# Prota Ventures

> Prota Ventures is a VC fund in Chicago backing Fashion and Big Data. See 11 investments, check sizes, portfolio and contact details. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Chicago, United States
- Total investments: 11
- Last investment: Mar 2024
- Lead investor: 18%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/prota-ventures/
- X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/protaventures
- Website: https://www.protaventures.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ProtaVentures/

Prota Ventures is a venture-building and early-stage investment firm engaged in investing in early-stage companies.The firm aims to launch inspiring new ventures and invest in early-stage founders. It generates ideas internally and co-lab projects with organizations and founders seeking strategic partnerships, conduct comprehensive experiments totest the viability of new teams, markets, and products, designs and builds hardware and software, including financial models and optimal legal structures for success, and helps companies bring prototypes to life, acquire customers, and recruit talents to facilitate growth.It was founded in Chicago, Illinois in 2016.

## Contacts

5 contacts available for Prota Ventures. Shizune tracks 10 team members at Prota Ventures. Sign up free to unlock them: https://app.shizune.co/sign-up/investor-profiles/find-team-emails/prota-ventures?utm_source=investor_profile

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Pre-Seed | $100k–$1.4M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Fashion | 1 | 9% |
| Big Data | 1 | 9% |
| Database | 1 | 9% |
| Funerals | 1 | 9% |
| Robotics | 1 | 9% |

19 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Pre-Seed | 3 | 27% |
| Seed | 1 | 9% |
| Funding Round | 1 | 9% |

## Team

| Name | Title | Investments | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| David Parrott | Managing Director | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/david-parrott |
| Gabe Coyne | Advisory | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/gabe-coyne |
| Gary Raju | CFO & Capital Managing Director | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/gary-raju-2020 |
| Kyle Buzzard | Managing Director | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/kyle-buzzard |
| Natalie Grummer | Advisor | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/natalie-grummer |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Ivee | Ivee builds in-vehicle technology to personalize the passenger experience. With Ivee Inside, passengers can control the cabin, content, and commerce in their rides. And we help the earth by doing it. Ivee's technology exclusively exists in zero or low emission vehicles. | $1.3M | Seed | Mar 01, 2024 |  |
| Glidance | Glidance develops a self-driving mobility aid for people with sight loss. It leverages advancements in robotics, AI, and autonomous systems to guide people with sight loss where they want to go. With the aid of its advanced technology, users may navigate through crowds of people and around objects with ease and safety, getting to a door, stairwell,or park seat in the area. | $1.4M | Pre-Seed | Jan 01, 2024 |  |
| RiseKit | RiseKit provides all job seekers access to a career path, regardless of the zip code in which they live. Our software connects unemployed and underemployed people from underserved communities with jobs, training programs, and supportive services to rise above barriers to their employment. We also help nonprofits, employers, government systems, andcommunity foundations save time supporting job candidates and measuring outcomes. We aim to facilitate a world where a person's ability to rise isn't defined by their zip code, social capital, or past circumstances and where nonprofit providers and employers alike can answer the question, "How can we efficiently impact and uplift the communities that we serve?" Visit us at RiseKit.co to learn more. | $3M | Venture - Series Unknown | Mar 15, 2023 |  |
| WEST X EAST | WEST X EAST: an end-to-end solution for custom-fit and on demand cultural clothing. The vertically integrated platform delivers personalized and size-inclusive garments at an accessible price-point. They have adopted Industry 4.0 in order to bring traditional clothes into a more modern method of production that allows for it to be made faster,cleaner, and better. | $200K | Pre-Seed | Oct 31, 2022 |  |
| Sydecar | Sydecar builds tools that remove the headache of organizing private investments -- so you can focus on making deals, not spreadsheets. Their lightweight, powerful technology helps you to manage subscription docs, compliance, banking, tax reporting, and admin for all of your deals, of any size, in one place. |  | Seed | Oct 22, 2022 |  |
| SendaRide | SendaRide provides customized non-emergency medical transportation for the healthcare industry. |  | Series A | Sep 20, 2022 |  |
| EasyMD | EasyMD connects users to health services form the comfort of their homes or work places. We have two main products, the first one is a telemedicine platform where you can find any Medical specialist you require and compare prices and experiences. The second part of EasyMD is our subscription base model where we offer 24/7 free doctor andmental health consultations and many other benefits. | $235K | Pre-Seed | Aug 10, 2022 |  |
| Sholder | Sholder, short for Spaceholder™, is a new standard in non-clinical mental & emotional health, powered by compassionate, skilled people from communities like yours. We provide high-affinity, one-to-one emotional support for employees in industries with heavy emotional demand and high burnout rates. |  | Seed | Jun 30, 2022 |  |
| ChargerHelp! | ChargerHelp! operates at the intersection of clean technology and workforce development. ChargerHelp!'s app-based dispatch and deployment system solves the industry-wide problem of down electric vehicle charging stations by providing on-demand repairs and maintenance support from trained and supported local workforces. This capability,provided at scale, is essential to support the exponential growth in EV charging infrastructure over the next decade, and it dramatically improves efficiency, turnaround time, and network availability while reducing costs across the networks. With the ChargerHelp! service offering, partner EV charging network operators can meet new service level requirements and win new EVSE contracts to meet the exponential growth in charging demands. The ChargerHelp! app is launched, technicians are in the field in its first market, and they've secured contracts with several large EVSE networks. |  | Venture - Series Unknown | Jan 01, 2022 |  |
| LifeWeb 360 | LifeWeb harnesses the outpouring of love that happens when someone passes to capture their essence in an authentic way, honor them, and give comfort to their family that they were seen in this world. Friends and family can share stories, photos, and videos that don't remind you that your person died, they remind you how they lived. |  | Pre-Seed | Dec 15, 2021 |  |

10 of 11 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Grep VC](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/grep-vc) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Alliance of Angels](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/alliance-of-angels) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [CMT Digital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/cmt-digital-ventures-llc) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Gold House](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/gold-house) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Greenwood and Cavalier](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/greenwood-and-cavalier) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Kalamazoo Forward Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/kalamazoo-forward-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together

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## FAQ

### What does Prota Ventures invest in?

Prota Ventures invests primarily in Fashion, Big Data and Database startups, most often at Pre-Seed and Seed stage. Most of the 11 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### What is Prota Ventures's check size?

Prota Ventures typically joins rounds of $100k–$1.4M at Pre-Seed. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Prota Ventures participates in.

### How do I contact Prota Ventures?

Public channels for Prota Ventures include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.

### Who are the partners at Prota Ventures?

The team at Prota Ventures includes David Parrott (Managing Director), Gabe Coyne (Advisory) and Gary Raju (CFO & Capital Managing Director), among 10 team members tracked by Shizune. The Team section lists each member with their title, investment count and links.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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