Chicago s institutional money likes to invest in large cap stocks. Chicago missed some opportunities to put itself on the map, citing Chicago s albatross Netscape s escape from the University of Illinois to the West Coast. Pre-IPO roadshows rarely come here because Chicago investors rarely buy IPOs, he said. It s a lonely feeling he knows well. As the head of Citibank s venture fund, Middlemas was an investor and believer in AOL since its inception as Control Video Systems, and he was the leader in the firm s restructuring and eventual public offering.
People couldn t get comparables because there wasn t really a model.
People like models, and some don t exist. And while I dispute the proposition of divine interVentures, the notion of helping start-ups is a good one. Middlemas has been critical of divine, the Internet operating company, but he s a booster of what it s done for Chicago. It s difficult to understand the proposition to be an entrepreneur and be part of a holding company, it doesn t equate. This jump-started the Midwest.