Top 18 Venture Capital Firms in Chicago, IL

12 Jul 2021 • 10 min read

To start a business, individual entrepreneurs and founders should have enough capital on their hands to cover all the expenses that will be made throughout the process, from building the brands to launching the business. Although some are frightened to take the risk, most exceptional founders started from scratch and ended up successful in their respective fields. How? because they got venture capital partners that help them scale up their businesses.

Venture capital is a form of a private equity financing program that is usually offered by venture capital firms to help startups, early-stage, and emerging companies scale their businesses. Many VC firms are existing all over the regions, like in Illinois. The state has a growing number of VC firms, particularly in the city of Chicago, funding and helping the businesses around the area. So if you’re still on the search, you should consider checking out Chicago’s top venture capitals.

Top 18 Venture Capital Firms in Chicago, IL

Chicago is quietly becoming a home of VC firms offering funds to a wide array of sectors. If you are residing in this city or your business is nearly located in Chicago you will surely find dozens of top VCs suited to your business. Especially, if your business operates under healthcare, marketplaces, and technology sectors since most venture capital firms in the city are highly focused on these sectors.

7wire Venture

7wire Ventures is a venture capital firm and private equity investing in early and growth-stage companies particularly those businesses working within the healthcare sectors with a great focus on digital healthcare, healthcare IT, and mobile health areas.

The main goal of the VC firm is to develop new ideas, business methods, great innovations, and technologies, in the healthcare sectors through the power of mobility, devices, the cloud, and sophisticated analytics. Aside from the healthcare sectors, they are also recognized as one of the leading VCs that make positive exits and scale-up startups to achieve their full potential in their field.

7wireVentures believes that "better health, quality, outcomes and experiences are possible through empowering the Informed Connected Health Consumer."

Hyde Park Venture Partners

Hyde Park Venture Partners is a venture investment firm interested in funding high-growth and mid-continent technology startups. They specialize in early to late-stage ventures, seed investments and debt. The VC seeks to find startup companies composed of powerful and dedicated founding teams with high potential in the market, looking for a VC that offers the first or second round of capital. In particular, they prefer those early-stage tech companies leveraging their skills and power in the field of ad tech SaaS, and mobile technology sectors.

Hyde Park Venture Partners is headquartered in Chicago but has a presence in areas of Indianapolis, and is composed of a tenacious, reliable, and dedicated team. They have made some strong bets to the logistics industry in Chicago, most recently with FourKites. They help FourKites to develop its full capabilities, achieving substantial growth plans.

Jump Capital

Jump Capital is a venture capital and private equity firm headquartered in Chicago with offices in New York, providing legacy and financial support to exceptional entrepreneurs and founders. The VC specializes in offering Series A and B expansion stage investments in data-driven technology and software companies. They also offer early-stage venture, late-stage venture, and seed to a wide array of sectors in the industry, with a great focus on B2B SaaS, data mining, enterprise, high-performance computing, and healthcare. infrastructure, FinTec, machine learning, and media sectors.

Since its founding year, Jump Capital has managed to invest in successful startups and companies in a wide range of verticals including enterprise infrastructure and FinTech. One of the recent successful investments they made is on startup BenchPrep, funding them a $20 million Series C investment.

Lightbank

Lightbank is a venture fund and private equity firm founded by Groupon co-founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell (who’s also the CEO of Uptake). The VC is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, United States but also operating in different areas in the United States. They seek to invest in early-stage consumer, enterprise, fintech and healthcare startups and companies, focusing merely on pre-seed, seed and Series A opportunities. Typically, they provide initial checks between $250k - $5m to their portfolio companies. Along with their investment, they also assist in business management and prefer to have direct involvement with the companies it invests in for a more successful exit.

Since March 2010, Lightbank has invested in more than 100 emerging companies such as Boom Supersonic, Clearcover, Extend and Expel. Fiverr (NYSE: FVRR), Tempus, Sprout Social (NYSE: SPRT), Tastyworks (acq. $1B+), Udemy and many more.

OCA Ventures

OCA Ventures is a venture capital and private equity firm specializing in early-stage, particularly Seed, Series A, and Series B venture investment. The firm also prefers equity investments in emerging companies with high growth potential in the market, primarily those companies operating within the technology and other highly scalable services sectors. OCA invests in a wide range of industry sectors, but they highly focus their verticals on information technology, education and healthcare technology, and financial services.

