Chicago

“The other company that's really interesting in this space is a company called fabric. So you can see they do 75 plus gatherings per month, month. They're in New York and Chicago. They've got 500 members.”

“That's live in Chicago, Austin, San Francisco. We're going live in New York and LA. We got other smaller markets percolating like Columbus and Milwaukee and Atlanta.”

“We've never had a hundred billion dollar enterprise value tech company built here in Chicago.”

“90% of the alpha for Chicago-based venture firms is created on the coasts, right? And 90% of the capital that the leading Chicago companies raise is from the coasts.”

“I did 15 pitches in Chicago, because I wanted to raise our Series A from a Chicago venture fund. I got 15 no's. I did one pitch on the West Coast with Kirsten Green from Forerunner, and we got a term sheet within 48 hours.”

“You gotta build a hundred billion dollar, or at least a fifty billion dollar company, To create that ecosystem of angels, and to create a training ground for the entrepreneurs of, you know, the next decade in Chicago.”

“However much, I have tremendous respect for everything that's come out of that place. It does have a tendency to produce Uniform thinking around a whole host of big topics, and 37 Signals was born in Chicago at a time where that had zero tech community of note…”

“There's probably no better place in the United States to recruit consumer talent.”

“When you go downtown and you see concrete high rise construction on apartments, very, very difficult to do today in any sub market, New York, Chicago, even Nashville”

“I think if you had to ask me, I think this is a legacy asset, at least for me and my family, that's how in the category that it goes in. To invest in Chicago where a lot of people are turning their back on Chicago. It felt right to be part of a family organiza…”

“So I have a workforce housing fund, right? It is not, It's a unique unicorn. It's a market rate, affordable fund that it caters to baristas, teachers. It follows the same algorithm as the mid-rise and the high-rise, and basically I was able to start it in Chic…”

“Well, the government, the current governor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, 90% of his election funds came from the unions.”

“Ultimately we had advantages there. Drew is from Chicago, I am as well. We had some relationships with real estate owners Drew specifically did that would help us get some early wins, but this was a hard business. And as we thought about who to hire, who we co…”

“Once we were in 12, 25 Old Town, the snowball started to form, and we ended up adding eight new locations a month. And then ultimately, Guy, we grew to 250 locations in Chicago over the course of, call it, three years.”

“And we looked at our revenue and it had only gone down by two percent.”

“Our cost for a driver was 60% higher than Chicago.”

“But I think the year was 2016, and I believe there were 55 new buildings coming up in Chicago. And guy, I think we were in 53 of the 55.”

“And then also that we would be the anchor tenant Of a new five hundred million dollar quantum computing campus that's being built in Chicago.”

“One of the issues with Silicon Valley, one of the benefits of being in Chicago is we isolate ourselves a bit from the herd mentality. And it's like, sometimes it's like sheep. They just jump one on after another and they buy more stock and things that you see …”

“Las Vegas Was interesting, first, because, ah, it had the highest murder solve rate in the country, with 94% of murders get cleared in Las Vegas, and if you compare that, like, San Francisco's like 70, 75%, ah, Chicago's in the thirties.”

“On the on the quant team stole code for, they call them alphas, basically code that no matter who runs it, they're gonna generate return. Stole a bunch of stuff on like a hard drive. Citadel finds out, realizes that they're stealing the IP, the code. The guy f…”

“Yeah, I mean, it was about 5000 dollars worth of parking tickets.”

“The number one key thing for why we beat them, all of the folks in Chicago. Is we were only in Chicago. Everyone else was distracted with all these other cities. Even the companies based in Chicago, they were focused outside of Chicago.”

“So we have an intern this summer who's launching DC for us. That's coming in August. In September, we're launching Chicago and Boston.”

“And where we are today is we have a 190 people at the firm. In three offices, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, we manage money exclusively for wealthy families. There are about a 180 families where we're overseeing their wealth, and that's thirty two bill…”

“So what I'm prioritizing is what a lot of other funds avoid, which is I'm going after first time founders. Primarily I'm going after second tier cities. And by second tier city, I mean like Atlanta, DC, Baltimore, Richmond, Minneapolis, Detroit, Chicago. I'm n…”

“Going into San Francisco, like crazy streets, tons of pedestrians, like shoddy streets, like all sorts of weather, fog, and also people that will vandalize you. So if they can solve that, it's going to be a breeze to go to Chicago or LA.”

“The first system that we built was for a minimally invasive heart procedure. The electrophysiologist was in Chicago. Our system was in Seattle, and we did a heart procedure on a pig, and we did it successfully.”

