In a dynamic landscape where venture capital often gravitates towards established coastal hubs, Samara Mejía Hernández, founding partner of Chingona Ventures and a distinguished member of the NVCA’s Board of Directors, stands as a pivotal figure challenging conventional norms. Featured in the NVCA’s "Meet a VC" series, which aims to spotlight the diverse personalities, perspectives, and deeply held convictions shaping the venture capital industry, Hernández embodies a powerful conviction: transformative ideas are ubiquitous, and those closest to societal challenges are often uniquely positioned to engineer their solutions. Operating from Chicago, Chingona Ventures strategically focuses on pre-seed and seed-stage investments, deliberately targeting founders and markets that have historically been overlooked by traditional venture networks, thereby forging new pathways for innovation and economic growth.
A Career Forged in Finance, Redirected by Vision
Hernández’s professional journey began at the venerable institution of Goldman Sachs, where she honed her analytical prowess across fixed income, asset management, and business strategy. This foundational experience provided her with an invaluable understanding of financial markets and complex business operations. However, a pivot occurred when she transitioned to the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management. While her commitment to finance remained steadfast, the precise trajectory of her career was still in development. It was during this period that a pivotal venture capital course, coupled with an immersive internship alongside a local investor, profoundly altered her professional path.
"I absolutely fell in love with the ambiguity of it," Hernández recounted, reflecting on her initial foray into venture capital. Her fascination stemmed from the industry’s inherent capacity to champion "wild things"—nascent products, uncharted industries, and entirely new markets. This environment, she realized, offered a unique opportunity to integrate the rigorous analytical discipline acquired at Goldman Sachs with the imaginative foresight essential for pioneering new ventures. More profoundly, venture capital presented a significant responsibility: the power to influence which groundbreaking ideas receive the crucial resources necessary to materialize. "You get to decide what gets funded," she asserted, "You get to decide what products get built in the world you want to live in." This realization underscored the profound societal impact embedded within investment decisions.
This responsibility intensifies significantly at the pre-seed stage, the earliest phase of venture funding. Hernández frequently engages with founders when their ventures are nascent, often little more than conceptual frameworks. In this capacity, she frequently serves as the inaugural investor to validate their vision, the first point of contact when unforeseen challenges arise, and a foundational partner guiding them from an abstract concept to tangible customer engagement. For many founders, particularly those accustomed to a litany of rejections from more conservative funding sources, this initial vote of confidence can be a transformative catalyst, unlocking subsequent opportunities and instilling invaluable momentum.
Chingona Ventures: A Midwest Powerhouse and its Investment Thesis
The establishment of Chingona Ventures was rooted in a foundational principle that permeates both its investment strategy and its broader philosophical outlook on the innovation economy: exceptional companies can emerge from any geographical location, founded by entrepreneurs from every conceivable background. This ethos positions Chingona Ventures as a counter-narrative to the prevailing concentration of venture capital in Silicon Valley and other coastal tech hubs.
Being strategically based in the Midwest provides Hernández with a distinct vantage point, enabling her to identify problems and opportunities that often remain obscured within the well-trodden paths of established coastal venture networks. "Being outside of the Valley and outside of these core networks provides a perspective on what 99 percent of the population is facing," she explained. "You get to be outside of this bubble, and you get to see these real problems." This geographical advantage allows Chingona Ventures to tap into a wealth of undercapitalized innovation, addressing challenges pertinent to a broader demographic.
Indeed, the disparities in venture capital allocation are stark. Data consistently reveals that startups founded by women, particularly women of color, receive a disproportionately small fraction of total venture funding. For instance, Latina founders historically secure less than 0.5% of all venture capital dollars, despite representing a significant and growing demographic. Similarly, while Midwest VC funding has seen growth, it still significantly lags behind California and New York, yet many reports suggest that Midwestern startups can offer competitive or even superior returns on investment due to lower burn rates and different market dynamics. Chingona Ventures actively seeks to rectify these imbalances, recognizing that investment in these overlooked sectors is not merely altruistic but a strategic imperative for generating alpha.
The "real problems" Hernández references are multifaceted, encompassing critical societal issues such as disparities in healthcare access, significant gaps in educational and workforce mobility, the pervasive challenge of food deserts, and formidable barriers to financial opportunity for underserved communities. Technology, she firmly believes, possesses the transformative potential to address these complex challenges. However, this potential can only be fully realized if investors are willing to transcend conventional geographical boundaries, look beyond familiar networks, and broaden their aperture to include a more diverse spectrum of founder profiles.
