New York City is undoubtedly the second-best tech ecosystem in the world, behind only Silicon Valley. With more than 9000 Startups, NYC’S Startup ecosystem has quickly emerged as a prominent hub for innovation and entrepreneurship to reach a valuation of $147 billion. This growth is fueled by strong foundation of tech talent and early-stage venture capital firms, over the last few years, investment activity and round sizes have increased substantially and we’ve seen an improved exit environment for venture-backed companies. So, who are some of the most important venture capital firms in NYC? To answer that, we’ll take a closer look at some of the most successful venture capital firms in the city:
Greycroft:
Greycroft is a leading venture capital firm that focuses on technology start-ups and investments in the Internet and mobile markets. It manages in excess of $1 billion and has invested in more than 200 companies.
Greycroft is full lifecycle investor, it invests between $500000 and $10 million in a first check, and will invest up to $15 million through the venture fund. The growth fund on the other hand starts at $10 million and will invest up to $50 million in a company.
Notable investments: Venmo, Bumble, Braintree, Segment, The Huffington Post…
Tiger Global Management:
Tiger Global is an investment firm focused on public and private companies in the global Internet, software, consumer, and financial technology industries. Launched in 2003, their private equity/Venture capital business has invested in hundreds of companies across more than 30 countries, including investments ranging from Series A to pre-IPO.
Notable investments: Facebook, LinkedIn, Spotify, Stripe, Coinbase, Square, Instacart…
Insight partners:
Insight is a venture capital firm founded in New York city in 1995 by Jeff Horring and Jerry Murdock. Since its inception, Insight has raised more than $30 billion in capital and invested in more than 400 companies.
Notable investments: Shopify, Twitter, Wix, Docusign, Tumblr, Udemy, Calm, bubble…
RHO Ventures:
RHO is an NYC venture capital firm that has backed more than 250 companies since 1981, it has more than $1.1 billion in asset under management and invests across most high growth sectors of today’s economy like Information Technology, Communications, New Media, Healthcare and New Energy…
Notable investments: Auvik, Ciena, COMMERCE ONE, Fabletics, iVillage, Yantra…
Union Square Ventures:
USV is a thesis-driven venture capital firm focused on early-stage, growth capital, late-stage and startup financing. Since 2003, USV has invested in over 100 companies in the internet world, focusing on the applications layer of the web, internet services, and web services that create large networks as well as the mobile sector. Most of its invested companies are based in New York, San Francisco, London, or Berlin, as well as most places in between. It typically makes a starting investment in portfolio companies of $1 million. In certain Series A round cases, the firm may make a starting investment between $2.5 million to $3 million. It typically invests up to $20 million in any single company.
Notable investments: Coinbase, Duolingo, Twilio, Twitter, Zynga, Etsy, Firebase…
Bessemer Ventures Partners:
Bessemer is a $4B venture capital firm with offices in 6 different cities including New York city. The firm funds consumer, enterprise, and healthcare startups around the world, from seed stage to growth. They’ve been part of 130 IPOs in the last 50 years, and they’re not planning to stop anytime soon. They help founders create companies that matter, starting with seed investments and sticking at every stage of their growth.
Notable Investments: Pinterest, Skype, Twitch, Twilio, Yelp, LinkedIn, Shopify, Wix.
RRE Ventures:
RRE ventures is one of the oldest, largest, and most active venture capital firms in NYC. Since its founding 1994, RRE Ventures has raised over $2B across nine total funds, investing in over 400 companies. Their current areas of focus include enterprise software, consumer, fintech, media, real estate tech, robotics, healthcare, space…
Notable investments: Business Insider, Buzzfeed, Clubhouse, Palantir, ripple…
FirstMark Capital:
FirstMark Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm based in NYC. Founded in 2008, FirstMark’s mission is to partner with exceptional entrepreneurs who are changing the world by solving meaningful problems. It has built a deeply engaged community among the teams in its network in order to spread ideas and opportunities.
Notable investments: Pinterest, Shopify, Airbnb, Discord, Upwork…
Thrive Capital:
Thrive Capital is a venture capital firm that focuses on building and investing in the internet, software, and technology-enabled companies. It was launched in 2009 by Joshua Kushner and has raised from multiple institutional investors such as Princeton University, Wellcome Trust, and Hall Capital. According to Forbes, Thrive was one of three firms to invest in Instagram’s $50 million Series B round at a valuation of $500 million.
Notable investments: Instagram, Robinhood, Instacart, Vimeo, Spotify, Slack, GitHub…
Scout Ventures:
Scout Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm trying to make the world a better, safer place by investing in frontier and dual-use technologies built by veterans, intelligence leaders, and premier research labs.
Notable investments: Scoot, Seedinvest, REDOWL Analytics…
Alpaca VC:
Led by a diverse team of company builders, operators, and analytical thinkers, Alpaca VC leads Seed rounds in founders that are reshaping the real world helping them progress efficiently from Seed to Series A.
Notable investments: Classpass, Doorkee, The guild, Imperfect foods…
General Atlantic:
General Atlantic is a growth equity firm headquartered in New York, providing capital and strategic support for global growth companies. The firm has over $ 65 billion assets under management and focuses on investments across four sectors, including consumer, financial services, in addition to healthcare and technology. GA has more than 375 employees globally including 192 investment professionals.
Notable investments: Spendesk, Slack, Snapchat, Airbnb, Uber, Facebook, Kaspersky, Alibaba…
In conclusion, venture capital firms in NYC are an important pillar of the startup ecosystem. In fact, these firms often play a crucial part in the success of a startup, by providing not only capital but also strategic assistance, introductions to potential customers, partners, and employees, and much more.
We started a new series of articles about the best venture capital firms in major tech hubs across the world such as New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Tokyo…