With warmer weather approaching and the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic likely behind us, a group of Chicago tech leaders wants you to come out from behind the Zoom screen and meet the local startup community in real life.
ChiTechIRL, a new startup event and networking group, is aiming to bring the Chicago tech community together for a series of in-person events designed to connect the entire ecosystem — from founders and investors to early-career employees and more.
The group is led by four Chicago tech leaders: Abhinaya Konduru, an investor at Chicago VC firm M25; Claude Cimeus, the director of platform at P33; Eric Duboe, head of corporate development at Relativity; and Tony Coglianese, vice president at CBRE in Chicago.
ChiTechIRL soft-launched its event platform last year to gauge community interest and get people together, many for the first time since the onset of the pandemic. Now launching more formally, the group plans to host around a half-dozen events in 2022 for Chicago's tech community to eat, drink and make connections again in person.
"The whole purpose is to get everyone together," Coglianese said. "We’re all living on Zoom calls nonstop. It feels like no one actually has true connections anymore."
ChiTechIRL's first event is April 21. The group is expecting around 150 to 200 attendees.
A major focus of ChiTechIRL is inclusivity. It's not intended as a formal, stuffy tech event for only startup CEOs and investors, but rather an opportunity to bring anyone in the Chicago tech community together.
"We're trying to make one big event where everyone in the Chicago tech community is invited," said Konduru. "It's a place for people to not just learn about Chicago tech, but build meaningful relationships."
Along with building community, ChiTechIRL also aims to amplify the city's tech scene nationally.
"We have a very rich tech culture in Chicago," Cimeus said. "We’re building great companies, raising a lot of money, hiring a lot of people. And it's a growing ecosystem that we should be really proud of. But we don't do a really good job of hyping it up to other cities."
Chicago needs to do a better job of connecting its tech community to the broader city culture, Cimeus explained. In other cities, like San Francisco, star athletes such as Steph Curry and Draymond Green invest in startups and speak at tech events. In New York, Brooklyn Nets superstar Kevin Durant operates Thirty Five Ventures.
And in Austin, of course, tech and culture collide every year at SXSW.
"We haven’t done anything in integrating Chicago’s culture with our tech culture," Cimeus said. "How do we connect Chicago's very, very rich culture as a city to its tech culture and to get those two to work together?"
Eventually, Cimeus said he would like to see Chicago have an event like SXSW that elevates the city's tech community and is intertwined with Chicago's arts and culture scene. But for now, the focus is on bringing Chicago's startup community back together with networking events attendees will actually enjoy.
"We want to make this feel like something you look forward to, not something you have to do to improve your career," he said. "We’re focused on building relationships."
