Paperboy Ventures Launches Breakout CPG VC Fund, Expanding To Become A Joint Media-Funding Enterprise

What began as a platform for CPG founders to get their stories heard by investors is now an investment vehicle itself.

After nearly two years of interviewing founders from all corners of the consumer product space, Kyle Fitzpatrick, founder of Paperboy Ventures, launches the company’s first fund today.

Paperboy has been acting as a media platform to help food and beverage brands fundraise through its media network. Now, it’s putting its money where its microphone is, investing in the very brands it will feature from here on out. It’s a unique format for a venture capital fund in the CPG space and has the potential to become a popular structure, where brands get exposure and a check all in one handshake.

“This is a new model that we’re testing out,” Fitzpatrick tells me. “The goal is to be the best follow-on investor in early-stage consumer.”

Venture Capital Meets Media

The goal of Paperboy since it began has been to help brands land capital, hire great talent and get founder stories in front of the right players. Previously, featured brands on the podcast and newsletter were ones that Fitzpatrick theoretically would have invested in. “I always wanted to support these brands directly with capital,” he says. Now, he actually can.

Throughout 2026, Paperboy Ventures plans to deploy capital to Seed to Series A-stage brands with net revenue up to $10 million. “The key is to get them at that inflection point,” Fitzpatrick says. The fund has already raised a majority of its maximum goal of $3 million and is still searching for Limited Partners, who can contribute up to $250,000 each, to join until that goal is reached.

80% of that $3 million will be split evenly among the chosen eight brands for checks of $280,000. The remaining 20% will be an additional follow-on for one or two of those brands who have a particularly interesting opportunity ahead of them.

Paperboy Ventures will not be a lead investor. It will write smaller follow-on checks so that it has the ability to be involved in a variety of deals. “We don’t want to write checks that are too large,” he says. “$3 million total allows us to get into deals that are already closed.”

“The structure and strategy of our fund is totally different…The active investing period is only a maximum of two years, so we don’t have to charge management fees beyond that, where standard venture funds charge a 2% fee for ten years,” Fitzpatrick explains. “We are charging 2.5% for each of the first two years, then down to zero, which is five cents instead of 20 cents on the dollar. We are doing that because we have the ability to move quickly on these deals. It doesn’t make sense to wait to support these brands.”

One of several advisors to Paperboy Ventures is Daniel Faierman of Habitat Partners. “Paperboy has a rich history of supporting CPG startups whether through media amplification, job search support, or Kyle’s deep network,” Faierman tells me. “Capital deployment is the obvious next step for Kyle.”

The structure of Paperboy going forward is going to shift now that it’s able to deploy capital to the brands it features. The brands featured on the podcast and in the newsletter, which together reach more than 20 thousand subscribers, will now indicate that Paperboy has made an investment in it. The next episode of Paperboy Ventures will be the start of a new year and a new season, and will introduce the first of Paperboy’s portfolio companies in early 2026.

The Paperboy

Since his days on UConn’s basketball team, Fitzpatrick has been the Paperboy. Given his extreme height difference compared to his taller teammates, they gave him the nickname because former NBA player Karl Malone was known as the Mailman. Fitzpatrick looked physically Malone’s opposite, so ‘Paperboy’ stuck. Now that he’s making his mark writing newsletters and writing checks, the name was a destined precursor for what was to come.

Spending many years at Red Bull, Fitzpatrick became a CPG operator, hopping on trucks early in the morning and delivering product to accounts from mom & pop shops to stadiums. He also worked at insights firm, Numerator, which collects consumer behavior data. Numerator remains a data collaborator to Paperboy Ventures.

Fitzpatrick’s original intention when building his own business was to create a content series to help early-stage brands raise money, giving them a platform to speak directly to investors. In early 2025, he realized the impact it was having, and decided to make it his full time gig, starting to build out the fund structure.

“It’s designed to give founders a space to tell their stories in depth and why they’re well-suited to execute on what they’re trying to build,” Fitzpatrick says. “Early stage investing, when there’s little data, is much more about the humans who are building than specific numbers.”

The very first Paperboy episode featured Sauz, the fast-growing pasta sauce brand that recently raised a $12 million round led by CAVU Ventures. “I’ve seen firsthand how Kyle is amplifying opportunities for early-stage consumer brands,” Sauz cofounder Troy Bonde tells me. “He’s redefining what access and visibility look like for founders, democratizing what has historically been an incredibly difficult space to break into.”

Jesse Konig, cofounder of Jesse & Ben’s frozen french fries, was also featured on an episode, and stresses how pivotal a platform Paperboy had been. “Storytelling is everything when it comes to raising money for an early-stage CPG business,” Konig tells me. “It’s the difference between getting funded or not, or the difference between taking what you can get versus getting to be in the driver’s seat to choose the right investor and the right terms for your business… He is on the cutting edge of finding brands early in their journeys.”

With hundreds of brands already showing interest in becoming a member of the Paperboy ecosystem, other venture firms can come to Paperboy to locate highly-vetted brands who are looking for capital. Paperboy can be that launchpad. “The early-stage fundraising department is brutal,” Fitzpatrick says. “Every founder can try and tell their story, but sometimes it takes a different format and a trusted operator.”