{"id":26078,"date":"2017-04-26T22:09:42","date_gmt":"2017-04-27T02:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/creator\/?p=26078"},"modified":"2020-02-26T14:28:52","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T19:28:52","slug":"young-innovators-victor-gutwein-m25-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/community-stories\/member-spotlight\/young-innovators-victor-gutwein-m25-group","title":{"rendered":"Young innovators: Victor Gutwein of M25 Group"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Gutwein was in middle school when he launched his first startup in his hometown in northwestern Indiana. \u201cI wanted to be able to earn money,\u201d he says, \u201cso I decided to put bubblegum machines all over town.\u201d Gutwein says it taught him a lot about running a business\u2014everything from generating more sales to managing his inventory. He even had a successful exit strategy: selling the business to his little brother when his family moved to West Lafayette.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By 2016, the recent graduate of the University of Chicago was making headlines as \u201cthe youngest head of a venture capital firm in town\u201d after raising $10 million for his company\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/m25group.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">M25 Group<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. This was on top of the $1 million he had raised the year before to test his idea that investors can mitigate their risk by putting smaller amounts of money into a larger pool of companies. It\u2019s a strategy that the 25-year-old Gutwein admits is a \u201cvery different model than the vast majority of venture capital firms out there.\u201d But his success in backing 21 different startups convinced investors that he was onto something big.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/Victor-Gutwien-M25-Group-1-800x571.jpg\" alt=\"WeWork Creator\" class=\"wp-image-34942\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>When people are talking about what startups are coming out of the Midwest, I want my company to have invested in every single one.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over the next three years, Gutwein and his team plan to invest $100,000 in 60 to 80 startups throughout the Midwest. (They have already closed on 14 of those deals.) Along the way they have caught the attention of more established firms that see the member of Chicago&#8217;s<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/buildings\/kinzie--chicago--IL\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">WeWork Kinzie<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> as an important partner. \u201cWe\u2019re always so warmly welcomed, because people realize there\u2019s such a lack of seed investors in the Midwest,\u201d says Gutwein. \u201cThe former Rust Belt is coming back, and we see a lot of opportunities here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Gutwein was in middle school when he launched his first startup in his hometown in northwestern Indiana. \u201cI wanted to be able to earn money,\u201d he says, \u201cso I decided to put bubblegum machines all over town.\u201d Gutwein says it taught him a lot about running a business\u2014everything from generating more sales to managing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":895,"featured_media":26080,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43903,43911],"tags":[513,39218,39221],"class_list":["post-26078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-stories","category-member-spotlight","tag-innovation","tag-small-businesses","tag-entrepreneurs"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v22.4 (Yoast SEO v25.3.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Young innovators: Victor Gutwein of M25 Group<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Victor Gutwein was in middle school when he launched his first startup in his hometown in northwestern Indiana. \u201cI wanted to be\u2026\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, 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