OUR PLATFORM
Strategic Advice & Introductions
We like being active partners alongside our founders. From strategic advice to industry connections and so much more. We help secure board members, recruit top-tier talent, make sales and BD intros.
Founder Community
With over 100 founders in the Lofty Family, we put a huge emphasis on making sure they stay connected, so they can ask questions, share news, build camaraderie and otherwise support each other. We enable this virtual and in-person connectivity through various tools, platforms and social activities (some are part of the Lofty Family), including Slack, Clubhouse, Talk Social, Bridge, Gamerjibe, Off Map, and PechaKucha.
Events
We host in-person and virtual events throughout the year for the Lofty Family. These events range from casual founders-only chats, to intimate round-table discussions with well-known entrepreneurs and investors, to larger showcases where we invite investors and other Lofty Community members.
Holistic Activities
We actively sponsor local nonprofits and their events, which enable our founders to participate as Lofty’s guests in social activities such as golf outings, galas and other opportunities. We host virtual and in-person activities that support holistic well-being for our founders, such as group meditation, mindfulness exercises and wellness education. We also organize intimate group activities for our founders, such as concerts, movie screenings, trips and glamping retreats (at Off Map, part of the Lofty Family).
Great People
We invest in founders because we think they will be great community members. We pass on any deal, no matter how interesting the company is, if we don’t think the founders will be good additions to our community. As cohorts move through Lofty Ventures, we’ve seen many founders at later stages offer help, support, and even investment to Lofty Family members at earlier stages of their journeys. We deeply believe in paying it forward and we seek out others who share that belief.
Access to Capital
Lofty Ventures actively grows and maintains a community of angel investors and VCs that are actively searching for Chicago startups to back. We often find co-investors to help fill out the rounds we enter, while also assisting our companies raise follow-on rounds. If you want to learn more about how to invest in Lofty’s founders, click here.
Founder Collaboration
We love to back founders who build companies that can further our mission of enabling community and hacking serendipity. We actively look for synergies across the portfolio and encourage our founders to work together, build mutually beneficial partnerships, share contacts, and use each other’s products.
Invest It Forward
Starting in 2020, Lofty Ventures pioneered a model to enable our founders to engage with and support local nonprofits. Our goal is to easily enable any Lofty founders (and their teams) to engage with their communities in simple, bite-size ways that create win-win-win opportunities for them, our local nonprofits and the underserved communities they support.
Annual Bonfire Scholarship
Each year, we select one woman, either a founder or teammate from the Lofty Family, to participate in Bonfire’s Chicago-based hybrid Cohort Experience leadership program. Bonfire is backed by Lofty Ventures and founded by Suzanne Muchin & Rachel Bellow. Learn more about Bonfire’s programs here.