Drive Capital LLC has hired general managers in four North American cities, including Chicago, to grow its portfolio in middle America — an area the company calls "the driveway."
With $2.2 billion in assets under management, the venture capital firm announced Wednesday that it has set aside $80 million in a seed program for hands-on investment of up to $500,000 at a time in 160 startups, with an emphasis on "overlooked" founders.
Based in Columbus, Drive Capital has opened a physical office in Chicago and hired remote general managers for startup ecosystems in Chicago, Columbus, Atlanta, Denver and Toronto.
The company wants to find market-defining startups located in "the driveway," what it considers to be an underinvested region in North America between the Hudson River and Rocky Mountains. The program already includes about 10 startups.
"The (general manager's) role is to be completely intertwined in that startup community and be the face entrepreneurs think of when they have an idea," Drive co-founder and Partner Chris Olsen told Columbus Inno. "There’s a difference in strategy at this stage of investing."
Landon Campbell was named general manager in Chicago.
He told Chicago Inno that the firm has been making investments in Chicago since it first launched, including recent investments in Chicago-startups Coherence Finance Inc., JupiterDX and Rivet.
"I wouldn't be spending my career in Chicago if it wasn't for a good reason. We have amazing talent here. We have amazing industries here. We just haven't gotten the respect we deserve," he said.
Drive Capital will invest in Chicago startups from pre-seed to IPO.
"A lot of the emphasis is on unicorns right now, which is great — we have amazing unicorns in Chicago — but I want decacorns here, and in order to do that we have to get in earlier and give founders a reason to want to stay here," he said.
Campbell plans to focus specifically on startups that are tackling solutions for health care, AI transformation, creator tech and future of work, but he thinks the "sky is the limit" for the type of company that can come out of Chicago.
"I used to work at Cameo, a company so many people said had to be built in the Bay Area or L.A..," he said.
His advice to any startup founder is that if you're building a great business and driving value in the market, then investment will come. Still, he wants to see more startup founders "think bigger" and to be intentional with their storytelling abilities.
"How do they articulate the market size? I don't just want to hear a number, I want to hear how it's going to grow over time," he said.
