have our own pizza
- Experience the community – come by 1871 and don’t ask for ‘the tour’ ask how you can be part of the community.
About the author: Colm Lennon is the Founder of Haka Products (www.hakaproducts.com). Haka Connect is an app built on Salesforce.com that helps you sell smarter and faster with context for customers and buyers. Haka Innovate helps you turn voice of the customer feedback into successful new products. Colm is an ex-CIO and Marketing leader at a Fortune 100 company. In addition to his LinkedIn profile, you can also interact with Colm on his Twitter account @ColmLennon.
Saturday, April 25, 2015
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)