Chicago venture capital firm LongJump first launched as a way to help underrepresented entrepreneurs get the help they need to start their own businesses. This month the VC firm closed on its 15th investment, totaling $1.5 million deployed in the past year.
With a typical check size of $100,000, here are the 15 startup that received funding from LongJump:
- Bilin Academy
- Bottlecode
- Clouty
- Fillow
- Flora
- Frankly Apparel
- Hanahana Beauty
- Kavnia
- Kazadi
- LivNow
- Metric
- Oja Express
- Sanarai
- Science on Call
- Stigma
Every company in LongJump's portfolio is led by either a woman or a minority founder. Companies that received funding were evaluated based on founder-market fit, market validation, and vision and strategy to scale the business.
LongJump also brought on two new venture partners: active angel investor and former Wise Apple co-founder and CEO Rebecca Kahnweiler and Betsy Fore, the first Native American woman to raise a series A in the country, to evaluate and support its companies. Their expertise is centered on consumer package goods and foodtech as they hope to expand LongJump's reach in the community and the coasts.
The VC fund plans to invest in nearly 30 more companies in the next two years with a total of $5.1 million raised.
Capital on call
Andy Freivogel, co-founder and CEO at Science on Call, one of LongJump's portfolio companies that runs tech support for restaurants, said the organization has been key to building Science on Call into a national brand.
"LongJump has been instrumental in a number of things," he told the Chicago Business Journal. "We took their investment in our infancy and didn't have much organizational savvy around fundraising."
Science on Call raised $1.6 million in pre-seed funding from both local and national investors earlier this year, and Freivogel said the expertise among LongJump's founders provided a great foundation to learn how to build a company from the ground up.
Officially launched in 2021, LongJump raised more than $5 million in its first fund, led by Chicago tech entrepreneurs such as Draftbit's Brian Luerssen, Rheaply's Garry Cooper and Paladin's Kristen Sonday, among others.
"For us, the check was almost secondary," Freivogel said. "When we got connected with LongJump, they helped us start thinking about ourselves as a $500 million company as opposed to a $5 million company."
Becoming a tech center
Freivogel said with leadership from LongJump and Chicago startup hub and incubator 1871, along with other influential organizations deeply rooted in the city's business community, Chicago has become as much of a tech center as it has ever been.
"If you look at what [local tech organization] P33 Chicago and what [P33 director] Claude Cimeus is doing with his events, and the attention that all those great founders are pulling to Chicago right now, that's what is really exciting to me," Freivogel said.
Freivogel doesn't feel like he's in "flyover country" for investors anymore.
"We feel like we're the Third Coast for tech startups right now," he said.
As a Chicago startup founder that benefited from LongJump himself, Freivogel also plans to give back to the organization however he can.
"The startup community would not be what it is if it was not full of founders who believe the same thing," he said. "I just made an intro for another founder from LongJump today ... and approached an angel investor who invested in us. What I really look forward to is the opportunity to actually write a check and be part of the fund the same way that [LongJump's founders] have supported us."
