CHICAGO- When attorney Galen Mason helped the business incubator Catapult Chicago get started in the offices of his law firm Foley & Lardner LLP, he only anticipated helping high-tech entrepreneurs grow their companies. Although they've done that, after only one year Mason also calls the experience an education and “the defining moment of my legal career. We've learned what it's like to be outside general counsel for ten companies” just starting out and discovering what these businesses need to grow. “That was really unexpected.”

And the companies at Catapult have grown. They've taken advantage of the free legal services from Foley, business services like accounting from other partners in the effort and gotten ideas and connections from their fellow Catapult entrepreneurs. They have raised approximately $8 million from investors and Mason says he expects them to raise about $20 million this year. “They're attracting names that would turn heads on the Coast.” And Shiftgig, an online provider for the services industry, has grown so much it will soon “graduate” and move into its own offices. Other firms at Catapult include BidMed, BucketFeet, MentorMob and StyleSeek.

If high-tech business incubators like Catapult and the similar 1871 in the Merchandise Mart have more successes, they may finally help fulfill many years of talk that Chicago was just on the cusp of becoming a “Silicon Prairie” that would rival California. And that could transform its downtown real estate market as tech companies move in to hunt for the young employees they need and who increasingly desire an urban lifestyle.

Foley & Lardner and Catapult announced this week that the group would renew its lease for about 10,000-square-feet within the law firm's offices at 321 N. Clark St. But unlike last year, Mason says, the group has signed its own lease with the building owner, instead of just continuing to occupy space within the firm. “We're the anchor tenant in a large building and we put in a good word with the owner.” Foley & Lardner also helped bring in the other businesses that provide Catapult companies with professional services and they now directly subsidize Catapult. “Our thinking was, there were other folks like service providers who would want to meet the next big thing.”

Mason believes the original rise of Groupon, however currently troubled, proved that major tech businesses could grow in Chicago. But when he and fellow attorney Christopher Cain helped launch Catapult, it was not certain that the experiment would last long.

“We had to make a pitch and say 'we need to keep doing this,'” Mason says of their effort to get Catapult a new lease. They made the case by pointing out that in addition to gaining experience by advising Catapult firms, Foley & Lardner has raised its profile in the high-tech world and attracted business from many others. “We're generating fees.” Otherwise, “the firm would not have done this.”

Catapult typically houses ten companies that arrive with around three to five employees and some presence in their chosen market. By contrast, 1871 accepts entrepreneurs that sometimes arrive with little more than an idea. “We're more like graduate school and they're undergraduate,” Mason says. And companies only get accepted into Catapult if they get past a peer selection process run by the entrepreneurs themselves. “I don't know of anyone else doing anything like it in the country.”

Instant Insights /

Catapult Chicago Growing Up

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