Hey friends,

Thanks for subscribing to the Driver’s Seat: my newsletter featuring insights on the dynamic world of Chicago startups and venture capital, as well as exciting updates from our pre-seed companies.

In case we haven't met before, I'm Landon Campbell, and I’m bullish on Chicago. As Drive Capital's Chicago General Manager, I’m focused on finding and supporting the promising entrepreneurs of the future.

📍 Today’s Topics

1. Our $80M seed effort 💰

2. Chart of the week 📊

3. Ways you can support our founders 🤝 

4. My podcast with Fred Hoch from TechNexus 🎙

5. Events around the city 🗺

Have feedback? Just hit reply — I’d love to hear from you.

Let’s dive in!

💰 We’re Investing Early

I first want to express my gratitude for the supportive messages we received regarding our recent $80M Seed announcement.

We’re thrilled to be part of shaping the future of our ecosystem, and there are many exciting developments on the horizon!

Our Seed Program further supports our mission of investing in the overlooked outliers building world defining companies across North America. The program will allow us to support the next generation of early-stage founders from idea until IPO.

We’re investing $500K into ambitious founders with early ideas. I commonly say that we’re searching for ideas on napkins.

Visit our new Seed website for more info on our early-stage initiatives.

The photo below is of our new office in Chicago! Stay tuned for some gatherings in the near future.

📊 Chart of the Week

I found a cool insight on PitchBook.

In 2022, investors from New York City made 50% of their investments outside of New York. You’ll see similar data from Bay Area investors as well.

Since 2013, there has been a growth of almost 9% in the proportion of deals made outside of these markets by New York City investors.

This means that investors in NYC and the Bay Area are expanding their focuses beyond their local markets, possibly indicating a growing interest in diversification and seeking new investment opportunities in cities like Chicago.

TLDR: great companies can be built anywhere. But we already know this 😎

🤝 Asks from our Founders

We currently have three companies in the Drive Chicago seed program:

1. Coherence Finance 👾 allows users to invest in ideas, not tokens.

2. JupiterDX 🏥 gives people tailored insights on managing Long Covid.

3. Rivet 🎤 uses AI to help musicians and creators build a personalized fan engagement game plan.

The following asks are requests from our founders.

If you have any resources or insights, please reply to this email and inform me so that I can link you up with the founder(s).

Jupiter 🏥

• Looking for patients who have Long Covid or take care of someone with Long Covid. Along with clinicians that specialize in chronic illness management.

• Looking for anybody that specializes in wearables or telemetry data.

Rivet 🎤

• Searching for a Head of Digital Marketing. Here is the job description.

• Open to mentorship / advice on digital marketing and SEO.

🎙 My Exclusive Podcast with Fred Hoch from TechNexus

This week I spoke with Fred Hoch from TechNexus, which is a firm located in Chicago that focuses on constructing venture strategies for Fortune 500 companies.

Fred is a highly respected individual in our ecosystem. Throughout his career, he’s worked with thousands of tech companies to drive their growth through strategic insight partnered with a keen focus on execution.

During our conversation, he shared valuable insights on networking in your 20s, the early days of SaaS (which he was super involved in), and his aspirations for Chicago's future.

Fred and I also spoke about why we both chose to relocate from California to Chicago.

Listen to our podcast.

🗺 Events Around the City

Gen Z VCs Chicago Co-Working Day!

• Monday March 20th

• Hosted by Gen Z VCs and Workbox

• Sign up here

Chicago LatinX Tech Week Kickoff

• Monday March 20th

• Hosted by Latinx Tech Week and World Business Chicago

• Sign up here

People-First Engineering Fireside Chat

• Wednesday March 22nd

• Hosted by 1871

• Sign up here

The mHUB HardTech Summit with the Fourth Revolution Awards

• Thursday March 23rd

• Hosted by mHUB: the innovation center for all things hard-tech

• Sign up here

👋 See you next time!

Thanks for making it this far! 😎

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