SNAK Venture Partners Raises $50M Fund to Back Vertical Marketplaces

SNAK Venture Partners announced on Wednesday that it has closed its oversubscribed $50 million debut fund, anchored by Pritzker Group, the investment firm founded by JB Pritzker and his brother Tony Pritzker.

SNAK was founded by Sonia Nagar and Adam Koopersmith, both of whom previously worked at Pritzker Group, where they helped lead investments in companies such as the automotive marketplace Backlot Cars and ticketing platform TicketsNow, which Ticketmaster later acquired.

After years of investing together, Nagar and Koopersmith decided to strike out on their own. Earlier this year, they officially launched SNAK Venture Partners, focusing on backing digital and vertical marketplaces.

“It felt like the timing was right and there was support within the firm to go do this,” Nagar said.

Nagar explained that many sectors — particularly supply chain, construction, and other traditionally offline industries — remain largely undigitized. She believes the current moment presents an opportunity, as even historically resistant sectors are becoming more comfortable adopting new technologies, driven in part by advances in fintech infrastructure.

“If you look at the biggest venture wins over the last decade,” Nagar said, pointing to companies like Uber, Instacart, and Airbnb, “those are five of the top 10 outcomes in venture.” She was referring to companies that raised billions in private capital, went public, and delivered substantial returns to investors.

“Most of those wins were in consumer, which tends to be faster-moving than large enterprises,” Nagar continued. “We think there’s a ton of white space to double down and focus on B2B marketplaces,” particularly in categories that have yet to fullydigitise.

SNAK has already made investments in six companies, including Big Rentals and Repackify, which focus on equipment rental and packaging logistics, respectively. Nagar said the firm plans to write seed-stage checks into at least 20 companies, typically investing between $1 million and $2 million per company, to deploy the full fund over the next three to four years.

At a time when many emerging venture funds are struggling to raise capital — and fundraising remains concentrated among established firms — Nagar said SNAK benefited from the founders’ backgrounds and relationships when approaching limited partners.

Nagar previously helped launch Amazon’s apparel business in 2009 and later served as head of mobile at RetailMeNot. Koopersmith spent 20 years at Pritzker Group and currently serves on the boards of several marketplace companies. Still, Nagar acknowledged that Pritzker Group’s backing was critical to getting the fund across the finish line, especially given the challenging fundraising environment of the past year.

Additional limited partners in the fund include the State of Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund and executives from marketplace-driven companies such as Favour Delivery and RetailMeNot.

Nagar also emphasized that SNAK is location-agnostic, noting that promising marketplace founders are often overlooked because they are not based in traditional tech hubs such as Silicon Valley or New York City.

“We’re finding these overlooked founders in places where maybe other funds aren’t looking,” she said.

SNAK itself is headquartered in Chicago, a choice that Nagar said some limited partners initially questioned. “People perceive that as a disadvantage; we view it as an advantage,” she said. “We can get to everybody very fast.”