Ben Sun
@bksun
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@PrimaryVC NYC born and raised. Founded Community Connect. Investor in Coupang, Jet,Latch,Slice,Chief,Mirror, Noom, Ollie,K Health,Pattern,Dandy, YipitData
NYC
Joined April 2009
Wonderful but weird to be on #ForbesMidas. Having been a founder, I got into investing to stay involved in early-stage building. It's a lot easier on this side! 40 companies, 12 years, 8 unicorns, and 1 decacorn later, I have some lessons and predictions:
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Our impact team is on fire this year. Just hit 140 hires placed at portfolio companies. Saved them over $5M already on agency fees. Time to placement and 12 month retention both are world class. Keep up the good work team!
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10 years ago there were only 3 private unicorns in NYC. Now we have maps showing where the most unicorn crowded neighborhoods are!
linkedin.com
The Most Unicorn-Crowded Neighborhoods in New York Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten From the Battery to the top of Manhattan Chelsea and Clinton lead New York's unicorn landscape with an impres...
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Amazing to see where @slice is now. Over the last few years they have been quietly building a suite of products and services to empower independent pizza shop owners. Now they are rolling out @IlirSela/ bold vision.
I’ve never been more proud of where @slice is than today. When I started Slice, my mission was simple: give independent pizzerias the same unfair advantages as big pizza chains — the technology, the buying power, and marketing muscle — while celebrating their independence.
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Introducing Oasis: the first playable AI-generated game. We partnered with @DecartAI to build a real-time, interactive world model that runs >10x faster on Sohu. We're open-sourcing the model architecture, weights, and research. Here's how it works (and a demo you can play!):
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Looking for a former growth stage VC Investor for a 4-month consulting project focused on deep research and analysis within the software/SaaS industry. If you have a passion for diving into software companies, we'd love to hear from you. Please reach out to bridget@primary.vc.
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The good thing about this narrative that VC firms can’t build platform teams that have real value is that it allows what we do @PrimaryVC to be differentiated and has driven our success versus a crowded VC market.
What's the real value of VCs and how does that drive out performance? We've seen the pendulum swing between extensive services by large VC platforms to a more "traditional" approach around what an individual investor can bring to the table. Join @nchirls and I on the latest
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I find myself telling every founder I talk to how helpful @PrimaryVC has been since (and really before) they led @Cargado_'s seed round. Between their GTM team, people ops, and recruiting support, their impact team really does make an impact. My newsletter from this week was
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The “Small Problem” with Silicon Valley Dear founders, investors, LPs, Our corner of the world was once small, united by one pursuit: life’s work. Specifically, life’s work applied to innovations that serve human progress. The opposite is now true. Perception addiction reigns.🧵
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We are excited to announce @PrimaryVC leading the $120 million Series A in Etched. Buckle up.
cnbc.com
A team founded by college dropouts has raised $120 million from investors led by Primary Venture Partners to build a new AI chip to take on Nvidia.
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Meet Sohu, the fastest AI chip of all time. With over 500,000 tokens per second running Llama 70B, Sohu lets you build products that are impossible on GPUs. One 8xSohu server replaces 160 H100s. Sohu is the first specialized chip (ASIC) for transformer models. By specializing,
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I am pretty sure this was a SNL skit 30 years ago
Billionaire Peter Thiel bankrolling ‘Olympics on steroids’ event that allows athletes to dope https://t.co/WV6nOsPlnZ
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2023 has been a special year at @slice which continues to be the journey of a lifetime for me and our team. We surpassed $100M in annual revenue for the first time, we are very profitable and more excited than ever to continue to invest in our customers to keep local thriving ♥️
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My conversation with @UbertiGavin We discuss: - what happens when models become multiples cheaper and faster - why hardware is a bottleneck - how data centers and semis will need to change - why scale rules Gavin is 21! The future is bright. Enjoy! https://t.co/FZi7oDdWT0
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I tried to start a software co in NYC in 2001. It was too damn hard, so we moved it to Boston. Today, NYC is an amazing place to start -- proximity to talent, capital & customers is second to none. Proud to have played a role in growing NYC's startup scene @MongoDB @datadoghq
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A FLOOD of startups are raising before the end of the year. The top 10% will get it done fast, but HOW you run a process is key for the rest. Every Primary portco creates an FAQ doc and they share it after the first meeting Here's why + an outline that helped 1 co raise >$400M
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A few weeks ago @HarryStebbings asked me what is @IlirSela from @slice great at. I told him that @IlirSela is a learning machine. This interview captures some amazing insights from @IlirSela’s impressive development as a founder and CEO.
open.spotify.com
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch · Episode
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Raising bars @PrimaryVC….Psyched to have @emily__man join our team!
Some personal news! — excited to share that I’ve joined @PrimaryVC as a Partner to invest in the next generation of exceptional founders that are reshaping fintech and b2b software
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