ITA Spotlight: Hyde Park Angels
In 25 words or less, what is Hyde Park Angels all about?
Hyde Park Angels is transforming early-stage investing by taking a people first approach. By matching our members’ expertise with entrepreneurs’ needs, we help develop top-performing companies that are delivering extraordinary results.
What problem do you solve and how do you solve it better than the competition?
We believe that investment has to come with more than just financial capital, but human capital. We’re an angel group that runs like a venture capital firm, with one major distinction: our world-class membership of over 100 successful entrepreneurs, executives, and venture capitalists.
We help develop top-performing companies that are transforming industries and changing the world because our members are leaders who successfully started, scaled, and sold their businesses or took them public in a wide range of industries. Nearly 40% of our members have founded a company, 88% are CEO’s, top executives or corporate board members, and 100% invest in startups. By leveraging our members’ deep knowledge and financial capital, we have driven multiple exits and invested millions of dollars in a broad range of portfolio companies.
How did you get started?
Hyde Park Angels started in 2006 as a collaboration from a group of Chicago Booth Executive Program students and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Booth. Together, they worked to develop an angel group truly focused on developing and growing the very nascent Chicago technology scene. As we have grown and evolved over the years, we have built relationships with numerous universities, venture capitalists, corporate venturers, community partners, and more across the Midwest, which has helped us achieve our original goal of truly developing our entrepreneur ecosystem.
How has your company culture evolved as Hyde Park Angels has grown?
Our company culture has evolved to focus on entrepreneurs and how we can create value for them. We have driven this change by building a strong membership and organizational infrastructure.
When we say we now take a people-first approach to investment; we mean it. We connect the entrepreneurs who come to us with members in our group who have expertise in their industries and can provide actionable insights and advice. We also take the entrepreneur’s side because our members are entrepreneurs themselves and understand the challenges that come with building a business. That means we’re responsive, helpful, and honest. We get to the “quick no” to ensure entrepreneurs don’t waste their valuable time with us, while still making sure they have the resources and connections they need to keep going.
We have also shifted towards a more professionalized and standardized management model, which means are deal processes are seamless, as our communication methods. This combined with a membership made up of serious investors with first-hand knowledge of the ecosystem has allowed us to do more deals than ever before in our history.
What are your primary goals for Hyde Park Angels?
We want to invest in the best entrepreneurs, build the best companies, and create the best startup ecosystem in the world.
Where do you see Hyde Park Angels in two years? Five? Ten?
Within the next ten years, we believe Hyde Park Angels will have created the premier model for active early-stage investors, with the rest of the VC industry following our lead.
In your opinion, what are some of the pros and cons of being an Illinois business?
The Illinois tech community is vibrant, close-knit, and very collaborative. Being part of that community helps us build connections and do our work better as result. There’s no question that businesses and business people in Illinois, and Chicago, are committed to helping each other and sharing knowledge.
On the other hand, the financial condition of the state and city is something all local businesses need to be wary of and consider.
What are the biggest challenges you face as you scale your business?
There are so many entrepreneurs in our community pushing themselves so hard to succeed, and want to be able to meet with each one and help them pursue their dreams. What they are doing is so hard – we know from experience. But we can’t invest in every company in Chicago. We have to find other ways to support them and work with them. That’s why we’ve been spending so much time and giving so much attention to build out platforms like our website, Still, reaching every entrepreneur that needs our help continues to be a challenge, and we’re really actively working to get to the whole community and beyond.