IB to VC in Chicago -- Can This Be a Thing?
What is the VC landscape in Chicago? Is there any meaningful presence there? Also, anyone out there made the move from IB to VC in Chicago? If so, what was your recruiting experience like? Thanks!
Not a crazy amount of venture / growth in Chicago. Jump Capital is a decent growth shop, the Pritzkers do a reasonable amount of later-stage stuff, Lightbank shows up in a ton of early deals. But nobody is confusing the metro for SF/NYC/Boston.
In general -- and I have no reason to expect this is different for Chicago v. other metros -- VC recruiting is extremely random and unstructured. Larger growth shops like a TA will look more PE-like (dedicated class every year that they fill with headhunters) but downmarket it's a lot more "I happened to meet a partner at this firm a year ago." That's actually a feature, not a bug... >90% of job success in this industry is related to networking, so if you can't hustle and find your way into a firm, you probably won't be very good.
Got it, thanks for the insight.
And just checked out Jump Capital's web site -- shows that their office is right next to Cabrini Green in Chicago, which I always heard was one of the worst and most dangerous areas of the city. What's going on with that?
Cabrini Green used to be super ghetto. But it has largely been gentrified over the years.
Second this. Just made the jump from IB to VC (in NYC though). It is all about networking your tail off as there are very few structured hiring processes. My strategy: I found a few companies in the industry I liked, wrote up some investment theses on them, and sent them over to a couple people at each firm with an intro email. 90% of people I contacted reached back out to me and I received a first round interview with about 75% of them. Best of luck!
Awesome, congrats. How do you like the change so far?
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