🧠 The Chicago AI Agent Strategy

AND Register for Chicago Tech Events

Author

Landon Campbell
June 10, 2024

62nd Edition

📍 This Week’s Lineup:

🧠 The Chicago AI Agent Strategy

📆 Events Around the City

🔙 Previous Editions of the Driver’s Seat

Highlights from Last Week:

We had the pleasure of hosting Techstars Columbus to our office this week for a founder and investor meetup. 👇🏽

I spoke on a panel for IrishAngels, where we discussed the early-stage investing market in Chicago and the areas we're focusing on at Drive. 👇🏽

🧠 The Chicago AI Agent Strategy

Before ChatGPT, majority of software has always been intended for a human user. This is starting to change.

We’re beginning to see a future where software can complete tasks on its own, or even collaborate with other software “agents” to achieve different objectives.

Not only does this have the potential to supercharge how we work today, but it will also allow us to automate mundane tasks that don’t require our time.

I wanted to share some thoughts on how early founders should approach AI agents:

What are AI Agents

  • AI Agents are autonomous software programs designed to perform tasks on behalf of users or other software.

  • Unlike traditional software, agents can make decisions and perform actions without constant human supervision.

  • These agents continuously learn and adapt from interactions, improving their efficiency over time.

Chicago’s Advantage

Chicago's unique economic and business landscape makes it an ideal hub for the rise of AI agents.

With no single industry comprising more than 13% of the economy, Chicago has many potential use-cases for AI agents across various sectors like finance, healthcare, music, and logistics.

You can practically throw a dart at a map of AI agent use-cases and have direct access to customers right in our backyard.

This level of opportunity and accessibility is unmatched to most other ecosystems.

Advice to Founders

The best place to start is by getting out into the city to discover enterprise problems that could and should be automated. Find repetitive tasks that consume too much of a knowledge worker’s time or create bottlenecks in the workplace.

When considering agents, it’s important to address a critical pain point, but even more crucial to start with a specific use case by focusing on a narrow problem.

🗺️ Events Around The City

VC Day - Chicago

Chicago Climate Happy Hour

  • Hosted by Out In Climate

  • Monday

  • RSVP

ChiTechIRL

Inflect Capital's Happy Hour

Chicago Open Source Data Infrastructure Meetup - June 2024

  • Hosted by Chicago OS

  • Tuesday

  • RSVP

mHUB Industry Disruptors

🗞 Latest Editions:

#61 - Bedrock Materials Moves HQ from SV to Chicago

#60 - Water Innovation in Chicago

#59 - The Story of Tempus

👋 See you next week!

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