Corazon Capital, the Chicago-based venture capital firm run by former Match CEO Sam Yagan and former Techstars director Steve Farsht, had a big week.
The firm just closed a second fund at $40 million, led a $5.9 million Series A round in Foodsby, a Minneapolis-based suburban food delivery service, along with Greycroft Partners and Rally Ventures and announced Phil Schwarz, former CMO of Tinder, is joining the firm as a partner.
They're clearly very serious about venture capital, investing and startups. So why does their website look like a startup acid trip?
Yes, that's the website for Corazon Capital. There's no menu or navigation, instead, there are interactive hidden links scattered throughout the landscape that lead to additional details about Corazon, including an "About" page, profiles of partners and something called "One Hub."
"We’re in a serious business in that we have to allocate capital and make investments and make a return for our investors, so we take it very seriously," said Farsht. "But I think sometimes people can take themselves too seriously. So part of it is making a bit of [fun] of ourselves and having the position of being humble."
Back in January 2014, when Corazon launched, Farsht and Yagan wanted to get something up online to let people know they were around, but as Farsht said, the two weren't really looking to do something conventional. They had an associate from University of Chicago Booth who was particularly creative and up for the challenge of creating a splash page, and so they decided to create an image that represented their values with hidden messages scattered throughout.
"Sam and I are both a little unconventional, nontraditional," said Farsht. "We started to think about putting up a website, we felt very strongly that we didn’t want to be similar to anything else that is out there."
Ok, let's break this landscape down:
Yes, that is Pride Rock from the Lion King, but there's no real driving reason for it. "We were looking for something we could separate the [team]…from the rest of the people, and I think this is just a great cliff," said Farsht. "And you could say it’s symbolic in terms of the pride that we have and what we’re trying to accomplish but that’s probably looking into it more than we probably should be."
The people on Pride Rock are the partners, directors and associates, including new hire Schwarz who got a "technology-oriented, drone-oriented" accessory.
The carvings on the rock are meant to indicate past deals.
The autonomous car driving up the cliff represents their early interest in autonomous vehicles and parking startups (Corazon participated in SpotHero's Series A).
The people in the landscape aren't meant to represent specific people, but rather all the limited partners that contributed to Corazon at the time. (You'll also notice a small CB on the lapel of one of the people toward the front of the scene, which links to Corazon's Crunchbase profile).
The woman in orange, which is a live URL, leads to One Hub, a place for LPs to access secure documents (She does not represent anyone specific).
The hearts represent Corazon, which is the Spanish word for 'heart' as well as the Match friends and network that helped launch the fund. Same for the bubbles that form a heart behind Yagan.
The headless mannequins to the right are in reference to an award that was previously given out in Chicago.
Sometimes the whimsical dreamscape translates to reality: There's a small image of a bike courier in the back left corner, and Corazon just made their first delivery startup investment this week. They also added a small image of Schwarz, their latest hire, flying a jet pack near Pride Rock ("I was kidding around with Phil and saying he could interpret it as he’s taking off, or he’s coming in to save us," said Farsht).
"It’s not optimal if you want someone to go to the page and know exactly what you do, but that wasn’t really what we were trying to portray," said Farsht. "The people [we do business with] know who we are, and they can find more about us in other ways. So this was a fun way to portray who we are in a single splash page."
