How Big Is Chicago's Startup Scene? About SOMA-Sized, Actually

How Big Is Chicago's Startup Scene? About SOMA-Sized, Actually(theatlantic.com)

15 points by garbowza 13 years ago | 17 comments

spuiszis 13 years ago |

Long time reader and first time poster. As a Chicagoan and a huge fan of S.F., this pissed me off because of the pure lack of journalistic integrity (and logic for that matter) when putting this article together. The Chicago startup scene pales in comparison to San Francisco, everyone knows that. There is no need to go through some ridiculous and poorly executed comparison to prove it. My comment to his post on the Atlantic (edited for grammar):

That is hardly representative of both Chicago and San Francisco's startup scene. I am not sure which is more shocking to me, the fact that you are posting this on the Atlantic (an extremely well respected publication) or the fact that an editor approved this.

A. The San Francisco map doesn't even include Menlo Park, Mountain View, etc. The San Francisco startup scene is even larger than you depict. B. You don't list the San Francisco startups as you with the Chicago map. C. You just Googled the locations of a few well known Chicago startups and just plopped them on the map. Simply taking a few minutes to search you might have found 1871, a startup incubator located in Chicago's Merchandise Mart that is the home to several HUNDRED startups. http://www.1871.com/about/ D. The scale on the maps are not comparable. E. This is simply unintelligent and a perfect example of the poor journalism we see today.

In Short: Thank you for wasting five minutes of my life with your last minute-deadline submission that contributes zero value to society.

jrockway 13 years ago | |

Why so much anger?

spuiszis 13 years ago | | |

Not anger, frustration mixed in with a very long day.

sabat 13 years ago | |

I'm with you on this. It's bullshit to compare the two; for one thing, SF is not the Bay Area, and for another, Chicago doesn't pretend to be the startup capital of the world.

wtn 13 years ago |

Starting a company in either of those geographic areas (Loop/River North or SOMA) is like shoveling cash into an incinerator.

rayiner 13 years ago | |

Relative to where? The most expensive office space in the Loop (along Wacker Drive) runs just under $40/sq-ft/year. Palo Alto averages $55+ over the whole market (not just the choicest area). Mountain View is a more reasonable $32.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-09-08/business/ct-bi...

http://kiddermathews.com/downloads/research/office-market-re...

brandnewlow 13 years ago |

The best comparison I've seen was a graphic that showed how much VC capital had been invested in various U.S. markets into tech companies in 2009. I seem to remember SF/Bay was in the $10-12b range, NYC was second in the $4-5b range. Then Boston at $3-4b, and Chicago at $3b or so....with about 45% of that being one company, Groupon.

dougsharp 13 years ago | |

Just for laughs I'd like to see a comparison consisting of one measure: average time elapsed between entering a coffee shop and hearing the words "startup," "iterate," "pivot," or "code/coding/ruby/rails" :)

Evbn 13 years ago | | |

Like the Economists Big Mac index for purchasing power parity, the Latte Index for startups: how many startups are sitting in an average Starbucks.

lquist 13 years ago |

Hmm.. I don't know that geographic size tells us anything important. Am I missing something here?

zafriedman 13 years ago | |

I don't even think that was the point. I think the geographic comparison is more a novelty than anything, and I don't even think the author takes a viewpoint in writing his article. I clicked the link because I'm at an Excelerate Labs company now in Chicago, and I'm sure other Chicago Hacker News-ers will click on the link too, but I don't think there was really any point to the article. So un-succinctly put, I don't think you're missing anything.

jser 13 years ago | | |

Guilty -- saw Chicago in the headline, had to click.

sharps_xp 13 years ago | | |

Guilty -- truly wanted to know how Chicago measured up to SF even if it be geographically.

joelrunyon 13 years ago | |

Yup, a little bit disappointed they didn't go any deeper than a simple geographic comparison w/ a photoshop overlay.

swang 13 years ago |

Seems like the guy who wrote this "article" is in Chicago viewing startups there and ran out of ideas to write about.

Or as others have pointed out, people will click on links with their current city mentioned. I am sure it would have evoked the same reaction from people in LA if they overlaid Santa Monica/Venice Beach over SOMA.