New York-based New York-based Contour Venture Partners is making progress on its latest flagship venture.
The company closed $42 million, raised from 64 backers, in Contour Venture Partners Fund V, according to SEC filing from May 17. The brand is with a target of $90 million for its fifth flagship fund and began fundraising in May last year, the filing said. It had previously raised $20 million of that as part of a separate parallel fund, according to a deposit from last December.
Contour Venture Partners declined to comment.
It’s been quite a tough few years for venture capital looking to raise new vehicles. In the past year, VCs, incl DCVC, Tiger Global and Founders Fund, have also lowered their fundraising expectations. Venture capital fundraising fell more than 50% last year compared to the record year of 2022, according to PitchBook data.
Contour writes checks between $500,000 and $1.5 million and prefers to lead seed and early-stage companies. The company focuses on areas such as SaaS, digital media and financial services and prefers companies based in New York or the Northeast.
While Contour isn’t equipped with a war chest of capital like some seed companies, it has built a track record of investing in strong companies.
The company was one of the early adopters of cloud analytics platform Datadog in 2011, which went on to an IPO in 2019 at a $7.8 billion valuation. OnDeck’s lending-focused financial platform Contour in 2006 struggled in recent years but had a notable exit when it went public in 2014 at 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 content personalization startup that 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 inception 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.
Correction: This piece and its title have been updated to reflect the existence of a $20 million parallel fund, which is counted as part of the original $90 million Contour is set to raise.
