Chingona Ventures 2023 Wrapped

Thank you to the friends of Chingona Ventures for your support over the past year! To kick off the new year, we are excited to share our “2023 Wrapped” — an inside look into this past year’s deal flow, investments, and the Chingona Ventures team.

2023 was quite a year — we reviewed over 1,700 business submissions from both cold and warm introductions, averaging to 3–5 deals reviewed per day. We deployed $1.75MM in capital to new Fund II portfolio companies with an average check size of ~$583k. On top of that, we allocated an additional $880k in follow-on investments.

Looking back at deal submissions in 2023, over 60% of businesses were raising pre-seed rounds. Reflecting our sector focus on FinTech, Food Tech, Future of Learning, Future of Work, and Health & Wellness, nearly 25% of submitted businesses were in FinTech, closely followed by Healthcare Tech.

While we witnessed generally inflated company valuations across the industry for most of 2022, our internal deal data shows that valuations started to come down in 2023. After looking back at the deals we received this year, the majority were at $5MM-$10MM pre-money valuations.

Of the 1,700+ deals reviewed in 2023, we were thrilled to welcome three new companies to the Chingona Ventures portfolio:

• Meili Technologies — Meili Technologies aims to stop crashes, save lives, and enable mobility for all by offering operator-facing, computer vision-based safety solutions for passenger and commercial vehicles.
• Tendrel — Tendrel is a workforce optimization platform built for frontline industries that digitizes operations, turning paper and clipboards into visible, actionable data.
• Viva — Viva is a home rental rewards platform allowing renters to earn cash back on their rent payments to save, invest, and achieve personal goals.

We also made a few exciting changes to our team. Peri Ehlman joined the firm as an Analyst, and Grisel Hernandez was promoted to Associate. In addition, we hired five interns from the Kellogg School of Management. We also had a few firsts, hosting our first Annual General Meeting back in June and our first team offsite in July. And, most notably, Samara Mejia Hernandez and her husband, Ben, welcomed a baby girl to their family in December.

Lastly, Chingona Ventures was featured in many noteworthy panels, articles, and other media, including:

• Samara participated as a speaker in several panels including those hosted by All Raise, Chicago Entrepreneurship Summit, Chicago Tech Week, eMerge Americas, L’Attitude Ventures, SomosVC, TechCrunch, and Venture Forward. She was also interviewed on Bloomberg TV and SHPE National.
• During Women’s History Month, Samara was featured by Venture Forward, CNBC en Español, and the Latino Corporate Directors Association. She was also honored by Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza. In addition, Crunchbase highlighted Chingona Ventures as a women-led investment firm.
• In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, Samara was featured in an article by the Candide Group and in a piece by the National Association of Investment Companies (NAIC) exploring the impact of Hispanic-owned alternative asset management firms.
• Samara was highlighted by Pivotal Ventures as one of four women of color contributing to a more equal world. She was also named a Latina National Leader by EsTiempo and Triad Leadership Solutions.
• Samara was selected to join the Aspen Institute’s Finance Leaders Fellowship.
• Chingona Ventures was featured in an article by Axios Latino about the impact of the economic climate on diversity gains in venture capital and in a member profile by the National Association of Investment Companies (NAIC).
• Grisel participated in a panel discussion regarding venture capital careers organized by Chicago:Blend. She also published an article on the Latino Investable Opportunity.
• Peri published an article on her Journey to Chingona Ventures.

That’s a wrap! We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and wish you a happy New Year. Bring it on, 2024!

As always, feel free to share our latest link for business submissions if you know of anyone in your network who would like to join Chingona Ventures’ portfolio of fearless founders.