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Investing In
Chicago’s Future

The Lofty Family is a convergence of Chicago’s best founders and resources backed by the Lofty Ventures team.

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61
Startups
107
Founders
84
With Chicago Founders
74
Led by Underrepresented Founders
4
Exits

What Our Founders Think

If the biggest value a founder received from Lofty was the money we invested, then we believe we have failed.

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Geography

Chicago-based (preferred) or in some cases we’ll consider startups with strong Chicago ties, plan to relocate to Chica

Diversity

We don’t have a diversity mandate per se but nearly three-quarters of our startups are led by underrepresented founders. We deeply believe that when we support a more diverse startup community that everyone wins and all boats rise.

Team

Brilliant, scrappy, gritty, coachable, humble and hard working founders with the highest integrity and tremendous passion for the problem they are solving. Strong problem/founder fit is critical.

Product

We are industry agnostic, but we love investing in products that help us build community, hack serendipity, or we personally use in other ways. (We eat Tovala meals, host virtual events on Gamerjibe, make intros via Bridge, manage relationships with 4Degrees, share stories with Gather Voices, drive hiring with Consider, and so much more.)

Timing

As early as possible, usually first-check to seed (typical post-money valuations/caps <$8M, with sweet spot of $3-4M)

Check Size

$10k to $100k (in rare cases larger)

Christopher Deutsch

Founder

Spencer Gordon-Sand

Director of Operations

Kiko Wemmer

Intern

Batchimeg Gasnbaatar

Intern

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