Hyde Park Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital fund headquartered in Chicago, announces the raise of $98 million Hyde Park Venture Partners Fund IV. It backs early-stage startups with founders primarily in the Midwest and Toronto.
HPVP Fund IV is backed by repeat backers, including the Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund, RK Mellon Foundation, Renaissance Venture Capital, and new partner institutions, including NVNG and Cintrifuse Capital.
The close of Fund IV brings HPVP’s total assets under management to approximately $320 million, including the $25 million Fund I closed in 2012, $65 million Fund II raised in 2015, $100 million Fund III raised in 2019, and $30 million Opportunity Fund closed in 2021.
This new fund has already invested in two companies to date. These are as follows:
- Diffit: A company, that leverages generative AI to enable teachers to create just the right lesson plans for all of their students
- CivCheck: A startup, which partners with cities and architects to accelerate the building permitting process.
Portfolio of investments
Hyde Park Venture Partners has backed ShipBob, FourKites, G2, LogicGate, and Dentologie, among many others. Altogether, HPVP’s portfolio companies have raised over $1 billion in follow-on financing rounds.
Over the past years, several HPVP portfolio companies have exited. Some of these include VNDLY (Workday, $510M), Tock (Squarespace, more than $400M), Pear Deck (GoGuardian), and FairX (Coinbase).
Early-stage VC
Founded in 2012, Hyde Park Venture Partners has added talent to its team, including Jim Conti as Talent Partner and investors Victoria Leon and Carlos Covarrubias, who was recently promoted to Vice President.
“Hyde Park Venture Partners was one of the earliest funds to bet on the success of the Illinois and broader Midwest startup ecosystem, and has been a catalyst in enabling our local ecosystem’s growth as their fund has matured,” said Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs. “We’re excited to continue to partner with them as they back the next generation of exceptional founders and companies in the Midwest.”
“Hyde Park Venture Partners has been an amazing partner to ShipBob since our earliest days,” said Dhruv Saxena, CEO and Co-Founder of ShipBob, a leading ecommerce omnifulfillment platform and HPVP portfolio company. “Their connections, expertise, and overall value-add support have been invaluable in helping us reach our global scale.”
“We continue to be wildly excited about working with skilled founders building important companies in the Midwest and Toronto. The sustained success of ShipBob, FourKites, G2, and many others in our portfolio have helped put our geography on the national startup stage,” said Allison Lechnir, HPVP Partner. “Fund IV will see us continue to back top founders with our direct capital, but also with introductions to the talent and later stage partners our portfolio companies need to grow.”
