The Bright, Sustainable Future of Chicago’s Technology Ecosystem (read more) In this final installment of our Chicago series, we explore the sustainability and growth potential of the startup ecosystem in the windy city. 
From the Investors Jerrod Engelberg, Pedro Sorrentino, and Kevin Lee of FundersClub discuss the dangers of super pro-rata rounds in “Transparent VC, Episode 1” (podcast) Sammy Abdullah of Blossom Street Ventures makes an argument why ACV is nothing but a vanity metric in "Stop Obsessing Over Average Contract Value: The ACV Needed for Exit is Only $14k" West Stringfellow of Target Corporation walks through some lessons about building an accelerator that is attached to a company of scale such as Target in How to Build a Startup Accelerator at a Large Company: Lessons from Target Ross Baird and Victoria Fram of Village Capital explain three lessons they learned from peer selection that can help investors be more successful in "Why Entrepreneurs Are Better Judges of New Ideas than Expert Investors." From the Operators Benjamin Benichou of Unrated recommends that before you start to fundraise, understand why are you trying to raise money in “How to Raise Money When You’re Not From the ‘Startup World’?” Benji Hyam of Grow & Convert describes what “mirage content” is and his method for avoiding it with a careful freelancer onboarding process in “‘Mirage Content’ Is The Reason Your Company Blog Isn’t Generating Leads” Jessica Dubin of Magoosh outlines seven ways to harness the power of threes to create great products in “The Rule of Threes at a Startup” Erik Luhrs of Subconscious Lead Generation talks about how good positioning provides the foundation for successful sales (and how bad positioning can ruin your sales efforts) in “Sales for Nerds, Ep. 8” (podcast) | 
