NEW YORK — Contour Venture Partners, a New York City-based seed stage venture capital firm, announced the closing of its fourth seed fund — Contour Venture Partners IV — with $82 million of capital commitments, exceeding its target of $75 million.
Additionally, Contour has closed its second Opportunity Fund (Opportunity Fund II) to invest in the later rounds of the more mature companies within the Contour portfolio. Founded in 2005 as the first seed fund focused on the New York City ecosystem, Contour invests in seed stage technology companies focused on the enterprise SaaS, vertical B2B SaaS and financial services sectors.
“Contour was the first institutional investor to commit capital to our seed round and they invested in every subsequent round,” said Olivier Pomel, Co-Founder and CEO of Datadog. “They saw the potential for Datadog early on and have been valued partners to the company on many levels at each step along the company’s journey from seed stage to IPO.”
Contour leads investments at the seed stage, typically pre-revenue, and takes an active role in all material aspects of the early stage business building process. Contour has invested in over 85 companies through numerous market cycles. Portfolio investments include Bench, Cutover, Cylera, Datadog, Degreed, Ellevest, Fevo, LeagueApps, Movable Ink, Octane, Narmi, OnDeck, Pandium, Pendo, Radius Networks, Routehappy, ShopKeep, Simplifi, Slice, SmartAsset, Syndio, SwapDrive, Ticketfly, Trialjectory, Wayscript, Wunderkind/BounceX and YellowJacket.
Contour’s portfolio companies have created $45 billion in aggregate value, $2 billion in annual revenue and have had 31 positive liquidity events. Datadog, a Contour I portfolio company since 2011 and later also in Contour’s first Opportunity Fund, became the largest technology IPO in New York City’s history when it went public in September 2019.
“While New York City has been severely impacted by COVID-19, the technology ecosystem in the city is incredibly resilient,” said Matt Gorin, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Contour Venture Partners. “Given its significant maturation over the past 15 years and the depth of the community, the technology sector will play a critical role in the city’s recovery. We are honored to work closely with so many great founders and teams who are creating material value for the benefit of their businesses, employees and the entire city.”
“Contour is grateful to have played a significant role in helping to grow and shape the New York City technology ecosystem,” added Bob Greene, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Contour Venture Partners. “We would like to thank all of our LPs for having enabled us to have this material impact, many of whom have invested in every Contour fund since inception.”
“The New York State Common Retirement Fund is proud to have invested with Contour in its last five funds,” said New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, trustee of the New York State Common Retirement Fund. “The firm has generated significant returns for the state of New York and has helped to create over seven thousand jobs in its portfolio, most of which are located in New York. Contour’s hands-on deeply involved approach correlates directly to their consistently strong performance year after year.”
