Snak Venture Partners Raises $50m Fund To Back Vertical Marketplaces

SNAK Venture Partners announced Wednesday nan adjacent of its oversubsubscribed $50 cardinal debut fund, anchored by nan finance patient Pritzker Group (founded by Illinois politician JB Pritzker and his brother, Tony).

SNAK founders Sonia Nagar and Adam Koopersmith worked astatine nan patient and helped lead investments successful companies for illustration nan car marketplace Backlot Cars and TicketsNow (exited to Ticketmaster). The duo decided to break retired connected their ain and, earlier this year, launched their patient to backmost integer marketplaces. 

“It felt for illustration nan timing was correct and location was support wrong nan patient to spell do this,” Nagar said. 

The imagination is that location is still truthful overmuch to digitize, for illustration successful proviso concatenation and construction, and this is nan infinitesimal to onslaught because moreover holdout industries are much comfortable adopting caller exertion arsenic fintech architecture advances. 

“If you look astatine nan biggest task wins complete nan past decade,” she said, pointing to nan likes of Uber, Instacart, and Airbnb, “those are 5 of nan apical 10 outcomes successful venture.” As successful those companies that raised billions from investors, went connected to IPO, and returned millions to them.

“Most of those wins were successful consumer, which tends to beryllium faster-moving than ample enterprises,” Nagar continued. “We deliberation there’s a ton of achromatic abstraction to double down and attraction connected B2B marketplaces.” Looking specifically for nan categories that haven’t yet digitized. 

The patient has already invested successful six companies, including BigRentals and Repackify, focused connected instrumentality rental and packaging logistics, respectively. Nagar said nan patient hopes to wide constitute seed checks into astatine slightest 20 companies, astatine $1 cardinal to $2 cardinal a pop. She said they dream to deploy nan full money wrong nan adjacent 3 to 4 years. 

Though galore caller costs are struggling to raise superior (and superior remains concentrated astatine nan top), Nagar said she and Koopersmith were capable to thin connected their backgrounds erstwhile wooing LPs. 

Nagar antecedently helped motorboat Amazon apparel backmost successful 2009 and was caput of mobile astatine RetailMeNot. Koopersmith, meanwhile, spent 20 years astatine Pritzker Group and serves connected nan committee of various marketplace companies. At nan aforesaid time, Nagar said that without Pritzker’s support, it would person been rather difficult to raise this fund, particularly successful past year’s environment.

Other LPs successful their money see nan State of Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund and executives from different marketplace companies, for illustration Favor Delivery and RetailMeNot. 

Nagar said nan patient is besides location-agnostic, recognizing that nan still-hidden marketplaces whitethorn not beryllium recovered only successful Silicon Valley and New York City. “We’re uncovering these overlooked founders successful places wherever possibly different costs aren’t looking,” she said. 

SNAK is itself based successful Chicago, which she said immoderate LPs person questioned. “People comprehend that arsenic a disadvantage; we position it arsenic an advantage,” she continued. “We tin get to everybody very fast.”