First posted on Built-In-Chicago 

I ran into a VC from NYC at a conference yesterday. He said he wanted to see why the Chicago VC market hardly registers on the map. While I wasn't sure what he was talking about yesterday, I went to WSJ VentureSource and found this map:

WSJ: VC Investments, 1st 6 months of 2011

Now I understand his point of view a bit more clearly, and this is really disappointing. Not that I would expect Chicago to be close to Silicon Valley, but this?

Area	Investment
San Francisco	$3.3b
San Jose	$2.2b
Boston	$1.9b
New York	$1.3b
Los Angeles	$900m
Washington DC	$582m
San Diego	$375m
Chicago	$296m

Really? Chicago has 5% as much innovation as that of Bay Area? 20% as much as that of Boston? 25% as much as that of New York? How can we close the gap?

AAB