Index Ventures, a global venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, has opened a new office in NYC to tap into the thriving local tech scene and better serve startups from Tel Aviv to San Francisco.
The VC firm announced in May that it was opening its third major office in NYC. After starting out in a coworking space, the firm moved this month into an office in the Meatpacking District on 13th Street and 9th Avenue.
“This will serve as our local HQ for the next two years to give ourselves time to find a space to house Index in the city for decades to come,” said Martin Mignot, a partner at Index Ventures.
Index Ventures currently has seven employees in NYC and expects to reach 10 by early next year. Mignot said the firm would like to add at least one investor to the team. He expects the office will eventually grow to the size of its London and San Francisco offices, both of which have between 20 and 30 people.
Mignot, who moved here from London in August, said he was an early advocate for setting up an office in NYC, and that he is attracted to the city’s energy, people and ideas.
“The city has over 10,000 tech companies and startups with a collaborative ecosystem of investors from small seeds to solo GPs,” Mignot said. “You are starting to see the flywheel effect of successful local companies like Etsy and Tumblr, which have built amazing talent and [achieved] exits [that] have created more capital to recycle back [into the local ecosystem].”
Index Ventures has backed more than 20 NYC companies, including iconic names like Etsy, Datadog and Squarespace. It has also helped European tech startups like Collibra and Wiz expand into the U.S., specifically to NYC.
Index Ventures, which launched its $200 million Origin seed fund last year, recently launched its second seed fund, Origin II, with $300 million to invest in early-stage founders. Mignot said the fund is not constrained to certain sectors and that it is “interested in extraordinary entrepreneurs who have the vision and conviction to define the future.”
“New York has now reached the maturity where it’s not reliant on a single sector anymore, and if one looks at past successes, they’ve spanned many sectors, from marketplace to fintech and enterprise infrastructure,” Mignot said. “Recently, we’ve seen a cluster of AI-related companies emerge in NYC and we expect it to be a major theme over the coming decade.”
Backing companies from seed to IPO, Mignot said Index Ventures offers founders the resources of a multi-stage fund and the hands-on expertise of a dedicated seed fund.