“The Proliferation of clones was undermining the foundation of the business model. The business model was based on scarcity. It was based on the novelty of one of these things existing per day in a city, and when you have 50 different Groupons in Chicago, all o…”

“When you go to other cities, like Chicago as an example, 30% of their homicides are resolved.”

“It was doing about three million. I bought it at a six million pre, you know, pre-money value.”

“Had a hundred buildings in Chicago, and all the other competitors had raised 20 to eighty million dollars, and they were all based in Chicago, too, but he had the number one market share, and I'm like, how, how is that possible that in their backyard, you're k…”

“So a Palestinian kid in Chicago was killed by his landlord. It was horrible. And fortunately, the Jewish community in Chicago showed a lot of solidarity to the Muslim community and condemned the murder.”

“And San Francisco's is only at like 27% versus what it was in 2019. I mean, everyone is down across the board, but the next lowest is Chicago at like 45%. And even New York, which ranks the highest, is only at like 65 Percent versus the norm of 2019.”

“And both we've, we have a massive office in Chicago right now. This is where our sales center is. So we have well over 200 people just there.”

“Groupon was smart to stay in Chicago because it's a sales-driven business, and sales is not Silicon Valley's strong suit.”

“80% of the property taxes in Chicago are now going just to pay for pensions.”

“We don't focus on big towns like Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, all these other areas. We focus on mom, pa shops in rural America.”

“If you look at like on a metro basis, all of our existing metros are producing, you know, cash flow. So you have your call calling your cash cows, right? Philadelphia, Chicago's Boston's, Miami's all of our Texas markets of the world that are producing cash fl…”

“Ken Griffin had decided that he didn't want people who were important in the business partners running bits of his business all over the world. He wanted everybody who was senior to be in Chicago.”

“Englewood had a death rate that was 10 times higher than Auburn-Gresham, even though it's separated by just a street”

“I just started selling the stuff that I already had in my collection, kind of like whittling it down and what can I get rid of and what's worth a lot. And through doing that, I made, I don't know, Probably five grand, but I moved to Chicago with that much mone…”

“It was a study done in Chicago with a restaurant owner named Gordon Sinclair. It's a famous restaurant called Gordon's there in Chicago. And he's since retired, but while he was operating, he had a problem. No shows. People who would call, they make a reservat…”

“They've been remote from day one. They own, they pay against Chicago market salaries. So they don't pay San Francisco salaries.”

“We start with three cities. Those are going to be New York, Chicago, and Boston. Before the end of the year, we'll be operational in all three, and then we'll take it from there.”

“We partner with groups in Atlanta and Chicago. That give books to incarcerated people and also give books for free to students.”

“So after that first Summer, I had almost every major retail florist in the city of Chicago.”

“In this case of selling the business to Ecovair, actually the greatest example of that is we were able to build what's probably the most sustainable manufacturing facility in the whole world in the inner city of Chicago immediately after we sold the business.”

“Part of the problem is, is that the people with money in Silicon Valley typically made it doing early stage startups, you know, and they, so they understand it. Versus people in places like, you know, Vancouver, or Chicago, or, you know, DC, made their money e…”

“I just traded in the day, and then I would go home at night, and I was working on my own web browser.”

“We got 11 on the team right now.”

“And then February of 63, I remember, was probably one of the snowiest months in Chicago's history, and we had one day where we did eight dollars, and the whole month was only 2000 dollars.”

“There was only three black furriers in the country. There was one called the, he was the most popular, the black furrier in New York, and there was two in Chicago”

“Flight test in the sixties around Chicago and around Oklahoma City, people were calling saying, you know, you broke my glass, you cracked my sheetrock, so they could get paid for the damage to their houses and things.”

“So I would say speed has already been exploited. And now it goes back to, I think, security, fairness, and resiliency are going to be balanced out, so we probably won't end up with massive data centers in New Jersey and Chicago.”

“I even think about a city like Chicago. Chicago has so much going for it, but you, when you really scratch the surface a little bit At least for internet-based businesses, there isn't much there that's lasting, that's created significant employment or other th…”

“Right now we are about to breach the 100 staff number mark. We've got about 56 people here in our Chicago office. And we've got about 45 in our Chengdu office.”

“And in this case of selling the business to Ecovair, actually the greatest example of that is we were able to build What's probably the most sustainable manufacturing facility in the whole world in the inner city of Chicago immediately after we sold the busine…”

“The only difference that I would make is that I wouldn't do it in Chicago. I wouldn't fund it in Chicago. It's the most conservative bed of investors in the country. These guys are bankers, you know, you go in with that.”

“There's 30 of us here in Chicago, so.”