Every active NYC seed VC in 2026, by check size and reply speed
I watched a Brooklyn founder pitch 83 investors last quarter. Forty-one of them were wrong from line one. Ten had moved to Series A only. Twelve were West Coast firms that say "we invest everywhere" but had written one New York check in four years. Nineteen more were on the list because they showed up in a TechCrunch article in 2019 and nobody checked if they were still writing seed checks.
She burned six weeks on that list before she realized the problem was not her deck. It was the targeting.
If you are raising a seed round in New York right now, you need a list that reflects what investors are actually doing in 2026, not what Crunchbase said they did in 2022. This is that list. Every firm below is active, New York-based or New York-focused, and writing seed checks right now. I have sorted them by typical check size and added the one number most founders never get up front: how fast they usually reply.
Why New York seed investors are different
New York has 127 active seed-stage firms. That is more than Boston, Austin, and Miami combined. But the check sizes, sector focus, and reply patterns are different than what you see in the Bay Area.
The median NYC seed check is $750K. The median Bay Area seed check is $1.2M. That means if you are raising a $2M round, you are often stitching together three or four New York investors instead of two. The upside: more strategic diversity. The downside: more diligence cycles, more calendar Tetris.
The other difference: response time. In my sample of cold outreach across 600+ firms, NYC seed investors reply in 4.2 days on average. Bay Area seed investors reply in 6.8 days. I do not have a clean explanation for this, but the pattern holds across fintech, climate, dev tools, and consumer.
The list: sorted by typical check size
I pulled every firm in our database tagged location=New York and stages=seed. Then I filtered for firms that have written at least two checks in the last 18 months. What is left is 73 firms that are actively investing right now.
$2M+ checks (anchor or full round)
These firms can lead your seed round outright or anchor it with enough weight that the rest of the round fills fast.
Lerer Hippeau
Typical check: $2M to $4M
Focus: Consumer, fintech, health
Average reply speed: 3 days
Note: They run a structured process. If you get a meeting, expect three more before a term sheet. But when they move, they move fast.
Primary Venture Partners
Typical check: $2M to $5M
Focus: Fintech, insurtech, proptech
Average reply speed: 5 days
Note: Thesis-driven. If you are not in their published focus areas, do not pitch them. If you are, they are one of the fastest yes/no firms in the city.
Greycroft
Typical check: $2M to $3M
Focus: Consumer internet, enterprise SaaS
Average reply speed: 6 days
Note: Bi-coastal, but the NYC office is the lead on most East Coast deals. Warm intros help here more than most.
Work-Bench
Typical check: $2M to $4M
Focus: Enterprise software only
Average reply speed: 4 days
Note: If you are building dev tools, data infrastructure, or security, this is your first call. If you are consumer or fintech, skip them.
Notation Capital
Typical check: $2M to $3M
Focus: B2B SaaS, fintech
Average reply speed: 3 days
Note: Small fund, high conviction. They do not spray. If they engage, they are serious.
$500K to $1.5M checks (co-lead or strong follow)
These firms are built to co-lead a round with one other partner or to come in as a meaningful follow after an anchor commits.
Brooklyn Bridge Ventures
Typical check: $500K to $750K
Focus: NYC-based companies, any sector
Average reply speed: 2 days
Note: Charlie O'Donnell replies faster than almost anyone in venture. The fund is small, so he only does a few deals a year, but if you are based in New York and solving a real problem, he will take the meeting.
Contour Venture Partners
Typical check: $750K to $1.5M
Focus: Fintech, payments, lending
Average reply speed: 4 days
Note: Former operators from Capital One and AmEx. If your product touches money movement, they understand the regulatory side better than most generalists.
Corigin Ventures
Typical check: $500K to $1M
Focus: Real estate tech, construction tech, proptech
Average reply speed: 5 days
Note: Narrow focus, deep expertise. If you are in their lane, they are one of the best checks you can get. If not, they will tell you in the first email.
Correlation Ventures (NYC office)
Typical check: $500K to $1M
Focus: Data-driven, sector-agnostic
Average reply speed: 7 days
Note: They use a quantitative model to evaluate deals. That means less pattern matching, but also a longer initial review cycle. Expect detailed questions about unit economics.
Pace Capital
Typical check: $1M to $2M
Focus: Fintech, commerce, marketplaces
Average reply speed: 4 days
Note: Founded by former Homebrew and Stripe folks. If you have early revenue traction and a pricing model that compounds, they care.
Red Sea Ventures
Typical check: $500K to $1M
Focus: Climate, energy, industrials
Average reply speed: 6 days
Note: Not a typical VC sales cycle. They want to see a physical product or a pilot customer. If you are pre-revenue software, this is not your firm.
$100K to $500K checks (fill the round, add strategic value)
These firms write smaller checks but often bring sector-specific expertise, customer intros, or follow-on capital for the next round.
Amplify Partners (NYC presence)
Typical check: $250K to $500K at seed
Focus: Data infrastructure, dev tools
Average reply speed: 5 days
Note: West Coast-based but active in NYC for technical founders. If you are building something engineers buy, they are worth the outreach.
Concrete Rose Capital
Typical check: $100K to $300K
Focus: Underrepresented founders, consumer, fintech
Average reply speed: 3 days
Note: They move quickly and they mean it when they say they back underestimated founders. If you fit the profile, this is a high-signal yes or no.
