Announcing Starting Line Fund I
Today, I’m pleased to share that we’ve closed $17M to discover and fund early stage consumer startups building products and services for the 99% economy – companies that leverage technology to be both cheaper and better, open up access, and ultimately, expand markets. We’re proud to headquarter our fund in Chicago, the heart of the Midwest, and innovate our new brand of geo-inspired investing.
We built Starting Line in order to invalidate many of the assumptions of what a Venture Capital fund in Chicago was supposed to look like. The common narrative says that Chicago is a sleepy enterprise b2b town, yet we focus only on consumer investments. Why? First, because with a phone in the pocket of every teenager in the country, pop culture is becoming increasingly distributed and increasingly likely to manifest in unlikely places. And second, because we actually investigated the data - which is demonstrative that Chicago consumer startups have driven double the number of absolute outcomes and double the value creation over the past decade. Similarly, many investors have focused on the perceived discount value and lower valuations that supposedly exist in a market like Chicago. We take a different approach: Starting Line recognizes that exceptional entrepreneurs often have multiple options and know their true worth – these are the types of winners we want to be in business with.
If we look and sound different, it’s because we are different. We’ve open sourced everything you’ll need to know about our fund, including the communication we share with LPs. And we are obsessively focused on speaking the language of the new generation of entrepreneurs cropping up across the country.
Starting Line is supported financially by many of the same world class entrepreneurs and institutions/GPs we’ve looked up to for years, including venture firms such as Bloomberg Beta, Dan Levitan co-founder of Maveron, Joe Floyd, General Partner at Emergence Capital, Wicklow Capital, as well as accomplished consumer entrepreneurs such as Matt Maloney, CEO of Grubhub, Greg Carlin, CEO of Rush Street Gaming, and Nick Green, CEO of Thrive Market. And most meaningfully to us, over a dozen of Chicago’s hardest charging up and coming younger operators also participated in our fundraise, including Sean Harper, CEO of Kin, David Rabie, CEO of Tovala, Stella Garber, Head of Marketing Trello at Atlassian, Elan Mosbacher, SVP Operations at Spothero, Jason Duboe, SVP Business Development at project44, Vijen Patel, CEO of Pressbox, Dan Ushman, Co-founder of SingleHop and more - all collectively committed to working closely with the early stage entrepreneurs we back.
I am thrilled to be on this journey with Principal Haley Kwait Zollo and Venture Partner Ade Olonoh who are a remarkable balance of passion and experience. And also deeply grateful to our fund advisors Matt Maloney, Rebecca Kaden (Union Square Ventues), Roy Bahat (Bloomberg Beta) and Seth Levine (Foundry Group) who attached their names to Starting Line when there was little upside to them for doing so.
We actually closed the fund several months ago and have been operating Starting Line more or less in stealth for over a year – with a focus on leading and co-leading seed rounds – and we’re excited by our top tier early performance, as well as grateful to the entrepreneurs who have taken our capital and allocated us their valuable equity. A slice of early portfolio includes:
Cameo – Enabling fans on demand access to personalized messages from their favorite people, while enabling tens of thousands of creators to monetize their followings and influence. (Chicago, IL)
Made In Cookware – Ultra premium cookware used by celebrity chefs in the kitchens of Alinea, Le Bernadin, Tom Colicchio’s Small Batch and more, and sold direct to consumer at less than 50% of the cost of comparable brands. (Austin, TX)
Clyde – One click plugin at the digital point of sale that enables emerging consumer brands to offer extended warranties to their customers. (New York, NY)
Hitch – Reimagining inter-city travel by providing spacious, comfortable, upscale long distrance rideshares for less than the cost of a Greyhound bus ticket. (Austin, TX)
Zoro Card – A debit card that builds credit profiles and improves credit scores for its users, with zero fees and no funding minimums. (Bloomington, IN)
Unchained Capital – Same day consumer loans, wholly collateralized with cryptocurrencies, that require no background checks or credit pulls. (Austin, TX)
Our full list of early fund investments and partners’ angel investments can be found here.
It may be rare to share the following in a funding announcement, but Starting Line nearly didn’t get off the ground. I personally cashed out my savings and borrowed against the rest of my assets to warehouse our first two deals – and in the process, came within months of defaulting on nearly everything we owned. On more than one occasion when our fundraise stalled out, my spouse Shira had to pull me off the floor, writhing in pain and dizzy with stress, overwhelmed by the fear of failure. I told no one besides my spouse and therapist about these struggles, fearing the shame and embarrassment of failure. It is for these reasons that we have aggressively invested in mental health policies and subsidies for every founder in our portfolio, in order to reduce the barriers to getting started.
Raising a first time fund is never easy, but the difficulty is exacerbated in a city such as Chicago where it is highly irregular to do so. In our earliest days, dozens of people supported Starting Line financially, emotionally or otherwise, and we are deeply appreciative to each of you for helping us get off the ground. Last, but not least, my sincerest gratitude to the entire team at Chicago Ventures who not only gave me my start in the industry, but were also each amongst Starting Line’s earliest checks and earliest vote of confidence.