Startup investment is crucial to the innovation ecosystem, often bridging the funding gap and allowing promising ideas to reach the market. The February 2014 issue of the Index compared Chicago’s venture capital funding with other leading U.S. metropolitan regions by total investment, concentration of funding by industry, and funding sources. This issue uses a broader set of data1 from CB Insights Venture Capital Database to highlight startup investment trends—most notably, that financing and deals in Illinois and Chicago increased throughout each quarter of 2014. The data also reveals an increasing share of total startup investment being directed at early-stage startups, indicating an ecosystem better suited to support high-risk activities such as technology development and company formation.
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