How University of Michigan Alums Are Impacting the Chicago Tech Scene
Karis Hustad - Staff writer
4/11/16 @6:48pm in Education
Chicago is a Big Ten city, a fact confirmed when walking down Clark Street in Wrigleyville and Lincoln Park on a Saturday during college football or basketball season. In fact Chicago attracts the most Big Ten alumni out of any city around the country: over 240,000 alums live in the city, according to data collected by SB Nation.
Because Big Ten universities are bastions of Midwestern talent, much of this population is due to graduates looking for a major metropolitan area to kick off their life post-grad. But when it comes to tech and entrepreneurship, one out-of-state Big Ten school has had serious impact in Chicago: University of Michigan.
Eric Lefkofsky
The most prominent of UMichigan grads in Chicago includes the two founders of Groupon and venture capital firm Lightbank: Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell (who just founded predictive analytics unicorn Uptake). Other major Chicago founders include Andrew Friedman, founder of Skinny Pop; Jeff Silver, founder and CEO of Coyote Logistics; and Gregg Kaplan, founder of Redbox.
But below the top tier of entrepreneurs, Michigan alums are also making up the network and infrastructure of a growing tech scene.
According to LinkedIn, which provides a general picture of a given school, 986 alums list themselves as entrepreneurs, 951 are engineers, 1,122 are in research, 1,271 are in sales, and 701 are in IT. Last fall the Chicago alumni chapter hosted an event discussing entrepreneurship that featured Katie Constantine, vice president of consumer insights at Networked Insights; Ethan Linkner, cofounder at LearnCore; Jonathan Ozeran, vice president of product at Zest Health; and Michael Spadafore, vice president at Sandbox Industries.
“It’s people with all different backgrounds and interests who are coming together and making things happen,” said Ilana Black, incoming president of UMichigan’s Chicago alumni association. “There are some really great existing companies that people are coming here for, but on the flip side there is leadership in the startups and tech scene that come from Michigan.”
That’s not entirely surprising, given the background of the school: one out of every five graduates is an entrepreneur. Michigan is academically ranked the top Big 10 school, and the 22nd best university worldwide according tothe Academic Ranking of World Universities. It’s long been known for its top tier engineering program (ranked 6th nationwide) and business programs (ranked 4th nationwide), and a huge chunk of that talent makes it to Chicago every year: A 2013 study found that 26,400 UMichigan alumni live in Illinois and 88 percent of those people live in Chicago. It’s the second largest concentration of UMichigan alumni in a city, just behind Detroit.
On campus, there’s also a growing push toward entrepreneurship. Last year Sam Zell gave $60 million to the school to develop entrepreneurship programs. The school recently launched the Innovate Blue network, which encompasses the school’s 15 programs and centers in entrepreneurship and more than 30 entrepreneurial student organizations, and hold events such as the Michigan Business Challenge. “We want to expose students to a broad spectrum of ways to tackle big problems, and fill gaps and needs that exist,” said Rishi Moudgil, a managing director at Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
ONE OUT OF EVERY FIVE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN GRADUATES IS AN ENTREPRENEUR.
“Because Chicago has had a robust pipeline for a long time, we definitely find students who are creating opportunity skills and value here in Ann Arbor that have moved to Chicago and quickly plugged into networks there,” he added.
“Michigan for all of it’s national brand awareness, it’s really a Midwestern school,” said Glenn Eden, a Michigan alum and senior vice president at Weber Shandwickwho works with tech clients. “It’s only natural that talent that would come out of U of M would pick a Midwestern metropolis.”
Devin Johnson, a Michigan business alum and managing partner at Gilbert Avenue Ventures, speculated that the economic downturn in the mid-2000s, which disproportionately hit Detroit’s auto industries, may have pushed graduates out of Michigan and to Chicago, just four hours from Ann Arbor. But he said the recent boom in the tech scene, bolstered by 1871 and a perpetually growing network of startups, draws students to Chicago. And once they’re here, it’s easy to connect to other UMichigan grads doing interesting things. “Because the network is so big, it’s really hard not to be able to find someone in your alumni database,” he said.
That network is key: there’s a deep connection between UMichigan alums, often forged by the school’s prominent Greek system, school pride, and strong sports culture which can lead to networking over Saturday football games at bars such as Rockit Bar and Grill (president and partner Arturo Gomez went to UMichigan), the Diag, and Duffy’s.
“There’s a lot of elbow rubbing and networking that happens,” added Eden. “Michigan alumni, we’re not afraid to come together and talk about how we can help each other. There’s always an eye [out] or an ear to the ground.”
Here are some of the University of Michigan entrepreneurs, investors, and founders making moves in Chicago.
Brad Keywell, cofounder and CEO at Uptake, cofounder of Groupon, cofounder of Lightbank (among others)
Eric Lefkofsky, cofounder and chairman of Groupon, cofounder of Lightbank
Gregg Kaplan, founder and former CEO of Redbox, operating partner at the Pritzker Group
David Kalt, CEO of Reverb
Julie Novack, CEO and founder of PartySlate
Vishal Shah, CEO and cofounder of LearnCore, cofounder of Catapult Chicago
Ethan Linkner, cofounder at LearnCore
Katie Constantine, vice president of consumer insights at Networked Insights
Michael Krasman, cofounder and CEO of UrbanBound
Todd Heyden, cofounder of SportsLock
Andrew Friedman, founder of Amplified Snack Brands, including SkinnyPop and Paqui Tortilla Chips
Peter Saravis, cofounder of Evive Health
Lindsay Spolan Pinchuk, founder and CEO of Bump Club and Beyond
Jon Michelon, cofounder and president of LoadDelivered
Dean Malmgren, cofounder of Datascope Analytics
Patrick O’Shaughnessey, founder and chief development officer of Patched Reality
Shelley Rosen, CEO and founder of LuxeBloom
Ryan Powers, cofounder of Markit Medical
Justin Delay, director of digital at Reverb and cofounder of TempoIQ
Mike Yagley, cofounder and CTO of TempoIQ
Phil Devries, founder and CEO of Thera Integrative Healthcare
Stephen Corby, founder and CEO at Specless
Aaron Cooper, senior vice president at Groupon