Business POV

McCall, a partner at Chicago VC firm Portage Venture Partners, talks about how FeedBurner epitimized many of the attributes that make Web 2.0 companies successful. The firm's investment in the feed publisher paid off when it was sold to Google in June for a rumored $100 million.

The Chicago office of Portage sees 500 to 700 business plans a year. Globally, the firm sees somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000. The firm in total has 600 portfolio companies and has been in the VC game for 23 years.

This conversation was recorded in June at BARCamp in Chicago.

Bio:

Matt McCall Partner Portage Venture Partners

Matthew McCall is a co-founder and Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson Portage Venture Partners and Portage Venture Partners. McCall is responsible for managing the firm's investments in EverDream, Feedburner, Imago Scientific, Lefthand Networks, Siimpel and TicketsNow.

McCall has served on the advisory board to the Mayor's Council of Technology Advisors in Chicago as well as on numerous other regional high technology advisory boards. McCall is a board member of the Illinois Venture Capital Association. He serves on the Kellogg Alumni Advisory Board, Northwestern McCormick MMM Advisory Board and ITEC-UIC (Illinois Technology Enterprise Corporation), a University of Illinois sponsored state funded incubator. He has been honored by Crain's Chicago Business on its annual "40 under 40" list of leading Chicagoans under age 40. He has also been named as one of top 100 most prominent members of Chicago's technology community. He has keynoted or been a panelist at over 50 area conferences and events nationwide. He is a founder & trustee of the McCall Family Foundation, focused on improving early childhood development in Chicago's disadvantaged communities as well as encouraging entrepreneurship in our youth.

Previous to 1995, McCall worked in the Boston Consulting Group¹s Chicago office, where he managed consulting and client teams on projects in the telecommunications, health-care and financial services industries. During and after college, McCall worked for Bankers Trust in Merchant Banking as well as at Merrill Lynch and U.S. Trust.

McCall holds a B.A. in Economics and History from Williams College and an MBA with honors from Northwestern University's J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management. He also holds a Masters in Manufacturing Management from Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering.