HAT OPENING REMARKS FROM 1871 3.0 GRAND OPENING
Welcome to 1871 3.0 and thank you for joining us so early
this morning for our Grand Opening.
We’re excited to take this next step forward and also to take
a moment to reflect on our progress over the last couple of years as we’ve
grown our operations by more than 300% to serve almost 500 startups as well as
providing more than 1000 events and workshops a year for Chicago’s larger tech
and entrepreneurial community.
We now support a small city here of almost 2000 people a day
in an amazing and creative space that has more than doubled in size and which
is already fully occupied by eager entrepreneurs inventing, building and
improving our collective future. We are also training over 1000 people a year
in coding, entrepreneurship, design, cybersecurity and 3D
prototyping/manufacturing.
1871 - since its inception - has created hundreds of
companies and over 4500 new jobs and put Chicago’s tech scene front and center
on the national and global scene. We’re ranked Number 1 in the U.S. and 4th
in the world and we don’t plan to stop growing any time soon since we don’t
believe in settling for anything less than the best.
I’m pleased to note that we’ve done this all while adding
less than a dozen people to our own 1871 team including 6 team members sourced
through Chicago’s own Skills for Chicagoland’s Future program. 1871 is a hub
for innovation, technology, community, diversity and inclusion with exciting
and expanding programs for women, veterans, and other underserved populations.
Our own focus on diversity is a model for tech companies and other businesses
across the country and another area where we will continue to build.
I’m especially proud that the new 3.0 expansion space
contains brand-new faces and organizations like the Illinois Hispanic Chamber
of Commerce and Collective Shift; member companies that have been here from Day
One and have grown dramatically since then like Learnmetrics and Options Away;
new business partners and supporters like Accenture, Pivotal and Windy City
Labs, venture funds including Chicago Ventures, MATH, Hyde Park Angels, and
Impact Engine, and expanded school and university presences with DeVry
Education Group and Designation. We’re also very grateful to our many sponsors
like Bucksbaum Retail Properties, Comcast Business and Bluescape/Haworth for
helping us make the new space a reality.
As I always say, no one today does anything all by themselves
and we wouldn’t be here today without the unbelievable vision, dedication and
commitment as well as the hard work of too many people to name individually,
but I do want to take a few moments for some special thank yous.
We want to thank our founder JB Pritzker as always for his
vision, support, continued commitment and guidance. JB was an early and vocal
supporter of this new expansion (when there were plenty of doubters) and
important to its approval and success.
I want to thank Mayor Emanuel for joining us today and for
his continued support, encouragement and promotion of 1871 and for his help in
making sure we were able to secure this space. I also want to acknowledge the
help over the years which we have received from the state and especially the
people at DCEO and IFA. Finally, the team from Silicon Valley Bank helped us
creatively finance this new space and we are grateful for their expertise and
partnership.
I want to thank Barbara Pollack, our owner’s representative,
for helping design and create this space and for her hard work in managing and
directing the teams of professionals from Gensler, Skender, Steelcase and
Forward Space who brought this project in on budget and in record time.
And speaking of teams, I want to especially thank all of our
entire 1871 team members who have pitched in in a million different ways to
make this new space a unique environment and another milestone in 1871’s growth
which we can all be very proud of.
And finally I want to thank my wife Judy for her support and
for her patience in suffering through years of 18 hour days and months of phone
calls at all hours of the night – all of which are part of what it takes to get
great and important things done.
#1871 3.0 Ribbon Cutting Congrats @1871Chicago @tullman @JBPritzker @RahmEmanuel You make #Chicago better pic.twitter.com/Pg8nKhWe8j— Jack Keenan (@jackkeenaniv) April 19, 2016
