From: Wayne E Baisley (baisley@alumni.rice.edu)
Date: Sat Feb 19 2000 - 18:29:21 PST
> Your first name of Kaishi has made you a friendly, approachable, and generous
> person. Generally you are good-natured, though at times you can be blunt and
> sarcastic. As you are naturally talkative, you find it easy to meet and make
> friends with many people. This name inclines you to be sympathetic and
> generous to those in difficult or unfortunate circumstances. It helps that
> you've got an enormous pile of money to invest.
I was watching the local CBS news (WBBM, cbs2chicago.com) earlier this
week, and they were doing an update on the B2B incubator effort by Flip
Filipowski of divine interVentures http://www.divineinterventures.com/
. This interests me for a number of reasons. It's an arguably good
idea, it's lotsa money, and di is in Lisle, the border of which is about
300 yards from my house. Their new incubator facility is on the north
side of Chicago, on Goose Island in fact, which is where I had dinner
with Rohit (and 20 of his closest IETF friends, including Adam and Roy;
am I forgetting anyone else?) the only time I've ever been in his
presence. So, besides enormous potential bandwidth from the Chicago
NAC, the incubator will have decent beer.
It's no secret that Chicago and the Midwest have been the backwaters of
VC and ecommerce, and di is looking to change that. Flip argues that
Chicago is a natural for B2B, because this is where the B is. The
manufacturing domain experts live here. I hope he's right, but there
are plenty of doubters. In fact, we all know one.
Right in the middle of the news show, CBS had a few comments from Keith
Dawson, who sounded pretty skeptical. Flip's answer was Check back a
year from now.
We'll see.
Cheers,
Wayne
http://www.suntimes.com/output/business/flip04.html
Venture capital firm in first investments
November 4, 1999
BY HOWARD WOLINSKY BUSINESS REPORTER
The new venture capital company divine interVentures Inc. Wednesday
announced
its first $50 million in investments in Internet companies, primarily in
the Chicago area, and also said it expects to boost its investment kitty
to as much as $4 billion.
Andrew J. "Flip" Filipowski, chief executive of divine interVentures,
said, "We're on a roll. We've established a firm beachhead for
business-to-business Internet companies in Chicago."
He told the Chicago Sun-Times that divine already has raised $400
million. "That
was the single largest first round of financing on the Internet space to
date, and it happened in Chicago," said Filipowski, who sold his old
company, Platinum
Technology Inc., last summer for more than $3.5 billion, a record sale
of a software company.
Divine has earmarked $50 million for nine companies. It expects to
distribute the remaining $350 million by the end of the year to other
"mid- to late-stage"
companies.
The goal was to raise about $1 billion, with about $600 million coming
from a public stock offering. But Filipowski said, "Our original number
was too conservative. I now expect that we will raise several billion,
probably $3 billion to $4 billion over the next five years."
David Weinstein, Mayor Daley's assistant for technology development,
said, "divine has raised the bar significantly with such an infusion of
capital for technology companies. We now have a true tool to attract
companies from around the nation and the world to Chicago."
Of the first nine companies divine is funding, two are moving their
headquarters to the Chicago area. Also, the founder of a high-profile
Silicon Valley market research company has signed on with divine to
establish a market research firm in the city.
Two of the companies have elected to remain here, despite strong
prospects for
funding if they moved to California's Silicon Valley.
Two of the companies are situated in other parts of the country.
Weinstein said that even that situation is healthy.
Stephen Auditore, founder of SHo Research, a divine-funded company,
said, "divine offers an excellent scenario because it is filling in a
lot of the infrastructure holes for the technology community in
Chicago."
Auditore moved to Chicago 15 months ago after selling Zona Research, a
Silicon
Valley market research company that pioneered analysis of the Internet.
He said he came here in part because Illinois is a "tax haven," with the
personal income tax lower here than in California. He sold his company
for $7 million.
In addition to capital, divine offers start-ups access to office space,
Web design, marketing Web hosting, legal services and public relations
services. Divine now has offices in Lisle, but plans to open a "habitat"
for start-ups on Goose Island next year.
Filipowski said the divine-supported companies are linked with a
"zaibatsu" concept, following a Japanese business model in which
companies in the same "family" help each other succeed. He said the
companies are not required to deal with each other or to locate in the
divine habitat.
September 21, 1999
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