Chingona Ventures’ 2022 Wrapped

What a year it’s been! In 2022, there were many announcements made, including new hires, new investments, and much more. We are so thankful for our LPs, founders, and friends that continue to support us. In May 2022, we announced the raise of our second Fund of $52.9MM; our limited partners include PayPal Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Melinda Gates’s Pivotal Ventures, Foundry Group, and the Office of the Illinois State Treasurer’s Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund, among others. We are continuing to fund founders who have backgrounds that uniquely position them to create businesses in growth markets that are often undercapitalized; we love to invest in financial technology, female technology, the future of learning, food technology, and health/wellness technology. Now, let’s dive deeper into the numbers that summarize our past year.

In 2022, we look at over 1,700 deals, which roughly equates to 6–7 deals per day. As we always tell folks, we look at every single deal, both through cold and warm leads. In just a year, we’ve already deployed $4.9MM in total capital, with an average check size of $490k. We are also excited to announce that we made 11 new investments in the past year, anywhere from the latest tutoring platform to the next big productivity tools for teams. Read more below on our portcos from 2022:

• Beni: Beni is a browser extension that surfaces curated alternatives from secondhand marketplaces while in the flow of shopping, so shoppers can buy secondhand without changing how they shop.
• Betterleave: Betterleave is a full-spectrum bereavement benefits provider for employers.
• Boom: Boom is an Android/iOS app that enables renters to build credit with the rent payments they already make, reporting to all three credit bureaus.
• Cartwheel: Cartwheel is a best-in-class on-demand delivery management software for restaurants and beyond (grocery stores, dispensaries, etc.).
• Stealth Company A: Mobile, social app designed to connect others.
• Stealth Company B: Productivity tool for teams.
• Lirvana Labs: Lirvana Labs is a B2B2C and B2C ML-guided individually-paced learning platform with content and assessments to help kids learn.
• Scout: Scout is a professionally managed retail investment platform with themed investment categories targeted toward Gen-Z.
• Sigo Seguros: Sigo Seguros provides affordable insurance solutions to Latinx, immigrant, and working-class populations via a bilingual mobile platform.
• She Matters: She Matters is a digital health platform that integrates a network of culturally competent clinicians and a trusted community for Black mothers into one ecosystem
• Papaya: Papaya is a virtual tutoring platform that connects bilingual STEM tutors in Latin America to U.S. K-12 students.

While we don’t exclusively invest in underrepresented minorities, we are proud to say that out of all of our CEOs across Fund I and II, 45% are women, 68% are people of color, and 33% are immigrants. All of these stats beat the national averages within venture capital.

In assessing all the deals we received throughout 2022, we were able to assess how valuations changed by quarter. We didn’t quite yet see the effects of the recession until starting in the third quarter of the year. Pre-seed valuations rose for the first half of 2022 and then fell back down in the second half of the year. However, B2B pre-seed deals have continued to stay strong and on average, hovering around $6.5MM. This may seem counterintuitive as a lot of founders are struggling to raise capital and VCs are trying to navigate overinflated valuations, but this trend is in line with what Pitchbook has reported; “the amount of capital available for the early stage is still high and many investors are still willing to put top dollar in deals.” It wasn’t until Q3 that we all saw invested dollars, deal volume, and valuations generally down, as Cooley noted. Overall, experts believe this downturn trend may continue for the next 2 quarters or so, as “private markets activity typically trails the activity of the public markets.”

Similar to pre-seed deals, seed deals also saw a rise during the first half of the year. Interestingly, fintech seed deals saw the largest rise in valuations in the year’s third quarter but quickly fell in the fourth quarter. This is in stark contrast to the significant decrease in funding from VCs in the fintech sector; Fintech investments were down more than 60% YoY, from $35 billion in Q3 2021 to $13.3 billion in Q3 2022, according to Tearsheet. However, it looks like VCs were less bullish about investing in growth-stage startups, not early-stage fintech companies.

Other notable highlights from the past year include:

• We were on Beta Boom’s list of top Latinx-led funds alongside many of our friends
• We spoke on the SheConquersCapital episode about Chingona Ventures’ thesis and everything VC-related
• We spoke at eMerge Americas in Miami, along with Elias Torres, Andrew Collins, and Bo Ren
• We joined the Rise of the Rest Beyond Silicon Valley Summit and spoke on their panel regarding underfunded founders
• We were panelists at TechChicago Week, organized by P33 and World Business Chicago
• We spoke on the VITALIZE Podcast and shared more about what changed from Fund I to Fund II
• Samara Mejia Hernandez was recognized as part of Negocios Now’s 50 Most Powerful Hispanic Businesses in Illinois
• We were interviewed by the National Association of Investment Companies and gave our perspective on fintech and the Latinx community
• We spoke at the L’ATTITUDE conference about connecting Latinos in Tech
• We spoke 3686 Festival, hosted by LaunchTN, and shared top tips and advice for navigating the next 18–24 months of fundraising
• Samara Mejia Hernandez has joined the Venture Forward board as a Director alongside Barry Eggers, and Courtney McCrea,
• Samara Mejia Hernandez was featured on Business Insider as one of the Top VCs in the Midwest!
• Grisel Hernandez also joined the team as our Senior Analyst! Read more about Grisel here.

We are excited about what’s to come in 2023! Feel free to share our latest link for business submissions if you know of anyone who would like to join Chingona’s portfolio of badass founders.