Since it was founded in 1999, the VC firm has been investing out of its fourth fund in companies across the United States. They are not a typical source of capital but rather a long-term strategic partner and active investor of expertise and talents.

Valor Equity Partners

Valor Equity Partners is an operational growth venture capital firm based in Chicago, Illinois with regional offices in New York, New York, and San Francisco, California. They are highly interested in non-control and control investments particularly in exceptional startups and growing companies across different development stages. The firm also prefers to fund in the form of growth capital in early-stage and seed-stage companies across industry sectors with great emphasis on the commercial services FinTech, food-tech, manufacturing, and Information technology sectors.

For a few decades, the VC firm has served its portfolio companies with great investment and unique solutions to address the challenges of their business growth and scale. The majority of Valor Equity Partners investments are allocated heavily on the coasts, including well-known high-tech companies like Tesla and SpaceX.

Sandbox Industries

Sandbox Industries is a venture capital and private equity firm in Chicago with offices in several cities in the United States and London. The VC firm is connecting the two entities; startups and corporations to make a better industry. They have three business lines, namely the strategic venture funds, accelerators programs, and consulting services, that they use to bridge the gap between the two entities.

Sandbox is also the exclusive partner of Blue Cross and Blue Shield Venture Partners I and II, helping founders connect in the healthcare space with 25 Blue plans all over the country for better partnerships. The firm is committed to investing in startups and growth companies in the food and agriculture, healthcare, and insurance sectors. They specialized in the early-stage venture, late-stage venture, seed and private equity.

Hopewell Ventures

Hopewell Ventures is a venture capital and private equity firm providing equity capital and strategic expertise to startups and emerging companies primarily based in the Midwest. They also have offices in Peoria with huge networks throughout the Midwest. They have been investing and helping Midwestern companies grow in their respective field for more than 80 years of experience.

The VC firm's investment verticals are aligned with the opportunities that the Midwest industry provides. They are investing in various stages of development across a wide array of sectors. Their verticals range from state-of-the-art technology and life-sciences to traditional manufacturing and consumer sectors. Other Areas of their focus are software, GPS, and games sectors. Some of their notable portfolio companies include InStadium, Inc., Mersive Technologies, SageQuest Inc.

Garland Capital Group

Garland Capital Group is a family investment and private equity firm supporting and financing disruptive companies. They specialize in Distressed Ranch Properties, Healthcare Consulting Oil Field Services and Tax Lien Certificates. Other areas of their verticals are Transportation, Travel, Employment, Insurance.

Aside from the investment that they offer, they also create opportunities for growing companies to help them launch their revolutionary products and services in the fast-paced markets.

Garland Capital Group also prefers to be involved in the business operation process, and willing to coach founders and individual entrepreneurs on how to run their companies, lead their teams, and teach how and when to scale. Some of their notable portfolio companies are SpotHero, Shiftgig, Rocketmiles.

FireStarter

FireStarter is a self-managed early-stage investment fund and private equity firm interested in providing financial support to high-growth tech-enabled companies with series A and B investment rounds. In particular, they seek to fund startups and companies within the digital media and marketing, Software-as-a-Service, and e-commerce sectors with great emphasis on web, social, mobile, and big data projects.

They are composed of a group of Chicago technology entrepreneurs and founders collaborating to help the next generation of business developers and innovators. Their team has a combined vast experience in founding, operating and investing in technology-based companies, scaling businesses for the past 40 years. Some of its notable portfolio companies include Blitsy, Kapow, GiveForward, and Hireology.

Corazon Capital

Corazon Capital is a leading Chicago-based venture fund and private equity firm focused on bringing early-stage opportunities and a coastal approach to Seed and Series A investment. The VC firm provides investment management services and is interested in investing in technology-based companies.

Corazon with its principals managed to fund and establish six companies to four exits, acts as CEOs of some companies with more than $5 billion worth, which includes taking the company publicly. They had also executed over $1 billion in acquisitions, invested in excess of $300 million in private companies, and held over 30 board seats. Some of the VC firm's successful investments include Fitplan, TripScout, Draftbit, Knock, Foodsby, Mac & Mia, Greenfly and Heretik.

Ceres Ventures

Ceres Venture Fund is a new Chicago-based venture capital and private equity committed to funding high-growth companies in their early stages of growth. Typically, the VC firm prefers to invest in companies located in the Midwest region. They are interested in partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs and founders with proven ability in the field and who can bring them resources, products and services that can achieve extraordinary success in the market.

