A response to Joe Cahill’s column “The Fortune 500 vs. Generation Y,” Crain’s Chicago Business

By Mike Huffstetler, CEC VP of Business Development

Joe Cahill’s May 8th column, “The Fortune 500 vs. Generation Y,” sheds a needed spotlight on the gap between corporations and startups in Chicago. From my view at 1871, young entrepreneurs want to make an impact now, and they want to do it in their jeans and t-shirts. Every day, our 50,000 square feet of shared workspace fills up with young, hungry visionaries who are determined and keenly focused on building the next wave of great companies.

To be clear, these folks aren’t starting companies because they couldn’t find jobs in corporate America.  On the contrary, many of them had roles as prized analysts at big banks, worked for leading companies across industries or held other jobs that most college seniors would jump at the chance to have. So what happened? Quite simply, they got fed up with the waiting game Cahill so accurately pointed out in his article. Their response: use their talents to build something impactful on their own and on their own terms.

At 1871, we’ve seen more than 225 startups taking advantage of this opportunity. Around the city you can see it too. Companies like Braintree, BrightTag, TrunkClub, Centro, GrubHub and others are examples of young companies, run by young people, wearing jeans to work and growing exponentially.

But Chicago’s established corporations are still driving the lion’s share of the economy, and at 1871, one of our key strategic initiatives in our second year is to bridge the gap between startups and these established enterprises.

While there are obvious benefits for startups to connect with their corporate counterparts, we see a unique opportunity for the industry-diverse pillar companies of Chicago like Walgreens, United Airlines and McDonald’s, to use innovative technologies – cultivated by this new crop of entrepreneurs – to impact their businesses in powerful ways.

Just this week, 1871 partnered with JPMorgan Chase on a pitch day where decision-makers from various business sectors of the bank were given the opportunity to hear pitches from 1871 startups Better Weekday, Rivs, Risk I/O, and MarkITx. This is just the most recent example of what we’ve been doing to bridge the corporate gap and we’re excited by the response we’re seeing.

We continue to look at other ways to create similar, mutually beneficial opportunities for 1871 companies to get in front of Chicago’s 32 Fortune 500s and other leading corporations. These meaningful partnerships can lead to decades of thriving business success, leadership and innovation in Chicago. We know this kind of success will only be achieved through collaboration. Now is the time. The sky is the limit. And Chicago is the place for it to happen.