* John Pletz in Crain’s…

Startups love disrupting old industries. But it can get messy and expensive when old industries fight back.

Opternative, a startup that developed an online eye exam, already has seen laws passed in three states looking to prevent it from doing business; two others created new regulations. The four-year-old Chicago tech company operates in 33 states.

Opternative’s 13th employee was a head of government affairs—brought on before it made a more routine hire like a controller, says CEO and co-founder Aaron Dallek. The company hired its first outside lobbyist last year and now has eight.

“They don’t teach you this in business school. There are very few startups who need to learn this stuff this early on,” says Dallek, 32, who has become familiar with state capitals such as Albany, Tallahassee, Lincoln and Sacramento.

As we’ve seen with Uber, Airbnb and fantasy sports games, professions that have had the playing field all to themselves will fight back hard against these “disruptors.” But, over time, it’s probably a losing battle.

* Uber and Lyft now have 90,000 drivers in Chicago, which would normally make them such a major player in the local economy that nobody would want to mess with them. Not so…

A Chicago City Council committee on June 17 approved regulations for ridesharing that would likely end the service as residents know it – and quite possibly drive Uber and Lyft out of town.

The proposed ordinance requires rideshare drivers, who already undergo company-required background checks, to submit to city-overseen fingerprinting and vehicle inspections and acquire a chauffeur’s license. Uber and Lyft warned aldermen that passing the ordinance would force them to cease operations in Chicago. The full City Council is expected to vote on the ordinance as early as June 22, mere weeks after the ridesharing platforms shut down in Austin, Texas, due to similar restrictions.

Beyond providing millions of safe rides for residents, the services have provided job opportunities for many Chicagoans struggling in a stagnant Chicago economy.

What the city should do is re-think its entire regulatory scheme for everybody. In the age of GPS, for instance, is it really necessary that drivers know all the intricacies of Chicago landmarks? And considering the fact that the Orlando terrorist passed two background checks, do they even work as advertised?…

Ald. Susan Sadlowski-Garza (10th) said the fingerprint checks were valid for ride-hailing drivers, just as for cabbies. “If Chicagoans are going to put themselves or their family members in the cars of strangers, they should be able to rest assured in knowing that driver has undergone a background check and that they will be safe as they travel,” she said.

Expect the heat to increase on the city council, now that a committee has forwarded a proposed ordinance.

* Along those lines, Vanity Fair published a glowing interview of Bradley Tusk over the weekend. Tusk was a higher-up in the Blagojevich administration who left for New York as fast as he could and wound up working for Mayor Bloomberg. He now runs “campaigns” for disruptive startups like Uber and FanDuel…

We’re campaign managers. So we do three basic things. We figure out how a business goal is going to be achieved, whether it’s fending off a piece of bad regulation, or selling your product into government, or being able to just write new regulations that will enable your product to exist or get licensed so that you can exist.

We figure out strategy to get from point A to point B. If necessary, we’ll build a team on the ground. That might mean lobbyists, that might mean P.R., it might mean polling, it might mean ads.

And then we run a campaign. During the 2009 mayoral campaign, I would send Mike Bloomberg an e-mail at five A.M. that said, “Here’s who’s endorsing you today. Here’s what we have on the air, and here’s what the polls say.” Whatever information he needed to know. And he then went about his day as mayor. And my view was, “Why can’t you run everything like this?” So every day at seven A.M., every company we work with, every client we have, gets an e-mail from us saying, “Here’s exactly what’s happening on every front, every issue, today.”

Our view is the more you run something like a high-stakes political campaign, the greater your chances of success.

* Related…

* ADDED: Emanuel wants to let precincts opt out of Airbnb

* Communities across Illinois take up Airbnb regulation debate

* Editorial: Legalized sports wagering now seems sure bet