Consumer Ventures

Consumer Ventures, formerly CompanyFirst, is a Chicago venture capital firm that invests in and helps build the next generation of consumer brands, products, retailers and the technologies that enable the consumer experience. It backs companies across pre-seed, seed, Series A and later rounds, and its stated focus categories are food, beverage, personal care, apparel, kids products and pet products.

The mechanics are unusually explicit for a venture firm. Consumer Ventures writes checks of up to $1 million, typically into US-based companies with less than $10 million in revenue, usually entering at the Series A and then reinvesting in its best performers across multiple subsequent rounds. It co-invests rather than crowding a cap table, and it states outright that it is not a unicorn hunter: the thesis is that durable consumer businesses generate their own optionality. Selection criteria run to brand strength that connects emotionally with consumers, teams capable of executing the plan in front of them, and solid fundamentals rather than narrative.

The firm's capital comes from CompanyFirst Capital Fund I LP, a $50 million Illinois vehicle registered in 2019 that had drawn $4.3 million as of its 2021 SEC amendment, alongside earlier single-asset holding vehicles. Founder Jason Starr previously ran the fund at CircleUp and spent eight years at Chicago consumer private equity firm Winona Capital. What distinguishes the firm is that positioning: Midwestern, hands-on, cross-functional across finance, strategy, marketing and operations, and openly built around asking management teams how it can help rather than around ownership targets.