Chingona Ventures’ investment thesis spans several critical sectors: financial technology (fintech), the evolving future of work, the transformative future of learning, and health technology (healthtech). Rather than adhering to a narrow, conventional founder profile, the firm actively seeks industries undergoing significant paradigm shifts and, crucially, founders whose unique lived experiences provide them with an uncommon, granular understanding of their target markets. This approach acknowledges that deep personal insight into a problem often translates into the most effective and innovative solutions.
Hernández shared a compelling example from her portfolio: a founder who immigrated to the United States and initially attended Loyola University Chicago but was compelled to temporarily withdraw due to financial constraints. A subsequent technical certification proved instrumental, enabling him to secure better-paying employment and ultimately complete his degree. This personal odyssey illuminated the profound economic empowerment offered by alternative education pathways, shaping his career trajectory within the industry. Years later, this founder embarked on building a company dedicated to modernizing professional testing and certification—a vital, yet historically sluggish, market segment spanning healthcare, food service, graduate admissions, and various other industries. Notably, this founder was not a young Silicon Valley dropout, but a Midwestern operator in his 50s, distinguished by profound industry expertise and a firsthand understanding of the problem he sought to solve. Chingona Ventures became his inaugural institutional investor, leading the round and providing continuous support as the company scaled. "He understood the customer in a unique way," Hernández emphasized. "The opportunities where we believe we can drive alpha are the ones that are not obvious yet." This illustrative case powerfully demonstrates how expanding access to venture capital simultaneously strengthens investment performance and the broader economy. By widening their field of vision, investors like Hernández are uniquely positioned to uncover founders, markets, and sources of innovation that have been consistently overlooked by others, generating both financial and social returns.
The "Chingona Factor": Assessing Grit and Resilience
The term "Chingona," a Spanish colloquialism Hernández uses to denote a "badass woman," is more than just a bold name for her firm; it is a foundational element that profoundly informs the team’s rigorous evaluation of entrepreneurs. To ensure an equitable and expansive talent search, Chingona Ventures mandates that every founder—irrespective of whether they are referred through a trusted contact or initiate contact via a cold outreach—completes the identical submission process. This standardized point of entry is critical for identifying talent beyond the firm’s immediate network, effectively mitigating the inherent biases often associated with warm introductions, which can inadvertently perpetuate existing inequalities in access to capital.
As an integral component of this process, entrepreneurs are invited to articulate their "Chingona Factor." This is not merely a biographical detail but a narrative opportunity for founders to highlight a specific experience that unequivocally demonstrates their grit, creativity, resilience, or resourcefulness. For Hernández, these personal narratives provide indispensable context, especially during the earliest stages of a company’s lifecycle, when operational history may be limited and concrete performance data scarce. While Chingona Ventures maintains a rigorous diligence process that meticulously scrutinizes the product, business model, customer base, and market dynamics, the firm places equally significant emphasis on understanding the individual at the helm—the person who will ultimately be responsible for navigating the inevitable uncertainties and formidable challenges inherent in building a groundbreaking company.
"Especially at the early stage, it is really about the human," Hernández stated. "What about you makes us believe that you are going to keep going—that you can fail over and over again and continue to get up?" This profound inquiry underscores the belief that a founder’s background is not merely tangential to the investment case; it is, in fact, integral. A founder’s unique experiences can elucidate precisely why they recognized an opportunity others missed, reveal the depth of their empathy and understanding for their target customer, and provide compelling evidence of their capacity to persevere through the myriad obstacles intrinsic to company building. This holistic assessment, deeply rooted in the "Chingona Factor," is a testament to the firm’s commitment to backing not just promising ideas, but also exceptionally resilient individuals.
Partnership Beyond Capital: Strategic Engagement for Scaling Success
At Chingona Ventures, the act of writing an investment check is merely the genesis of a much deeper, more engaged relationship with a founder. Hernández consciously and deliberately tailors the nature of this partnership to the specific needs of each entrepreneur. In some instances, the most effective contribution an investor can make is to provide the necessary capital and grant the founder ample autonomy to execute their vision. However, when a company requires more active support and strategic guidance, Hernández meticulously focuses on two critical areas where her extensive experience proves particularly invaluable: fundraising and sales.
Chingona Ventures actively assists its portfolio founders in various capacities, including facilitating the introduction of additional investors into their funding rounds, strategically preparing them for future financing stages, developing robust go-to-market strategies, expertly negotiating complex contracts, converting pilot programs into sustained partnerships, and meticulously building out early-stage sales teams. This bespoke support is particularly consequential during the formative period when a company is striving to establish its first repeatable systems and transition from a promising concept into a durable, scalable business entity.
