I want to thank you all
for joining us tonight and for all of your continued support for our
entrepreneurs and for the tech community in Chicago and Illinois which
continues to expand by leaps and bounds every day. Community is at the core of
everything we are about and our community is stronger and more connected than
ever as I hope you all know from the occasional emails, which you might
sometimes receive from me.
At the same time, we’re
creating more and more sustainable businesses and they are, in turn, creating
thousands of new jobs. Nationally, we are already the epicenter of technology and
disruptive innovation in the Midwest, the heart of what Steve Case calls the
“rise of the rest”, and we’re not stopping any time soon. It’s great to be the
biggest mega-incubator and start-up factory in the world, but our goal has
always been to continue to be the best. We expect to be sharing good news and
even more progress in this regard with you shortly as this year’s UBI Index incubator-ranking
awards are announced next month in Toronto.
In addition, we are
continuing our campaign to make sure that Chicago becomes THE jumping off place
for international businesses that want to launch in the United States. We now
work closely with our own partners in London, Mexico City, Toronto, Tel Aviv,
Turkey, Brazil and Columbia and globally thru the Google for Entrepreneurs Network
as well. Paris is coming soon.
The proceeds from this
dinner help to support the CEC and particularly all of 1871’s activities in
more areas than I have time to enumerate. But I do want to take time to mention
our continued excitement around our veterans’ initiative (now called The Bunker
Labs); the launch of the first WiSTEM cohort with 13 amazing women-owned and operated
businesses and some amazing initial programming; and the multiple fronts on
which we are working to expand and diversify the population at 1871 and
everything we are doing to grow our programs to serve more and more underserved
sectors of the community.
In addition, a great
deal of our success comes from our close connections to our University partners
and especially to the graduate programs at Kellogg and Booth. When you hear great news about GrubHub or
Braintree, it’s important to remember that - just as Cleversafe got some of its
earliest money from CEC and Chris and his poker buddies helped fund CEC – these
businesses grew out of the Booth New Venture Challenge (which is celebrating
its 20th year anniversary this year) and that the NU Venture
Challenge has also given us a number of exciting new ventures as well.
Not surprisingly, all
of this excitement and growth has created increased demands for space and
resources at 1871 and I’m pleased to officially announce tonight that 1871 will
be expanding again.
SLIDES
Just to review -
1871 1.0 opened in May 2012
(Slide 2)
1871 2.0 opened in October
2014 (Slide 3)
1871 3.0 will open
directly above the 1.0 space next January (Slide 4)
1871 3.0 will have
alumni offices, new tenants, classrooms, labs, etc. (Slide 5)
It will be connected by
a new staircase, which will be sponsored and funded by JLL, which has been at
our side since 1871 begin and continues to support us in many important ways. (Slide
6)
It is already fully
leased with these tenants, members, sponsors, universities, incubators, labs
and partners as well. (Slide 7)
So in total we will
have almost 120,000 square feet of space (Slide 8)
It will be an
extraordinary and special space and we are very grateful for the continued extraordinary
work and help we receive from our partners in construction and design at Skender
and Gensler. (Slide 9 – new renderings)
We are very proud to
note that the expansion will be funded exclusively by 1871 (with the help of
The Merchandise Mart and Silicon Valley Bank) and with no financial support
from either the City or the State.
Finally, as I approach
the end of my second year as CEO of CEC and 1871, I just want to thank my team
and all of our Board members as well as all of you for your help, support,
guidance and enthusiasm. No one does anything today all by themselves and 1871
is as good an example as any place in the world of an activated, passionate and
committed community in action. You should all be very proud of what we’ve built
together.
