Samara Hernandez, a Chicago investor known for her time at MATH Venture Partners, has launched her own venture fund to invest in startups that don’t necessarily fit the B2B SaaS mold that many local VC firms focus on.
Chingona Ventures, which began cutting checks early last year, invests in early-stage startups that are traditionally neglected by Chicago and Midwest VCs. Hernandez explained that she’s looking for not only diverse founders, like racial minorities and women, but also unique business concepts and startups operating in consumer industries, a sector other Chicago VCs are known for avoiding.
“I saw who was getting funded, the types of businesses that were getting funded, the types of industries that were getting funded, and sometimes they look the same,” Hernandez said. “There’s a huge opportunity to fund businesses that are traditionally overlooked or not so obvious, and I wanted to create a fund to help that.”
Hernandez wouldn’t disclose the size of her fund but said Chingona’s average check size is about $100,000. The firm considers itself industry agnostic, but gravitates toward fintech, food tech, female tech and wellness products.
“I’m looking at what’s happening in society and I think VC dollars have been slow to fund some of these categories so that’s where I’m focusing,” Hernandez said.
So far, Chingona has invested in nine startups, including Career Karma, a San Francisco-based coding education startup, and Tiny Organics, a baby food startup in New York. And just in December Chingona participated in a $4.5 million funding round for Leaf Trade, a Chicago-based marijuana tech startup.
Since 2015, Hernandez had been a principal and later a venture partner at MATH, but left at the end of 2019 to focus on Chingona full time.
Ezra Galston, a former principal at Chicago Ventures, did something similar a couple years ago. In 2018, he left his post at the VC firm to launch Starting Line, a venture capital firm that says it invests in consumer companies “for the 99%.” So far, it has backed Chicago’s celebrity shout out startup Cameo and a Milwaukee women’s work boot startup called Xena, among others.
Though it’s not necessarily uncommon for investors at established firms to go off and launch their own VC funds, it is rare for a woman of color to do so, according to data from Chicago Blend. Of all Chicago venture capitalists, 28 percent are women and only 1 percent identify as Latinx. And the raw data shows that there are only two female Latinx VCs in Chicago.
Considering the figures, Hernandez is likely the first and only Latinx woman in Chicago to launch her own venture firm. On the firm's website, the word "Chingona" is described as "a woman who is intelligent, fearless, and can get things done. Also see 'Boss' or 'Badass.'"
"Venture has historically been an apprenticeship business, where those in power gravitate to others who look and act like them," said Lindsay Knight, the founder and a board member of Chicago Blend and the director of platform at Chicago Ventures. "This dynamic is slowly shifting through new fund managers like Samara, who are opening doors for those who don't fit a traditional mold. They may identify opportunity where others don't, whether it be in a market opportunity, an entrepreneur or an employee."
