Mentor Day at Excelerate Labs
Company founders are the lifeblood of our economy. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times recently wrote a piece talking about the relationship between net new jobs and startups. "Here’s my fun fact for the day, provided courtesy of Robert Litan, who directs research at the Kauffman Foundation, which specializes in promoting innovation in America: 'Between 1980 and 2005, virtually all net new jobs created in the U.S. were created by firms that were 5 years old or less,' said Litan. 'That is about 40 million jobs. That means the established firms created no new net jobs during that period.'” Everyone has noticed that the startup community here in Chicago is growing. The online success of GroupOn has brought about some positive attention. This year we saw the launch of three new incubator type groups - Lightbank , Scalewell , and Excelerate Labs . Sam Yagan, founder of OK Cupid , launched Excelerate Labs using what he describes as a "mentorship model&quo