Ceres Venture has a deep interest in the areas of health care, information technology, and business services. For more than 60 years, the VC company managed to bring success to various startups and companies in the Midwest with the help of their team's combined experience in investing, managing, and developing early-stage companies.

Baird Capital

Baird Capital is one of the global capital venture firms that specialize in delivering funds, sector expertise, strategies for growth as well business operating resources to strategically targeted high-growth companies and startups across the globe. Since its founding year, they have raised an investment with more than $3.1 billion worth and funded over 300 portfolio companies operating within the information technology, industrial solutions, and digital health & healthcare sectors.

They also have strong built relationships with passionate founders and entrepreneurial management teams, and an extensive network of 60 investments globally. They are composed of operating professionals in Asia, the United States, and the United Kingdom helping them to consistently bring significant value in their portfolio companies.

Arch Ventures

ARCH is an investment fund and private equity firm collaborating with well-known scientists and health-centred entrepreneurs, dedicated to bringing market innovations in life science sectors. They are interested in funding life science discoveries to combat, detect and cure diseases. Typically, they offer early-stage, and seed investment stages to promising companies working in health sciences, particularly in the healthcare, information technology, and commercial services sectors.

Since its founding year, they have been known as one of the successful VC firms to commercialize technologies to develop devices and innovations that deliver solutions to existing diseases. They already raised ten venture funds with a total of $3 billion and had invested in the earliest venture capital rounds for more than 150 companies all over the world.

lApex Ventures

APEX Ventures is a venture capital firm operated by committed founders with complimentary backgrounds but driven by the same goal which is to "build the next generation of world's leading companies." The VC firm is highly interested in funding growing companies within the technology sectors prioritizing AI & Machine Learning, AR & VR, Blockchain, Autonomy, Cloud Computing, Computer Vision, Data Analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), and 3D Printing. Whereas the industries that they specialize in are Digital Platforms, Digital Health, FinTech & InsurTech, and Industry Future of Work.

Since Apex Venture Partners was established, it has obtained six funds and more than $600 million under management and has invested in more than 130 technology-based companies. Some of its successful portfolio companies include Â Sittercity, Trunk Club, Bloom Energy and many more.

Hyde Park Angels

Hyde Park Angels is an active investment fund and private equity firm in the Midwest. They provide significant value to the promising entrepreneurs, founders and investors by delivering startup high-growth and investment success. Their team comprises more than 100 successful individual entrepreneurs, founders, executives, and other venture capitalists, collaborating together to create and drive critical strategic management skills to the entrepreneurial community. By leveraging their team and networks, HPA managed to deliver multiple exits and funded millions of dollars in more than 50 portfolio companies in the Midwest since 2006.

The VC firm is highly focused on investing in the Business, Consumer, Digital Media, Financial, Technology, and Healthcare sectors. Some of their successful exits are Ahaology, Base, Brilliant, Catalytic, Dabble, Rithmio, The Eastman Egg Company, TurboAppeal, YCharts and many more.

JK&B Venture

JK&B Capital is a venture capital investment and private equity firm founded in 1996. The VC firm is interested in investing in startup and emerging companies with business operations within the communications, healthcare, software, and information technology sectors. Other areas included in their portfolio companies are those under the Enterprise Software and Mobile sectors.

Since it was established in 1996, they have been consistently generating exceptional returns for their investors and driving success to their portfolio companies, transforming them into market leaders in their niche. In fact, they have been recognized as one of the leading VC firms for successfully investing in growth tech-companies that made critical growth in the information technology industry. Some of their notable portfolio companies are Actiance, EarlySense, Viewfinity and many more.

MK Capital

MK Capital is a venture capital and private equity firm in Chicago, IL with offices in the areas of Los Angeles and Ann Arbor. The TV firm invests in startups and companies at all growth stages of the funding lifecycle. But they prefer to fund those companies operating within the sector of Digital Media, Data Center Automation, Software, Education Technology, other Software and Cloud services. They typically invest $250 million venture capital fund to their portfolio companies

MK Capital has a great team of well-experienced partners and extensive network of professionals with deep experience in investing, operating and establishing a business. They work closely with their portfolio companies to build successful businesses in the market.

Final Thoughts

There are plenty of top venture capital in Chicago, Illinois that you should take into consideration. As an entrepreneur or startup company founder you should start engaging yourselves to the word of capitalist as they can indeed help you run and scale your business. If you are working within the sectors of healthcare, marketplaces, and technology, you will find more VC in Chicago that will surely suit your niche.