Meet the Midwest: Landon Campbell

Our first guest post

We’re trying something new this week! A guest post from a rockstar member of this regional ecosystem of ours. We’re going to start doing this every once in a while so if you or someone you know want to meet our community…let us know.

Today’s guest writer is Landon W. Campbell an Investor at Drive Capital in Chicago, a $2.3B venture capital firm committed to investing in exceptional founders who are shaping the future of market-defining companies between the Hudson River and the Rocky Mountains. Landon oversees the firm’s $80M pre-seed fund in Chicago. He also writes LandonsLoop.com, a weekly newsletter covering what’s new and next in Chicago tech.

Huge shout out to Landon for being our first guest!!!

I’m not from Chicago originally.

Which means I didn’t come here with a blueprint or any fixed ideas of how our tech scene is supposed to work. That’s been my biggest advantage.

Because when you’re new to a place, you don’t carry the weight of how it’s always been done. You can just build and contribute.

That’s what I did. I started with what I wished existed when I moved here.

One of those things is Landon’s Loop, a weekly newsletter that’s become the go-to guide on what’s happening across Chicago’s innovation economy. Before launching it, I was frustrated by the constant pessimism in the local press. At the same time, I kept meeting Chicago-based founders, researchers, and operators building remarkable things. It felt selfish not to share what I was seeing.

So I started writing. 105 editions and nearly a million emails later, Landon’s Loop has become what I hoped for: a spotlight to the momentum moving Chicago forward.

I also felt like tech events here needed a new approach. More curated and intentional. I wanted to create space for the technical community. Spaces to celebrate engineers, connect the LLM-obsessed, and talk honestly about where things are going. So we launched a popular monthly AI meetup.

Eighteen meetups and 1,500+ attendees later, it’s become a self-organizing community that I’m proud to help steward.

During the day, I’m working to drive more early-stage investing momentum in our city. I help lead Drive Capital’s seed fund and our Fulton Market office, which I’ve started calling the Moonshot Factory. We back founders before there’s even a product. I spend my time proactively sourcing: digging through university research, hosting technical events, and looking for sparks where others aren’t.

Drive didn’t end up in the Midwest by accident. Most of our team came from the Bay Area. But when they set up shop in Columbus, it was with a clear intent: to do something different here. Something grounded in ambition and long-term conviction. That mindset stuck with me.

It’s easy to say Chicago should be better. More ambitious, more connected, more visible. I agree. But none of that happens unless we build it ourselves. I didn’t grow up here, but maybe that’s the point.

I didn’t move here trying to fit into anything. I noticed what felt missing and built from there.

You can too. Our city has space for it.

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Want to follow along?

Subscribe to Landon’s Loop — a weekly look at what’s new in Chicago tech.

Twitter/X: @Landon20s // LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/landon20s