Opening Our Search for Primary’s Next Partner

We’ve always bet on New York City. As the largest seed-stage firm here, we have a deep appreciation for the power of this city’s diversity—in terms of industries, interests, cultures, and people. It’s a trait that we hear consistently as the key element attracting people in the tech world who move here from SF, Boston, or elsewhere, and it has undoubtedly contributed to the significant growth of our portfolio, including the five unicorns we minted in 2021 alone.

As we look toward the future, we recognize that to continue to grow, to continue to be a preferred partner to the most talented founders in this market, we need to add new and different talent to help lead our investment team. To that end, today we’re officially announcing our search for a world-class Investing Partner.

This is something we’ve been thinking about and exploring through our own networks over the past couple months, but in the interest of ensuring we see all the best candidates and make this opportunity accessible to those outside the typical VC profile, we feel it’s important to share this search in a much more public way.

So who are we looking for?

We’re committed to diversity in every sense of the word. We are eager to add to our team someone who has expertise in an important sector that we don’t yet feel we adequately have nailed. And so profiles that hold particular appeal include either a technically-minded individual with experience in infrastructure, open source, or dev tools, or a deeply fintech-experienced person with a knowledge and curiosity around the DeFi movement.

In seeking that, we don’t feel that pre-existing investing experience is essential. A killer operator with passion and curiosity could easily be the right answer. At the end of the day, we want someone who brings substantial new expertise and who will challenge us, make us rethink what we do and how we do it, and raise our collective bar. We’re looking for an exceptional athlete, a deeply curious mind with a passion for learning and exploring, and someone we’re excited to spend the next couple decades building alongside. And we say building deliberately, because we have always thought of ourselves as building a business here at Primary, not simply sitting back and hoping founders build theirs well.

In terms of gelling with our team, the current partnership shares experience as operators and founders, and with that understands the white-knuckle roller coaster ride that comes with rapid scaling, scrapping failed product launches, dealing with quadrupling your size in 12 months, recruiting top-level executive talent, and going all the way. That background helps drive the founder empathy that we place at the heart of all we do.

Based on that perspective, there are a few values our team holds close and will want to see in a future partner:

• Wear the founder’s shoes: Trust is paramount. Start with empathy and curiosity, and work collaboratively to solve problems from founders’ perspectives.
• Dive deep: Go the extra mile and do the hard work to get to data-driven answers and insights.
• Work with the best: Bring an excellent network to the table and expect a hunger to win from colleagues, founders, and operators.
• Build a ‘we’ team: Collaborate meaningfully as a team and share expertise to deliver unparalleled support.
• Challenge what’s possible: Think creatively and build. We're not in the business of what's been done before, we're redefining what seed investing can be.
• Play to win: Consider every opportunity through the lens of ultimate success. Winning doesn’t mean squeaking by, it means being 10X better.

We’re proud of where we’ve come in the past couple years, but we’re nowhere close to done. If you know candidates who align with our values and have a genuine spark, please send them our way!