SNAK Venture Partners has closed an oversubscribed $50 million debut fund to invest in vertical marketplaces, betting that the next wave of venture-scale outcomes will be built in overlooked B2B categories from construction to supply chain. The fund is anchored by Pritzker Group, with additional limited partners including the State of Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund and marketplace operators from companies such as Favor Delivery and RetailMeNot.
The firm is led by Sonia Nagar and Adam Koopersmith, veterans of Pritzker Group who helped back marketplace standouts like BacklotCars and TicketsNow. With SNAK, the duo plans to write $1–$2 million seed checks into roughly 20 startups and deploy the fund over three to four years, concentrating on founders digitizing narrow industry workflows where transactions, data, and payments converge.
Why Vertical Marketplaces Are Back in Focus
Marketplace models produce powerful network effects when they unlock supply, standardize fragmented demand, and add trust through ratings, guarantees, and embedded payments. That dynamic hasn’t gone away—it’s moving upmarket. In the past decade, category-defining consumer platforms like Uber, Airbnb, Instacart, and DoorDash proved how liquidity can create outsized enterprise value. Now, SNAK’s thesis is that the same flywheel is maturing inside B2B niches that have resisted digitization.
Macro signals support the shift. McKinsey’s B2B Pulse has consistently found that the majority of corporate buyers prefer digital self-serve and remote interactions, and Gartner has forecast that most B2B sales engagement will occur via digital channels. Digital Commerce 360 estimates U.S. B2B e-commerce already exceeds $2 trillion in annual sales, while Amazon Business has reported tens of billions in annualized revenue—evidence that procurement is moving online. As fintech rails mature, vertical marketplaces can layer financing, insurance, and payments to deepen monetization and stickiness.
In sectors like heavy equipment rental, packaging logistics, building materials, or industrial parts, analog processes still dominate—phone calls, spreadsheets, and local brokers. SNAK is targeting those friction-heavy corners where a platform can standardize SKUs, surface transparent pricing, and compress fulfillment times, creating measurable ROI for both sides of the market.
Who Is Backing SNAK Venture Partners’ $50M Fund
The fund’s anchor, Pritzker Group, was founded by JB and Tony Pritzker and has a long history in growth and venture across industrial and consumer sectors. That institutional backing, along with commitments from the State of Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund and seasoned marketplace executives, signals confidence in a specialized, thesis-led strategy at seed.
Nagar previously launched Amazon’s early apparel effort and served as head of mobile at RetailMeNot, giving her an operator’s view of funnel physics, conversion, and retention in commerce. Koopersmith spent two decades at Pritzker Group and sits on multiple marketplace boards. Together they have studied—and helped scale—the mechanics that differentiate marketplaces that compound from those that stall: supply density, geographic expansion models, unit economics at liquidity, and the ability to introduce value-added services once the core transaction is standardized.
Early Bets and the Fund’s Deployment Plan and Pace
SNAK has already backed six startups, including BigRentals in equipment rental and Repackify in packaging logistics. Those bets reflect a focus on categories with fragmented supply, recurring demand, and operational complexity—conditions that often translate into high-frequency usage once a platform solves onboarding and trust.
The firm expects to invest in at least 20 companies from the inaugural fund, with initial checks typically at seed and room for follow-on. While many emerging managers are grappling with slower fundraising and longer cycles, SNAK’s plan is to maintain a measured pace of deployment over three to four years, concentrating capital in companies that demonstrate early signs of marketplace health: improving fill rates, shorter time-to-match, and expanding spend per account.
Chicago Base and a Wider Lens on Non-Coastal Markets
Based in Chicago, SNAK is deliberately location-agnostic, arguing that some of the most promising marketplace founders are building outside the coasts, closer to the industries they serve. The Midwest’s industrial heritage—logistics, manufacturing, food, freight—provides fertile ground for vertical platforms, from procurement networks to capacity marketplaces. Chicago has produced notable logistics and marketplace players over the years, and SNAK believes proximity to customers and operators will accelerate diligence and portfolio support.
If the past cycle crowned consumer marketplaces, the next crop may be quieter but equally durable: platforms that own the transaction in complex B2B workflows and monetize across software, payments, and financial services. With a $50 million war chest and an operator-led bench, SNAK Venture Partners is positioning itself to be an early partner to those founders standardizing the analog economy, one vertical at a time.
