Try to keep up
As I read Groupon’s Biggest Deal Could Transform City’s Tech Start-Ups, I felt compelled to write up a few related thoughts.
The deal, tech executives say, could represent a game-changing moment for Chicago’s economy — a chance for the city to establish itself as a major tech hub that can grow talent and keep it here.
For anyone in technology in Chicago, this fact should already be established. This potential deal simply shines a media-induced spotlight briefly into our fine city and what we’ve been doing here for the last 5 years. In my little niche in Chicago — namely Obtiva — growing talent and keeping it here is one of my highest priorities. Back in our early days, Kevin and I questioned whether Chicago’s talent pool was big enough for us to grow sustainably. So, I kicked off Obtiva’s apprenticeship program as a supplementary growth strategy: we would recruit great people AND we would grow great people. At the same time, our friends at 8th Light were adopting a similar strategy.
Three years later, it’s time to recognize the results. Not only have Obtiva and 8th Light grown their collective “talent pool” to around 40 people, almost half of those people spend their days at Groupon, making huge contributions to its success and on new innovations alongside their own homegrown team of talented web innovators. What’s more, 6 of these Groupon contributors are former apprentices of 8th Light and Obtiva, people who took the opportunity to put themselves in the best position to learn, proved themselves, and are now spending their days in the trenches, sitting just a few yards away from wunderkind Andrew Mason.
This is just one of many examples where Chicago has already proven itself, at least to ourselves and our own entrepreneurs. This potential deal is a chance to send a message of what we’re capable of to the global tech and start-up communities. People may point out that Groupon’s efforts are also powered by the excellent people from Pivotal Labs (New York, San Francisco) and Groupon’s own talented west coast teams (Palo Alto, San Francisco), but let’s be clear that the vast majority of the technical work that went into the history-making growth of Groupon came from Chicagoans like Ken, Mike, Ivan, Shinji, Colin, Keith, Tyler, Matt, Matt, Steven, Ryan, and Anthony.
Chicago’s emerging online industry has been criticized for being splintered and lacking a deep pool of talent, the so-called tech geeks who are the backbone of innovation. City executives hope the Groupon deal will change that.
The only thing this potential deal might change is the criticism. This perception of us being splintered and shallow is woefully out-of-date. We are a deep and cohesive tech community already working on our next big success stories. Try to keep up.
