Longtime New York-based seed investor, Contour Venture Partners, is making progress on its latest flagship fund after lowering its target.
The firm closed on $42 million, raised from 64 backers, for Contour Venture Partners Fund V, according to an SEC filing from May 17. The New York-based firm is targeting $70 million for its fifth flagship fund and started fundraising in May of last year.
Contour Venture Partners could not be reached for comment.
The firm initially set out to raise $90 million , according to an SEC filing from May 2023. It’s been a tough few years for venture funds looking to raise new vehicles. In the past year, VCs including DCVC , Tiger Global and Founders Fund , among others, have also lowered their fundraising expectations. Venture fundraising was down more than 50% last year compared to 2022’s record-breaking year, according to PitchBook data.
Contour writes checks between $500,000 and $1.5 million and prefers to lead rounds in seed and early-stage companies. The firm focuses on sectors including SaaS, digital media and financial services and has a preference for companies based in New York or in the Northeast.
While Contour isn’t equipped with a war chest of capital like some seed firms, it has built a track record of investing in solid companies.
The firm was one of the first checks into cloud analytics platform Datadog in 2011, which went on to IPO in 2019 with a $7.8 billion valuation. Contour backed lending-focused financial platform OnDeck back in 2006, which has struggled in recent years, but had a notable exit when it went public in 2014 with a $1.3 billion valuation.
Contour’s active portfolio includes product intelligence platform Pendo, which has raised more than $460 million in venture funding, and was last valued at $2.6 billion. The company is also an investor in Movable Ink, a data startup that has raised nearly $100 million and was last valued at $1.3 billion.
The nearly 20-year-old firm has raised more than $370 million since its founding in 2005 across four flagship funds and three opportunity funds. The firm is still led by its two founding partners, Matt Gorin and Bob Greene.