Alan Patricof, co-founder and managing director of Greycroft Partners LLC.
Chris Goodney | Bloomberg | fake pictures
Venture capitalist Alan Patricof is still investing in startups. At 85, he now supports technology designed for people in their later stages of life.
The founder of Greycroft and Apax Partners announced Wednesday a new investment firm he calls Primetime Partners. The $ 32 million fund will support platforms and products for older Americans and invest in older entrepreneurs. Patricof is partnering with Abby Miller Levy, former president of Thrive Global, at the company.
“I had another act on me and I had the energy to do something else. This market is really fertile territory,” Patricof told CNBC in a Zoom interview. “This particular area has really caught my imagination and energy beyond what I would have anticipated.”
The New York-based duo met through Patricof’s son, a Levy’s classmate from Harvard Business School. They had been independently seeking the same idea of investing in products for an older cohort. Despite controlling most of the country’s net worth, its investor peers have overlooked “a silver tsunami” of older people in Silicon Valley, Levy said.
“There is a myth that older adults are not online, they don’t buy things, they don’t change their behaviors, and I think that’s fundamentally changing,” said Levy, who was previously a senior vice president at SoulCycle. “Now he has older adults, thanks to Covid, which buys online and uses e-commerce in different ways.”
Patricof and Levy agreed to join in November, before the Covid-19 pandemic ravaged the economy and, for a time, rocked capital markets. They followed through on their plans this year and said they completed a “stealthy” fundraising process in about eight weeks.
Primetime will write checks of $ 250,000 to $ 1 million for anything from services and experiences for seniors over 60 to financial security for retirees. Patricof said there is also an opportunity to invest in more “mature” entrepreneurs, who do not always receive the same attention as those who drop out of college.
Investors in the fund include the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, as well as NBA star Kevin Durant, co-founder of Thirty Five Ventures.
Patricof’s latest company comes amid a slowdown in investment in the early stages. At the current rate, PitchBook has estimated that the deal count this year will drop by 25-30%. According to a recent report by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association, investors have been forced to “double top-performing portfolio companies and quickly reduce their losses in troubled companies.”
But Patricof has seen its share of economic recessions and knows how to navigate, even when to get aggressive, Levy said. Some of Patricof’s investments during its 50-year career include America Online, Office Depot, Apple, Audible, Axios and Wondery.
“When everyone else is freezing and doubling their existing portfolios, now is the time to help support new business,” Levy said, referring to Patricof’s strategy.
CLOCK: Patricof says the venture capital market has been much more active than anyone would have thought
.
