IL Tech in NY
“Amazing technical training from the military” makes great Israeli founders, says Primary
Primary Venture Partners participated in IL Tech in NY, a CTech series in collaboration with Israeli Mapped in NY.
“We’re eager to invest in Israeli companies wherever they may be. There is a great pool of talent with both technical skills and real grit coming out of the military service young people experience there,” said Brian Schechter. “In particular, we think Israeli founders make great cyber and infra founders because of the amazing technical training from the military.”
Schechter joined CTech for its IL Tech in NY series in collaboration with Israeli Mapped in NY.
“We want Primary to be a first call for any of those founders even thinking about raising a pre-seed or seed round. We can be collaborative with local funds,” he added.
Fund ID
Name and type of VC: Primary Venture Partners, the world’s largest early stage VC firm
Main fields of investment: Enterprise and SMB SaaS, Consumer, Fintech, Healthcare, Infrastructure, Cyber, and Frontier Tech
Names of managing partners: Brad Svrluga, Ben Sun, Cassie Young, and Jason Shuman
Partners and/or other backers: Brian Schechter, Emily Man, Sam Toole
Year of founding/start of NY operations: 2015
Total sum of investments/size, number of funds: $1B AUM across four core and three select funds
Median investment amount/Average investment in startups: Lead investments ranging from $1-10M
Number/size of rounds led: We always aim to lead rounds, and make about 15 investments a year
General background:
Inspired by a commitment to New York City tech and the founders who bring it to life, Brad Svrluga and Ben Sun launched Primary in 2015 to build a different type of seed firm. With a mission to maximize impact, Primary has steadily built the most experienced and dynamic team in the seed landscape, anchored by the largest portfolio impact staff in the industry.
What unifies us at Primary is that we're all builders, not just backers. We partner intimately on the very hard work of companies’ earliest stages, and we are constantly looking for new ways to expand our impact, build new capabilities, and continue to set the bar for just how impactful an investor can be. When we invest, we invest with all we’ve got.
We've always been focused on New York City, and increasingly find the network we’ve built here also gives us access to top deals around the world.
The VC vision:
Primary's commitment to founders begins with how we invest: We take a low-volume, high-conviction approach—because we devote unreasonable resources toward building unfair advantages.
The differentiator, unheard of in seed VC, is Primary Impact: Outnumbering investors 2:1, this team led by C-suite execs makes hires, signs customers, and secures next rounds to supercharge the growth of New York City’s most successful startups.
Why invest in an Israeli company in New York? What advantages do such companies have?
We’re eager to invest in Israeli companies wherever they may be. There is a great pool of talent with both technical skills and real grit coming out of the military service young people experience there. In particular, we think Israeli founders make great cyber and infra founders because of the amazing technical training from the military. We want Primary to be a first call for any of those founders even thinking about raising a pre-seed or seed round. We can be collaborative with local funds.
How is the New York market different from the Israeli market?
The New York market is different in a few ways, particularly in (a) access to customers and (b) sector diversity. You have so many customers from the biggest companies in the world here – it is the greatest market possible to build a startup and sell software. Additionally, the diversity of types of companies is incredible – fintech, consumer, classic B2B SaaS, and increasingly infra all have phenomenal representation from some of the greatest companies in the world in all of those sectors.
How do Israeli entrepreneurs/startups differ from their local counterparts?
Israelis tend to be much more tech and product-focused than US founders, while Americans tend to focus more on the market, the story, and the positioning. American VCs tend to want to hear a startup pitch that centers around the market opportunity and a ‘Why Now’, but Israelis tend to want to talk about the tech – this is a gap that’s easy to bridge but sometimes Israeli founders need the right coaching around how to talk to US VCs.
How do you assess the risk involved in investing in Israeli companies in the current situation?
I don’t see any more risk than normal. Startups are always insanely risky, and Israeli founders are still working like crazy to build great businesses despite the conflict.
How does the political and economic situation in Israel affect your investment decisions? Have you experienced a change in investment trends in Israel following the political and security situation?
It doesn’t impact how we think about backing Israeli founders. We treat Israeli entrepreneurs and opportunities in the same way we treat all others, and when we find exceptional people tackling huge markets, we’re happy to invest regardless of location.
Are there global trends that influence your decisions to invest in Israeli high-tech?
We think AI will bring a huge inflection in what is possible and what is needed in cybersecurity. We may be at the beginning of a new generational shift in this category, and Israel is obviously the epicenter for cyber founders. So, we are excited to meet Israeli founders building great cyber businesses, especially as we begin building out our cyber practice more at Primary.
We are in the midst of the AI revolution. Do Israeli companies have an advantage in this sector, or is there actually room for improvements?
Israelis certainly bring an interesting perspective with the cyber background, and with great technical skills generally. However, most of the best AI companies are in the US – OpenAI, Anthropic, NVIDIA, Meta, Google, etc. There are some amazing AI companies coming out of Israel, but I think we need another generation of AI research and Israelis operating at the best AI companies before we can say they have a clear advantage.
Two suggestions for Israeli entrepreneurs on what to do in New York:
- Go to Brooklyn and get some pizza – Lucali if you can, but L’Industrie, Ops, and Roberta’s are all great as well
- If it’s nice out, walk around Central Park or Prospect Park – both are great
Two suggestions for Israeli entrepreneurs on what not to do in New York:
- Avoid Times Square unless you’re seeing a Broadway show
- Take as few Ubers as possible – the subway is the way to go
Examples of 2-3 of your most successful investments:
We’re very excited about the work Etched is doing to build an ASIC specifically focused on LLM inference. We’re also excited about Cake AI, an end-to-end AIOps platform that utilizes open source components; Teleskope, an automated data security platform; and Jed (based in Israel), a cloud native Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) Platform.
