Coming Full Circle—Joining Primary Venture Partners
Below, our newest Primary team member Curtis Lee takes time to introduce himself and share why he chose to join us.
I’m excited to share that I’ve joined Primary Venture Partners as a Venture Partner in New York City. I’ll be investing in seed-stage companies, but also incubating ideas for new startup opportunities. It’s a unique role that aligns perfectly with my interests and background.
A little about me: I was last a “professional” investor 14 years ago. Looking back, I was clueless. As much as I had good intentions in helping my companies succeed, I really didn’t know how to move the needle for them. All the fundamental skills of operating a company — hiring and firing, fundraising, and scaling — were theory to me. Most importantly, I didn’t have empathy for how difficult entrepreneurship truly is. Luckily, I did something about it.
For a decade, I took on various product leadership roles at Groupon, Zynga, YouTube, and Google. However, it was my time founding and scaling Luxe that inspired me to come back to the world of venture. Those five years were some of the most challenging and difficult of my life, but also the ones from which I learned the most. Through success and failure, I learned more about myself and who I like to work with. Through my investors, I came to appreciate the value of a VC’s unwavering support. Whether it was Shishir Mehrotra’s sharp intellect, Ryan Sarver’s deep empathy, or Naval Ravikant’s tactical insights, I couldn’t have achieved what I did without all of those who supported me. This experience shaped my desire to pay it forward to a new generation of entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship has an uncanny way of humbling you and stripping you down to reveal who you really are. There are the anxious moments when you’re down to the last month of runway and you’re on to your fiftieth pitch with still no lead. Or when you’re scaling the company so quickly that your processes and product start falling apart. Or when you’re doing layoffs and telling your family that you’re not taking any salary until you can right the ship. I’ve been there. And that’s why I have so much admiration for entrepreneurs. As someone who’s been in your shoes, I promise to serve you and be the investor that I loved working with as an entrepreneur.
I’ve seen how important this commitment and understanding is to my partners at Primary. Ben and Brad have created a firm whose culture of helping companies is intertwined with everything we do. Just ask our founders. And if you haven’t heard of Primary yet, you will soon. We like to think of ourselves as a Series A company. We have some product/market fit, but still have so much to prove. As a startup guy, I love this mentality and look forward to building it here.
Primary’s unique perspective on venture also drew me here. We believe that incubation is a pillar for strong future returns. It allows us to cultivate relationships with the best entrepreneurs at the earliest stage — pre-company formation. With our process, insights, and network, we believe we can produce outsized returns for our investors. Investing and starting companies with great people — things I’m already passionate about — feels like an opportunity too good to miss.
Founders, I look forward to meeting you and hearing your audacious vision of the future. I can be reached at curtis at primary dot vc / @curtislee.
—Curtis Lee, Primary Venture Partner
