Far From Wall Street and Silicon Valley, a Focus on Family Ties

When the hedge fund manager David Einhorn was just another investment analyst in the mid-1990s, his family gave him $500,000 to get his fund, Greenlight Capital, off the ground. Now that he is a billionaire after a career of doing battle with large corporations, he has returned the favor.

A world away from Wall Street and the tech money culture of Silicon Valley, the Einhorn family started a venture capital firm here, which raised a $40 million fund last year.

David Einhorn is the largest investor in the fund, run by his brother, Daniel, and their father, Stephen. The firm, Capital Midwest Fund, also led by another partner, Alvin Vitangcol, aims to tap the Midwestern work ethic and has ambitions of changing the way early stage investments are run.