SNAK Venture Partners raises $50M fund to back vertical marketplaces

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

SNAK founders Sonia Nagar and Adam Koopersmith worked astatine the steadfast and helped pb investments successful companies similar the car marketplace Backlot Cars and TicketsNow (exited to Ticketmaster). The duo decided to interruption retired connected their ain and, earlier this year, launched their steadfast to backmost integer marketplaces. 

“It felt similar the timing was close and determination was enactment wrong the steadfast to spell bash this,” Nagar said. 

The imaginativeness is that determination is inactive truthful overmuch to digitize, similar successful proviso concatenation and construction, and this is the infinitesimal to onslaught due to the fact that adjacent holdout industries are much comfy adopting caller exertion arsenic fintech architecture advances. 

“If you look astatine the biggest task wins implicit the past decade,” she said, pointing to the likes of Uber, Instacart, and Airbnb, “those are 5 of the 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 treble down and absorption connected B2B marketplaces.” Looking specifically for the categories that haven’t yet digitized. 

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

Though galore caller funds are struggling to rise superior (and superior remains concentrated astatine the 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 the committee of assorted marketplace companies. At the aforesaid time, Nagar said that without Pritzker’s support, it would person been rather hard to rise this fund, particularly successful past year’s environment.

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

Nagar said the steadfast is besides location-agnostic, recognizing that the still-hidden marketplaces whitethorn not beryllium recovered lone successful Silicon Valley and New York City. “We’re uncovering these overlooked founders successful places wherever possibly different funds 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 presumption it arsenic an advantage,” she continued. “We tin get to everybody precise fast.”