In today’s brutal fundraising environment, finding LPs that resonate with your pitch is especially challenging for emerging managers. Rodeo Growth Partners has found success by targeting an unusual group of investors – health and wellness influencers.
The Los Angeles-based firm just held a second close on $1 million for its debut fund, which invests in consumer wellness companies at the seed and Series A stages. It began fundraising toward its target of $10 million in August 2024 and previously held a first close on $412,000.
Rodeo’s founders are Christine Silver and Kiki Somers. Silver previously founded a van conversion company after spending five years across various financial services companies, while Somers was serving as the community manager at clinical herbal products developer Hilma.
Friends since college, Silver and Somers both have a personal connection to the space they invest in. “We both come from a background of autoimmune disease which is what led us into the consumer wellness space, just realizing how deeply we’re being affected by our environments, our food, the products we use,” Silver says. “Everyone’s starting to realize that buying ingredient-conscious products is not just for one sector of the population any more. It will become mass market and, in some ways, already is.”
Silver notes that she and Somers “started Rodeo as a kind of mini accelerator program, worked with a dozen companies right out of the gate on this strategy and saw amazing results. After that we decided it made sense to raise a fund and apply this on a larger scale.”
Somers is a certified holistic health coach and influencer, which gave her a front row seat to the power that social media can have in driving company growth.
“[That experience as an influencer] has really helped me understand what a marketing scheme is versus what an actual effective product is, and it gives me some credibility on the investor side that I can see what you’re doing and understand it on a technical level,” Somers tells VCJ.
Silver says that the pair’s focus on raising from other influencers is a win for both sides, explaining that many social media influencers are tired of the “transactional nature” of their traditional paid-to-post structure while they also lack the knowledge to successfully invest in the companies they promote. Rodeo offers influencers financial returns as LPs while also diversifying their portfolio away from any one product.
“The second part of that strategy is that we don’t have any formal agreements with our influencer LPs where they’re required to post about the companies we invest in, but what we’ve found is they’re so excited to be a part of it that they’re just posting naturally,” Silver adds. “They’re not paid posts. They’re integrating these products into their lives and it’s creating this synergistic relationship between our portfolio companies and our influencer LPs.”
The firm declined to share the terms of its fund, but did name two of its influencer LPs: Liv Hedlund, a nutrition-focused influencer with approximately 400,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok, and Claire Baxter, a wellness and fashion influencer with just over 230,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok. The remainder of Rodeo’s LP base is made up of traditional emerging manager supporters, such as friends and family, company founders and family offices.
Rodeo plans to make 20 investments out of its debut fund and has already completed four. Its first investment was in the early-stage round of sauce and dip producer Sunny Fine Foods; its second was in the $3 million Series A round of eco-friendly cleaning products manufacturer Koala Eco; its third was in the early-stage round of skincare brand Hanni; and its latest was in the early-stage round of menstrual wellness product manufacturer Marlow.
Silver says that a key part of all of the firm’s investments is that they’ve each built a community on social media that connects on an emotional level with its audience, which she believes drives higher clickthrough rates, and therefore more sales. She and Somers expect this community aspect to soon be a key indicator acquirers look for when evaluating companies, especially in the health and wellness space.
“As each generation has more and more access to the internet there are more and more products out there, it’s extremely oversaturated,” Somers tells VCJ. “Our big belief is that our companies need to be able to offer something aside from just their product – they need to offer a place of belonging, education, a community element. That’s something we look for when we’re investing and something we really pride ourselves in helping them achieve.”
As for Rodeo’s name, both Silver and Somers grew up taking family trips to Colorado, and Somers spent some time working on a ranch in the state after she graduated from college, leading the pair to settle on “a western theme” for their firm.
“When we were trying to come up with names, that was the obvious tie together,” Silver explains. “It’s a wild ride starting a company, so ‘rodeo’ just fit. We’re along for the ride with you. Saddle up. We figured we could do a lot of plays on that.”
