Lightbank is a financial organization that specializes in making venture capital investments in "disruptive" technology companies in the United States including seed investments, Series A round and late-stage investments. It combines investment with guidance and direct involvement with the companies it invests in. Unlike most investors in technology companies, it does not concentrate its investments in Silicon Valley, but prefers to have a presence across the United States. It was founded by Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky. It is headquartered in Chicago and it has made investments in companies in Chicago, New York City, Omaha and the Bay Area.
Investments
Lightbank has invested in a number of companies, including the deal-of-the-day website Groupon. Lightbank's Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell were two of the original co-founders, along with Andrew Mason of Groupon.
Other Lightbank investments include Mediaocean, InnerWorkings, loyalty startup Belly, test preparation service BenchPrep, Qwiki, ClusterFlunk and HighGround.
Partners
Lefkofsky was a co-founder of Lightbank, though he became 'Special Advisor' in 2014-2015 during his tenure as CEO of Groupon. He then returned to Lightbank as managing partner in November 2015 after stepping down as CEO of Groupon.
Paul Lee, a partner at Lightbank, left the venture fund in November 2014 to start Roniin, a venture capital incubator which has a mentor model where veteran entrepreneurs mentor fresh ones and Roniin provides seed capital to hopefully increase chances of startup success.
Victor Pascucci III was announced as managing partner of Lightbank in February 2017. This move allowed Lefkofsky and Keywell to step back and focus on their growing start-up companies. Pascucci was most recently a partner at Munich Re, a German reinsurance company.
See also
- Venture builders
References
External links
- Official website
- Lightbank profile on CrunchBase
- Lightbank profile on AngelList
