Winners Welcome Podcast, Episode 11 with Ben Sun, Co-Founder of Primary Venture Partners.

Ben Sun built Primary Venture Partners on a bet nobody else wanted to make: New York.

Back in 2013, when Ben Sun and Brad Svrluga sat down for what was supposed to be a one-hour lunch, they ended up talking for two and a half. Not just about the daily deals space where their paths had crossed, but about a shared conviction: seed investors weren’t actually helping founders, and New York City’s startup ecosystem was about to change everything. Two and a half hours later, Primary was born.

Ben’s path there wasn’t a straight line. He founded Community Connect out of a one-bedroom apartment in Midtown, built Asian Avenue and BlackPlanet before “social networking” was even a term, and spent two years getting turned down by Bay Area VCs who couldn’t picture Black and Asian communities online. After selling the company, he became an angel investor, riding early bets on Coupang and Groupon-style startups before formalizing that instinct into Primary.

In this episode, Ben walks through what it actually took to scale a seed fund without losing its edge: building dedicated recruiting, go-to-market, and AI tooling teams that most boutique firms can’t afford, launching Altus to bring real research rigor to a notoriously opaque asset class, and why he thinks the industry’s obsession with fund size misses the point entirely. He also gets candid about what he’s learned from the people who bet on him early, and what he still owes them.

Our podcast is sponsored by Gunderson Dettmer #PoweredByGunderson

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About The Winners Welcome Podcast

The Winners Welcome Podcast brings elite founders and top investors into thoughtful conversations on pushing past possible, sharing the conviction, standards, and lessons behind building generational companies.

About Harlem Capital

Harlem Capital is a venture capital firm that backs the next generation of winners. The firm partners with exceptional founders with the irrational motivation to build generational companies. All Winners Welcome.

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