The Gold Standard for Seed VC: Inside Primary

Venture capital firms love to talk about scaling startups, but what about scaling venture firms themselves?

In this episode, I sat down with Brad Svrluga, cofounder of Primary and someone I’ve had the privilege of calling a mentor and friend for over a decade. Brad and his team have pulled off something rare in the seed-stage world: they’ve scaled a venture firm into a 60-person operation while staying laser-focused on early-stage investing.

That’s no easy feat.

Most seed firms operate like boutiques, small, generalist, and lean. Others try to scale by raising multi-stage mega-funds, losing touch with the founder’s earliest challenges. Brad’s approach? A “Goldilocks” model: big enough to offer real operational horsepower, small enough to stay aligned with founders at the seed stage.

Primary has built a robust support team, recruiters, market development, and strategic finance designed to plug into startups during their most vulnerable phases. As Brad explains, these resources aren’t designed to generate revenue for the firm. They exist to drive MOIC (Multiple on Invested Capital) by accelerating portfolio success. The team is trained to think not in service KPIs, but venture outcomes.

This is a firm run like a startup.

We also explored how Primary avoids common pitfalls like scaling AUM without adding partners. That often leads to diluted performance and pressure to write bigger checks. Instead, Brad’s team brings on specialists in specific verticals, each running a focused book of business. It’s like a seed-stage fund of funds under one roof.

We also got into:

• The inside story of how Brad and his cofounder Ben transitioned leadership roles to scale effectively.
• Why the venture network model of the 2010s fell apart and what Primary did differently.
• How emerging VCs can stand out to LPs by picking a clear lane and sticking to it.
• Why founder calibration is the most underrated skill in venture and how to build it.

It was a masterclass on building a firm, not just a fund.

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