Chingona Ventures Closes New $52 Million Fund

Chicago – May 17, 2022 – Cooley advised Chingona Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in founders whose backgrounds uniquely position them to create businesses in growth markets that are often overlooked, on the closing of its new $52 million fund. Lawyers Rachel Goddard, Noah Pittard, Mystery Murphy, Mandy Kondo and Christine Zhao led the Cooley team advising Chingona Ventures.

Limited partners in the new fund include PayPal Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, Foundry, and the Office of the Illinois State Treasurer’s Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund, among others. With the new capital, Chingona Ventures plans to continue to execute its existing investment thesis while increasing its initial check size to between $250,000 and $1 million.

“Chingona” is a Spanish word for a woman who is fearless and gets things done, according to Samara Mejia Hernandez, founding partner of Chingona Ventures. The firm “wants to be the first and largest check into a round,” Hernandez said in an article published by TechCrunch. “What I realized with fund one is that a lot of these founders really need someone to lead and to write the biggest check and help catalyze the round,” she added.

Founded in 2019 and based in Chicago, Chingona Ventures focuses on industries that are massively changing, including financial technology, female technology, food technology, health and wellness, and the future of learning. The firm invests primarily in pre-seed companies raising their first institutional round of capital.

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