<story><title>$1.6B in funding and $7B in exits: Chicago tech just had its best year ever</title><url>http://www.builtinchicago.org/2015/01/22/16b-funding-and-7b-exits-chicago-tech-just-had-its-best-year-ever</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>spamizbad</author><text>Eh, three things really grind me gears about the tech scene in Chicago.&lt;p&gt;1) Lots of mediocre entrepreneurs that seem to have the same story:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  - Little to no hard skills.
  - Probably got an MBA from a good B-school
  - Did a stint at a consulting firm and is going to outsmart
    the competition with all the wisdom they gained at 
    Accenture, McKinsey, BCG, Bain, or some big IL firm.
  - Does NOT have a technical co-founder but is being advised
    by some guy with a similar pedigree that attended a coding 
    bootcamp&amp;#x2F;wrote a crappy iOS app&amp;#x2F;got a CS degree... 
    but has written &amp;lt;10,000 lines of code in their life.
      - This person will interview you by giving you a fizz     
        buzz test followed by &amp;quot;lateral thinking&amp;quot; brain-teaser 
        questions). Very 90s.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
I know these people exist everywhere today but there&amp;#x27;s an unusually large number concentrated in Chicago. Must be something in the water?&lt;p&gt;2) Developer compensation is roughly 10% lower (when adjusted for CoL) than it should be. And in terms of equity compensation Chicago isn&amp;#x27;t even in the same league as SV today. Getting &amp;gt;0.25% as the initial engineering hire is extremely rare here - even at companies that lack a technical co-founder.&lt;p&gt;This causes younger talent to get sucked to the coasts.&lt;p&gt;3) Many of the startups do not actively cultivate a technology or engineering culture.  I think this largely stems from Point #1 - you really do need a tech co-founder to drive that side of the company.</text></comment>
<story><title>$1.6B in funding and $7B in exits: Chicago tech just had its best year ever</title><url>http://www.builtinchicago.org/2015/01/22/16b-funding-and-7b-exits-chicago-tech-just-had-its-best-year-ever</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>_random_</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s interesting what would be 80s&amp;#x2F;90s person assumption?&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;1.6B in funding! Oh boy, robots, life extension, hover cars!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Err, no. But you will be targeted with ads about food delivery and HR services much more precisely!&amp;quot;</text></comment>