Primary Venture Partners (Primary), a VC firm focused exclusively on investing in New York City startups, has announced the launch of a new $150m fund, the largest seed fund dedicated to New York City startups to-date. In addition to this third fund, Primary today announced it has closed $50m for its second Select fund—closing a total of $200m across these two new funds.
Primary will use this third fund to invest in the most talented founders entirely from the New York City tech ecosystem as they work to build the next generation of transformational businesses, further solidifying the firm’s loyalty to local entrepreneurs.
Primary’s current and previous portfolio companies have experienced success, such as Jet.com which was acquired by Walmart for $3.3B, Mirror which sold to Lululemon for $500m, K Health which recently achieved Unicorn status with a $1.5B valuation and Latch which is merging to go public via a Tishman Speyer SPAC that values the company at over $1.5B.
Despite COVID’s economic impact, Primary recognizes that New York City is the second biggest tech ecosystem in the world valued at $147B, and the firm remains devoted to keeping it on top.
“New York City has diversity, grit and passion in a way that no other city has, and we firmly believe that this multi-dimensional magnetism is core to the evolution and ever-growing success of the startups that are created here,” said Brad Svrluga, Co-Founder and General Partner at Primary.
“Our diversity—of people, industries and cultural assets—and the breadth of domain expertise in our workforce—across finance, fashion, advertising, real estate, media, CPG, pharmaceuticals and more—are this market’s and Primary’s greatest assets. It is this diversity that led the city to bounce back from the Global Financial Crisis, which so many thought would be a crippling blow to New York. Instead, the tech community in many ways was fueled by the meltdown on Wall Street and has never looked back.
“Now, as the city begins to rebound from COVID, we are doubling down on our commitment while many others fear for the future of this market, and will continue to play an integral role in shaping the next wave of New York City startups which we believe will be stronger than any other market in the country.”
Ben Sun, Co-Founder and General Partner at Primary, added: “As a lifelong New Yorker, I’m excited to invest in the next generation of New York City startups and continue to work with the amazing founders that call this city home. We have seen an influx of great entrepreneurial talent in New York over the last decade. When we started Primary, I wanted to build a firm that could provide the support to founders that I never had on my own founder journey as an operator. Six years later, I’m proud to say that we are having that impact, as our founders tell us every day.
At the same time, our bet on my hometown—a bet that was far from obvious to people when we got started in 2014—has proven to be a very wise one. NYC has now emerged as one of the most important startup markets in the world, and the best is yet to come.”