Hernández’s distinct approach to sales is, in itself, highly instructive. "People think sales is pitching, but it is actually listening," she profoundly observed. "The more you listen, the more you can understand the problem." This philosophy transcends sales, serving as a guiding principle for her work as an investor. By listening intently and empathetically to founders, and by extension, to the communities their ventures aim to serve, Hernández is uniquely positioned to discern not only the compelling commercial opportunities but also the profound, larger-scale impact a company could ultimately create. This deep engagement fosters a more symbiotic relationship, ensuring that capital is not just deployed, but strategically amplified.
Opening Doors for the Next Generation: A Legacy of Support
Hernández did not initially embark on her venture career with the explicit ambition of launching her own fund. The inception of Chingona Ventures arose from her astute recognition of a significant market opportunity that few investors—particularly within the Midwest—were actively pursuing. The journey of building the firm from the ground up was, at times, characterized by isolation. In its nascent stages, the venture ecosystem offered fewer structured communities and dedicated programs designed to guide emerging managers through the intricate processes of fundraising and firm formation. It was through the crucial support of the NVCA (National Venture Capital Association) and its affiliate, Venture Forward, that Hernández found indispensable guidance. Their educational programs and office hours provided vital connections to seasoned members of the venture community, forging relationships that were instrumental in transforming an ambitious idea into a robust institution capable of backing other ambitious ideas.
Motivated by her own formative experiences, Hernández later committed to serving on Venture Forward’s board and subsequently joined the NVCA’s Board of Directors. Her motivation was clear: she sought to extend the same critical opportunities and support she had received to others navigating similar paths. She envisioned a stronger, more interconnected ecosystem where the guidance that had once propelled her forward could become a clear pathway for the next generation of investors.
The most enduring lesson gleaned from the arduous process of building Chingona Ventures is also the invaluable advice Hernández frequently offers to aspiring founders and emerging managers alike. "You are going to get 10 million noes, but you just need one yes," she articulated with conviction. "I had one anchor LP who believed in me and wrote that first check. After that, other checks came in." This initial commitment extends far beyond mere capital; it generates crucial momentum, signals credibility to subsequent investors, and, most importantly, provides an individual with the profound opportunity to demonstrate the untapped potential that others have yet to recognize. It is this powerful multiplier effect of a single, decisive "yes" that can unlock a cascade of future possibilities.
Returns That Reach Beyond a Single Company: A Multiplier Effect
What fuels Hernández’s unwavering commitment to venture capital is the transformative work of the founders she champions and the pressing problems their companies are diligently solving. She frequently highlights portfolio companies like Teal Health, which has pioneered an at-home cervical cancer screening option. This innovation is poised to significantly expand access for women residing in medically underserved areas or those confronting other systemic barriers to conventional care. Across Chingona’s diverse portfolio, founders are actively tackling complex challenges across health, education, the future of work, and financial inclusion—constructing viable businesses that possess the dual potential to profoundly improve lives while simultaneously generating competitive financial returns for investors.
These returns, in turn, create a powerful ripple effect throughout the entire ecosystem. Chingona Ventures’ limited partners include not only traditional institutional investors but also a range of public and community-focused organizations. Poignantly, a scholarship organization that had once provided Hernández with crucial financial assistance for her own education later became an investor in her fund. The profound significance of this full-circle moment was not lost on her. A successful investment by Chingona Ventures could directly enable that same scholarship organization to support a greater number of students facing the identical barriers she once navigated.
This exemplifies the true multiplier effect of venture capital: an initial investment in a fund cascades into vital investment in founders; these founders, in turn, meticulously build innovative companies, develop groundbreaking products, and create essential jobs; ultimately, successful outcomes return capital to institutions serving retirees, students, taxpayers, and entire communities. "I get to help these incredible founders who are told no every single day, who may not come from traditional communities but are obsessed with a problem that needs to be solved," Hernández passionately stated. "You get to be their first yes. You get to believe in them before everybody else."
Samara Mejía Hernández’s remarkable narrative is a vibrant reflection of the expanding breadth and increasing inclusivity of American venture capital. As a Latina investor operating from the heart of Chicago, she is not merely building a successful financial institution; she is actively opening critical doors for a new generation of investors and passionately backing founders whose audacious ideas hold the potential to transform entire industries and uplift communities. For Hernández, the profound privilege of working in venture capital extends beyond merely envisioning the future before it arrives. It lies, more fundamentally, in empowering a greater number of diverse individuals to believe they possess a rightful and integral place in the monumental task of building it.
