When I started iExplore in 1999, Chicago was jokingly referred to as a “flyover city”, as the big venture funds in Boston or Silicon Valley would fly back and forth to each other looking at deals, ignoring Midwest startups altogether. And, even worse, they would insist that any startup that wanted their funds, would need to relocate their business to their city in order to close a financing (which many aspiring entrepreneurs did, having no other choice), in order to leverage their expertise and tap into their local ecosystem. But, that was a different time for Chicago, before it started to build a robust startup ecosystem of its own.
Read the rest of this post on Forbes, which I guest authored this week.
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