If you’ve read our posts about the Club M25 Summits in the past, you know we (M25) do these 2-day summits twice a year with the goal of lifting our portfolio, feeding that community, and creating better connectivity in the Midwest ecosystem.
Blowing past 500 good meetings at Summit 3.5, we feel like we’re hitting our stride.
Some fun facts we’re pointing to…
142 VCs, from 30+ cities, across 18 different states (plus a shoutout to our visitor from Toronto!)
The summit has become an awesome melting pot of VCs, all with a shared interest in participating in the Midwest ecosystem. For us to not only have that spread of attendees, but to also have dozens of folks coming in from the coasts, we’re excited about what that says about our goal of creating better connectivity in the Midwest ecosystem.
572 double opt-in meetings
So, not only did people show up, but they took meetings. Productive meetings. As always, all of our meetings are facilitated between parties that have both “opted in” to meeting with each other, and between Thursday and Friday we had 420 founder to investor meetings and 152 investor to investor meetings. We did investor to investor meetings for the first time, and will look to keep it going forward as it was a big hit.
Over 100 new faces
Not only did we have a ton of returning attendees, but we had 86 investors and 23 founders attend this summit who hadn’t been to a previous one. We also had an awesome group of new speakers — including Jason Vandeboom, Scott Brinkman, and Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs. Additionally, we had some great M25 Founder-led content from Elate, PactSafe, Upsie, PrintWithMe and Pear Commerce!
Of course, after two long days of meetings, dinners, networking and learning — we made sure to have some fun too…
As I’ve mentioned in my previous summit posts (1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0) about M25’s approach to adding value to startups, we genuinely get excited about creating meaningful value-add for Club M25. The Club M25 Summits are just one way that M25 aims to do this. Whether you’re a founder looking to raise capital from us or considering another investor, it’s by far in your best interest to partner with someone who’s both excited about and has “referenceable work” of finding meaningful ways to add value to your vision.
A BIG thank you to all our sponsors!
About the Author
As a partner at M25, Mike Asem has participated in nearly 100 investments in early-stage companies across the Midwest. Outside of his responsibilities at M25, Mike is a Kauffman Fellow and a board member at BLCK VC, leading initiatives in the Midwest to connect, engage, empower, and advance Black venture investors. In his free time, Mike enjoys making wine, eating sushi, following Chicago sports, and traveling with his wife, Erikka.
Twitter: @DMikeAsem
About M25
M25 is one of the most active venture capital firms focused solely on early-stage tech investments in the Midwest. Since the firm’s inception in 2015, M25 has invested in over eighty early-stage tech startups in over 20 cities across 11 states in the Midwest. M25’s objective, analytical model and collaborative, forward-thinking approach creates a large portfolio spanning several industries across the entire region, allowing them to establish M25 as a key node in the Midwest startup ecosystem.
Twitter: @M25vc
