Chicago Venture Capital Ecosystem

As someone who has spent time in the Chicago tech scene in the past but hasn’t had the ability to stay plugged in recently due to weekly business travel, I need some way to familiarize myself with the current state of the Venture-capitalized tech scene in Chicago. This is my attempt to understand who the players are in the Chicago VC ecosystem by breaking down the vitals for each firm. This is a living document that I will continue to update as I learn more about the Chicago VC Ecosystem.

Methodology:

1. Assemble list of Chicago VC firms. Lots of Googling and comparing different databases to see what I’d missed. Scrape as much info as possible on the firms, their portfolio companies, their partners and staff, their funds, their investment criteria and theses. Then, off the cuff, rank the field into one of four groups to prioritize and focus my further research. I’ll get around to all of them eventually, but I wanted to start with the ones that I already had a good vibe from, the ones with a name that already rang a bell in my head and a portfolio of companies that you read about on HN.
2. One by one, check in to each firm in detail. Their website, Crunchbase, the twitter accounts and blogs of their partners and staff, press releases, etc, Assess each firms’ web presence. If they are prominent investors in the web and technology space, their web presence should reflect that pretty readily. Are they prominent on BuiltinChicago? Are they a member of VentureUp? Is their website cool or outdated?
3. Do they invest in early- and growth-stage technology startups? Do they, or have they in the past, hired associates? If not, I’m not going to be a good fit there.

To access the Google Doc with my compiled research, click here.