None of our family businesses were focused on technology. It was '93 when I came out of law school, and the Internet was taking hold. So I started New World Ventures.

It's a brave new world. I'm 42 years old. I certainly wasn't out in high school.

ChicagoNEXT is focused on making Chicago the best possible place for technology entrepreneurs.

I grew up in a middle-class family. I went to law school.

I came to live in Shepperton in 1960. I thought: the future isn't in the metropolitan areas of London. I want to go out to the new suburbs, near the film studios. This was the England I wanted to write about, because this was the new world that was emerging.

I was not the midwife of the Law School, but its fraternal twin.