Hyde Park Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital fund headquartered in Chicago, has announced the raise of $98 million Hyde Park Venture Partners Fund IV. Founded in 2012, Hyde Park Venture Partners invests in early-stage startups with founders primarily in the Midwest and Toronto. Repeat backers, including the Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund, RK Mellon Foundation, Renaissance Venture Capital, and new partner institutions, including NVNG and Cintrifuse Capital, are backing HPVP Fund IV.
Hyde Park Venture Partners has visibility into over 90% of mid-continent startups and was an early backer of ShipBob, FourKites, G2, LogicGate, and Dentologie, among many others. Together, HPVP’s portfolio companies have raised well over $1 billion in follow-on financing rounds.
In the the past few years, several HPVP portfolio companies have had meaningful exits. Notably among them are VNDLY (acquired by Workday for $510 million), Tock (acquired by Squarespace for over $400 million), Pear Deck (merger with GoGuardian), and FairX (acquired by Coinbase). And each of these represents meaningful returns to HPVP limited partners.
The closing of Fund IV brings HPVP’s total assets under management to approximately $320 million, including the $25 million 2012 Fund I, $65 million 2015 Fund II, $100 million 2019 Fund III, and $30 million 2021 Opportunity Fund.
Over the last few years, HPVP has added talent to its team, including Jim Conti as Talent Partner and investors Victoria Leon and Carlos Covarrubias, who was recently promoted to Vice President. And since its last fund, HPVP also promoted Allison Lechnir to Partner, and in this fourth fund, Greg Barnes has been promoted to Managing Partner.
The new fund has invested in two companies: Diffit (leverages generative AI to enable teachers to create just right lesson plans for all of their students) and CivCheck (partners with cities and architects to accelerate the building permitting process).
KEY QUOTES:
“Hyde Park Venture Partners was one of the earliest funds to bet on the success of the Illinois and broader Midwest startup ecosystem and has been a catalyst in enabling our local ecosystem’s growth as their fund has matured. We’re excited to continue to partner with them as they back the next generation of exceptional founders and companies in the Midwest.”
– Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs
“Hyde Park Venture Partners has been an amazing partner to ShipBob since our earliest days. Their connections, expertise, and overall value-add support have been invaluable in helping us reach our global scale.”
– Dhruv Saxena, CEO and Co-Founder of ShipBob, a leading ecommerce omnifulfillment platform and HPVP portfolio company
“We continue to be wildly excited about working with skilled founders building important companies in the Midwest and Toronto. The sustained success of ShipBob, FourKites, G2, and many others in our portfolio have helped put our geography on the national startup stage. Fund IV will see us continue to back top founders with our direct capital, but also with introductions to the talent and later stage partners our portfolio companies need to grow.”
– Allison Lechnir, HPVP Partner
