fundraising

Market Wagon Raises $5M in Series Seed Round

Hyde Park Angels participated in Market Wagon’s $5M Series Seed round, which was led by Hyde Park Venture Partners. This investment is focused on expanding Market Wagon’s presence to more than 50 markets by the end of the year. Market Wagon is an Indianapolis-based startup that is an online farmer’s market. By deploying an innovative […]

oak9 Raises $5.9M in Series Seed Round

Hyde Park Angels participated in oak9’s $5.9M Series Seed round, which was led by Menlo Ventures. Uncorrelated Ventures also participated in the round. The oak9 platform accelerates the delivery of cloud-native applications while providing comprehensive security. The infrastructure-as-code security platform seamlessly integrates into the DevOps pipeline, enabling developers to have security implemented through the development […]

Sifter Raises $4.6M in Series Seed Round

Hyde Park Angels and Valor Equity Partners, through their Valor Siren Ventures fund, led Sifter’s $4.6M Series Seed round. Sifter is a personalized nutrition data and technology platform that helps consumers find and buy products that match their specific dietary, medical and lifestyle priorities. This personalization drives value for the retailer, brands and consumers. Growing […]

John Higginson

Video Games, a Single Mom, and “Brilliant Assholes”: How this CTO Became a Successful Tech (and Diversity) Leader

Get to know John John Higginson is the CTO at Enova, a large publicly-traded Chicago FinTech company that’s extended over $20B in credit to customers worldwide. At Enova, John is responsible for driving the company’s technology strategy to leverage advanced digital experiences and data science to deliver on its mission to help hard-working people access […]

July 18, 2019 By Heidi Craun
Top Midwest raises in 2018

Breakdown of biggest VC raises in Midwestern states in 2018

As the new year gets underway, 2018’s fundraising numbers are rolling in, allowing us to get a snapshot of how the Midwest’s top startups fared. It was a good year for the Midwest, which we define here as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. Here is a list of each Midwest state’s top VC […]

January 14, 2019 By Pete Wilkins
Sawyer Bengtson

Why Top VCs from Outside the Midwest Want In

As the Midwest startup ecosystem continues to grow, top investors from outside the region increasingly show that they are watching and want in — especially when a repeat entrepreneur is at the helm of a budding startup. To validate this assertion, my firm, Hyde Park Angels, decided to dig into the numbers. Between 2016 and today, coastal […]

People First Podcast

Podcast: Creating a Goal-Driven Culture with Eddie Leshin

People First is the Hyde Park Angels podcast dedicated to deconstructing entrepreneurial success into actionable takeaways you can use today. Hyde Park Angels is the most active early-stage investor in Chicago with a commitment to taking a “people-first approach” to investing. By matching our members’ expertise with entrepreneurs’ needs, we help develop top-performing companies that are delivering extraordinary […]

How Tiz Landed Its First Investment: Advice for Entrepreneurs Everywhere

The Hyde Park Angels “New Investment Series” profiles our most recent investments by examining the investment process and the individual company’s future trajectory from two perspectives: the portfolio company’s CEO and the HPA leader who made the deal happen. This edition focuses on Tiz. We recently invested in Tiz, which makes online ordering for bars, […]

January 20, 2017 By Alida Miranda-Wolff

New Investment Series: Occasion

The Hyde Park Angels “New Investment Series” profiles our most recent investments by examining the investment process and the individual company’s future trajectory from two perspectives: the portfolio company’s CEO and the HPA leader who made the deal happen. This edition focuses on Occasion.  Aksh, why did you start Occasion? What problem were you trying […]