Chicago VC firm M25 adds Ryan Coon as venture partner
THE REMAINDER OF
Ryan Coon, who sold his Chicago startup to Realtor.com in 2020, explains why he's switching to the other side of the table.
A local early-stage venture capital firm has added a new venture partner with ties to Chicago's tech scene as it aims to find the Midwest's next unicorn.
Ryan Coon has joined M25, bringing with him direct knowledge of what it's like to launch a startup in the Windy City.
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After founding Chicago startup Avail, Ryan Coon is moving to the other side of the table by joining M25 as its new venture partner.
Courtesy of M25
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Coon's most recent venture, Avail, a Chicago startup he co-founded in 2012 and for which he served as CEO, was acquired by Realtor.com in 2020 after it raised $10 million and served more than a million landlords and renters. The platform provided tools and resources to improve the landlord-tenant relationship.
Coon thinks his experience launching and scaling a startup and raising capital will add a fresh perspective to an early-stage venture firm focused on finding startups headquartered in the Midwest.
M25 launched a $31.8 million fund in 2021 and has become one of the most active investors in the Chicago market, backing more than 50 startups in Chicagoland including Kin Insurance, Chowly and Continuum. M25 first launched nearly 10 years ago with a mission to support Midwest-headquartered startups.
Coon spoke with the Chicago Business Journal about why he decided to join the Midwest-focused firm.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What made you want to switch to the other side of the table?
Now is the right time for me, both personally and professionally. I think on the personal front, have a couple of young kids, and so I see this as a way to be still be involved in the venture ecosystem but outside the founder/CEO chair.
And professionally it just seems like a really good match between the experience of going through all the different stages of growing a company, from literally writing the first line of code to selling and and sharing that news with our team and investors. Along that journey, I made a ton of mistakes, and so I really view this as an opportunity to help others in the M25 portfolio to avoid a lot of those mistakes and things we screwed up.
How do you think your experience in launching a startup in Chicago will serve you in evaluating where M25 should invest?
As a investor, there's three things that you've got to do really well: You've got to be able to raise capital from the limited partners. You've got to deploy and invest that capital. And you've got to support your portfolio companies.
With each of those three things, my experience growing and selling a company in Chicago will be helpful. I know firsthand: I had a number of advisors and investors who were former operators and those were my favorite and best investors as founder.
How do you think it will help when advising and talking to startups?
When we raised our last round, I got 168 no's before finally getting a yes. I think it will be helpful to have a former operator around to say and be able to identify holes in pitches and identify things that maybe even founders haven't thought about.
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