Insight Partners, Precursor Ventures join Hustle Fund in raising new fund money

NelsonG · November 4, 2020

Even as the country is in the final days of a polarizing election, the cogs of VC never stop turning. On this ever-so-quiet, non-election-news Tuesday, venture firms still managed to file paperwork with the SEC indicating newly raised funds. Precursor Ventures and Insight Partners will join Hustle Fund in closing new capital.

The filings are noteworthy because they signal new capital coming into the startup world, which could look dramatically different in the coming weeks. Still, Precursor Ventures and Hustle Fund are both still fundraising, so expect them to (hopefully) add more capital in the coming months.

Precursor Ventures, led by Charles Hudson, has raised a new tranche of capital to invest in pre-seed companies. The firm first filed in March 2020 that it had plans to raise a $40 million fund, and today it appears that it has closed $29 million of that goal. Recent investments from Precursor include The Juggernaut, mmhmm and TeamPay. The fund made headlines recently because it promoted Sydney Thomas, its first hire, to principal. Hudson was unable to comment due to fundraising activity.

Precursor Ventures’ Charles Hudson on ‘the conversation no one has during an upmarket’

We also saw a filing from Insight Partners, which closed a $9.5 billion fund in April for startups and growth-stage investments, indicating that it has raised money for its first-ever Opportunity Fund. The SEC filing shows that Insight Partners has raised $413 million for the opportunity fund. Insight did not return a request for comment.

Earlier today, SEC filings also showed that Hustle Fund has raised $30 million for a second fund, surpassing its previous fund of $11.5 million. Interestingly, paperwork for this new fund was first filed in May 2019 with the intention to raise $50 million. Today’s news, thus, is its first close. While the firm is still fundraising, it’s a long gap between filing and first close. The fund was launched in 2018 by ex-500 Startup partners Eric Bahn and Elizabeth Yin to, similar to Precursor, invest in pre-seed startups. Hustle Fund invests $25,000 checks into 50 startups per year.

Yin declined to comment due to ongoing fundraising activity.

While the spree of funds on Election Day was noteworthy, it was somewhat expected. Generally speaking, funds want to get their paperwork cleared and closed before a potentially chaotic event or time of unrest. We saw closes from OpenView, Canaan, True Ventures and more, while firms including First Round and Khosla filed paperwork for new funds. Time will tell if this is a final exhale of news until January 1, or if the VC world will continue pushing droves of capital, holidays be damned.