Wintrust Ventures

Wintrust Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of Wintrust Financial Corporation, the Rosemont, Illinois-headquartered community-banking and financial services holding company founded by Edward J. Wehmer that operates roughly 15 wholly-owned chartered banking subsidiaries across greater Chicago and southern Wisconsin alongside wealth-management and specialty-lending businesses. Established in 2015, Wintrust Ventures is led by Senior Vice President Bailey Moore, who launched the unit at age 28 and continues to head it; in February 2022 Wintrust Financial committed an additional $50 million of capital to the Ventures program to extend its support of Chicago's innovation community. The unit's thesis pairs financial-services value-add, banking, specialty financing, wealth-management and treasury services for both portfolio companies and their founders, with equity investment, primarily into Late Seed and Series A rounds, generally as a co-investor. Sector focus areas include Enterprise SaaS, Healthcare IT, Marketplaces and Omni-Channel consumer brands, with a strong Chicago and Midwest bias. Since inception Wintrust Ventures has made approximately 52 to 102 investments depending on the database, across 42 active high-growth portfolio companies. Named investments include workforce platform The Mom Project, smart-buildings software Cohesion, specialty grocery and prepared-foods retailer Foxtrot Marketplace, premium kids' brand Monica + Andy, and direct-to-consumer furniture brand Interior Define. The Ventures program's largest historic exit on record is Megalytics, in October 2019. By pairing equity with a full suite of banking and financial services, Wintrust Ventures backs Chicago and Midwest founders across SaaS, healthcare IT, marketplaces and consumer brands.