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midVentures25 is the first Chicago-based startup demo day & conference: 25 of the best investor-ready early-stage startups will pitch their products in an open-floor expo.

We have over 22,000 square feet of demo space, where you can meet each startup team at their table.

The top 5 startups will have a chance to pitch to an audience of entrepreneurs, VCs, angels, bloggers, media and Chicago’s tech community.  A panel of expert advisors will ask the tough questions — ultimately choosing one company to win over $15,000 in cash, prizes, and services from our partners.

Agenda

5:00pm – 6:00pm Registration / Open-Floor Expo

6:00pm – 7:30pm Welcome / Open-Floor Expo

7:30pm – 7:35pm Welcoming Remarks

7:35pm – 8:15pm Top 5 Startup Pitches (3 minutes each)

8:30pm – 9:00pm Judge’s Results / Awards

9:00pm – 10:00pm Networking

The focus of midVentures25 is to show the national technology and investment community that the Midwest has an abundance of early-stage innovators within the technology, consumer, and sustainability space. You can expect to engage thought leaders in education, art, media, business, science, and technology during the conference. Dress is Web Casual.

You can purchase a ticket on midventures25.eventbrite.com or you can pay $10 at the door. You can also come any time from 5pm until 10pm. You can park at the garage on Adams and Franklin.

Transaction Cost Economics defines the ‘firm’ or corporation as an entity whose purpose (aside from maximizing profits and increasing shareholder value) is to lower the cost of a transaction in an economic system. In other words, of the cost of a transaction were sufficiently low (a transaction being any exchange of capital, goods, services, knowledge, assets, property, etc between multiple people or groups) then individual workers (freelancers) would be able to conduct complex business with the same efficiency as a large corporation. That means it would take as much time and resources for 2 separate small businesses to enter into a contract to exchange capital for services, as it would a manager to assign work to his employee.

Yet it is obvious that corporations reduce the transaction costs of exchanges, management, and economic processes. Why else would every entrepreneur need a lawyer, yet every employee in a company uses the same company lawyer? But my interest in the transaction cost of entrepreneurship is not in reference to the transaction of management, delegation, or exchanges in products or services. Rather, my interest is in the transaction cost of Deal-Flow.

Someone should conduct research on the amount of time and resources spent by an entrepreneur preparing, planning for, seeking, negotiating, securing, and maintaining either investment, strategic partnerships, acquisition, or equity-based deal-making. Some startups ignore ‘deal-flow’ and focus on the basics such as organic sales. Yet some companies do nothing except push their own deal flow. Many startup lawyers tell me new tech ventures might spend 20% of their revenues on the legal and administrative costs whose purpose is little more than to secure more funding. In other words, the transaction cost of finding, negotiating, and securing either funding or equity-based deal flow is not efficient. Mostly because its a buyer’s market and the startups need to jump quite high to get noticed.

Therefore my interest is in reducing the transaction cost of entrepreneurial deal flow. In other words, both eliminate the guesswork or ‘information assymmetry’ from startups who do not know when or where to get funding or partners, as well as the ‘game theory’ information assymmetry of multiple investors or partners conducting multiple independent reviews and negotiations. Within a corporation the transaction cost of an acquisition is the salary to the analyst and then the VP in charge of presenting the acquisition to decision-makers. In Entrepreneurship, there is no well-defined process.

I have some ideas in mind.

Having witnessed several successful startups grow from concept to real-business, I can finally sit down and define what elements you need if you hope to succeed.

1. At least one of the founders must have a car, in case you need to pick up office supplies from Office Depot. However, multiple founders should help pay for parking when you meet at Starbucks.
2. There should be at least one girl in the group, whether she’s a founder, employee, or one of the founder’s girlfriends. The girl is a good litmus test for flagging extremely stupid ideas.
3. Draft roles, processes, timelines, plans, bylaws, org charts, or resource allocation charts at least once a year, but no one should look at those docs for the rest of the year. At least one team member should protest “whats the process for this” or “whats his role” to which someone might reference the fact that there is a document for that somewhere.
4. Whenever the founders go home from the office around 6pm or 7pm, they should go back to their computers and keep working until 1am, communicating frequently over gtalk ot Skype. In fact, more communication should happen over gtalk and Skype than by phone or in-person.
5. Own at least 2 dry erase boards and always run out of markers. Accidentally use a permanent marker at some point.
6. Have at least one founder who thinks he is a good designer, humor him a little, though everyone unanimously agrees he can’t design.
7. At any one point in time, at least one founder should be working at a coffee shop, even if you have an actual office.
8. Have 3 pitches for your startup. One pitch is for smart investors who understand your market and might actually invest. Another pitch is for people you meet at parties, explaining why you’re going to save or change the world. The third pitch is for your parents or non-techy degree’d friends explaining why you’re not wasting your life.
9. Have private corporate documents indescriminately mixed in with personal notes, like print-out maps to the airport or university alumni newsletters.
10. Have at least one founder who refuses to maintain a calendar, so that everyone else is forced to call him every few hours asking where he is or if he is coming into the office.