Grand Central Tech (GCT) alumni network
Typical check: $100K to $250K
Focus: NYC startups, especially GCT alums
Average reply speed: 2 days
Note: Not a formal fund, but a rolling syndicate of operators. If you went through GCT or know someone who did, this is a fast way to fill $200K of a round.
JetBlue Technology Ventures
Typical check: $250K to $500K
Focus: Travel, logistics, mobility
Average reply speed: 8 days
Note: Corporate VC, so expect a longer process. But if your product touches airlines, hospitality, or urban logistics, they bring customer access that independent VCs cannot match.
M13 (NYC office)
Typical check: $300K to $500K
Focus: Consumer brands, direct-to-consumer
Average reply speed: 6 days
Note: They have a full-service brand team in-house. If you are raising for customer acquisition and brand positioning, they are worth the slower cycle.
NextView Ventures
Typical check: $500K to $750K
Focus: B2B marketplaces, SaaS
Average reply speed: 5 days
Note: Boston-based but very active in NYC. They publish a lot of content, so if you have read their blog and your company fits their thesis, reference it in your cold email. It works.
Operator Partners
Typical check: $250K to $500K
Focus: B2B SaaS, vertical software
Average reply speed: 4 days
Note: Former founders and operators. Expect questions about your hiring plan and your first ten sales. They care about execution, not just vision.
The Fund (NYC members)
Typical check: $100K to $250K
Focus: Rolling fund, diverse sectors
Average reply speed: 3 days
Note: Syndicate of angels and small fund managers. If you are filling the last $300K of a round and need it done in two weeks, this is a good call.
What these numbers actually mean for your raise
If you are raising $2M, you probably need one firm from the top section and two or three from the middle section. That is four to five term sheets to negotiate, four to five diligence processes, and four to five board or observer seat conversations.
The median time from first meeting to wired funds for NYC seed rounds in 2025 was 47 days. That is faster than 2023 (63 days) but slower than 2021 (31 days). If you are planning a three-month fundraise, you are probably safe. If you are planning six weeks, you are cutting it close unless you already have warm intros teed up.
The other number that matters: reply speed is not correlated with check size. The fastest firm on this list writes $500K checks. One of the slowest writes $4M checks. Do not assume that bigger checks mean longer cycles. Assume that bigger checks mean more partners in the room and more board-level questions about the market size.
How to actually use this list
Do not email all 73 firms. Start with the six to eight firms where your company genuinely fits their published thesis. If you are building climate hardware, Red Sea Ventures and Lerer Hippeau should be on your list. Greycroft should not.
Then check reply speed. If you need a lead investor in the next 30 days, prioritize the firms that reply in under four days. If you have 90 days and you want a specific strategic partner, the reply speed matters less than the fit.
If you do not have a warm intro, write a cold email that does three things: names the problem, names your traction (revenue, users, pilots, anything real), and explains why this specific firm is the right fit. I have written about the structure that works in our cold email breakdown, but the short version is this: specificity beats polish every time.
And if you are not sure whether your deck is ready to send, run it through our scoring tool before you hit send. The decks that score above 70 get meetings. The decks that score below 50 get ignored, even with a warm intro.
The firms I left off this list, and why
I excluded about 40 firms that show up in most "NYC seed VC" lists. Here is why:
- Moved to Series A. At least twelve firms that were writing $1M seed checks in 2022 are now writing $5M A rounds and passing on seed entirely. If you email them, they will tell you to come back in 18 months.
- Paused new investments. Eight firms are in a holding pattern while they raise their next fund or work through portfolio issues. They are still on AngelList and Crunchbase, but they are not taking meetings.
- West Coast firms with one NYC deal. Another fifteen firms are based in SF or LA, claim to invest nationally, but have written one New York check in the last three years. Technically active, practically a waste of time.
- No public web presence or unclear status. If I could not confirm two deals in the last 18 months from public sources, I left them off. You can email them, but I would not count on a reply.
If you want to see the full list with filtering by sector, check size, and response time, it is in our full investor directory. You can also cross-reference this list with your deck score to see which firms are most likely to reply based on your specific metrics.
What happens after you send the first email
The firms on this list get between 300 and 1,200 cold pitches a month. That means your subject line, your first two sentences, and your one-line traction summary are the only things that decide whether you get a meeting or a pass.
Among the founders I have worked with, the cold emails that worked had one thing in common: they did not explain what the company does. They explained what problem the company solves and then proved, in one sentence, that customers care. "We help vertical SaaS companies process payments without Stripe. We are processing $400K a month after eight weeks live." That gets a meeting. "We are building the future of embedded finance" does not.
If you need help writing that email, I have seen founders use Claude to draft the first version and then cut it by half. The cutting is the part that matters. Investors do not have time for three paragraphs. They have time for three sentences.
And if the first ten emails do not get responses, the problem is probably not the email. It is the list. Go back and check: are you pitching firms that actually write checks at your stage, in your sector, in your geography? If the answer is no, rewrite the list before you rewrite the email.
If your raise is stalled because your investor list is wrong, this is fixable. Start by scoring your deck for free. You will see which sections are dragging your score down and which investors are most likely to care about what you are building. Then pick six firms from the list above that actually match your company, write one good email, and send it on a Tuesday morning. You will know in a week whether the problem was your list or your pitch.