Ben Sun

Who they are

Ben Sun is General Partner at Primary Venture Partners — co-founded Community Connect in the late 1990s, building AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, and MiGente into some of the earliest large-scale online communities before social networking had a name.

Person

Ben Sun graduated with a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan and went straight into Merrill Lynch's Technology Investment Banking Group — the analyst track that produced a generation of New York tech operators. He left banking to found Community Connect in the late 1990s, which became President & CEO, building AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, and MiGente into one of the top 25 highest-trafficked internet properties before the term 'social network' existed; it was eventually acquired by Radio One. After the acquisition he ran LaunchTime LLC, an early-stage investor and incubator in e-commerce and digital media — the portfolio included Coupang, where he joined the board in 2010, and Jet.com, which Walmart acquired for $3.3 billion. In 2015 he co-founded Primary Venture Partners with Brad Svrluga, a seed-stage fund focused on NYC-based startups with $1.6B AUM, and has been GP there since. Alongside Primary he co-founded Altis, a venture-intelligence company building research infrastructure for the VC market. He posts on LinkedIn on AI-native CRM, vertical SaaS, and emerging AI categories in legal, accounting, and insurance, and appeared on panels on GTM strategies in the AI age and a podcast with Nihal Mehta on AI strategy, both in 2026. The through-line is building or backing the infrastructure layer before the mainstream catches up — community platforms in 1999, e-commerce in 2010, AI-native software categories now.

Network

Ben's closest named collaborator is Brad Svrluga, co-founder of Primary Venture Partners, with whom he shares public profile and Forbes Midas List recognition. Within the Primary orbit he works with Tess Gutt (Marketing & Networks) and Cassie Young, who appear in his LinkedIn engagement around NYC marketing and network events. Harrison Kratter rounds out the leadership team at Primary.

Brad Svrluga· Co-founder & General Partner, Primary Venture Partners
Tess Gutt· Marketing & Networks, Primary Venture Partners
Cassie Young· Collaborator via NYC marketing/network events, Primary Venture Partners
Harrison Kratter· Team member, Primary Venture Partners
Nihal Mehta· Podcast interlocutor / AI strategy discussion partner

How they likely show up

Long tenure at Primary since 2015 (co-founding it from scratch) → thinks in fund cycles and decade-long company arcs, not quarterly metrics.
Hybrid role-type pattern — founder turned operator turned investor, with Altis running alongside Primary → comfortable holding multiple simultaneous bets and likely expects the same high-agency disposition in founders.
LinkedIn posts on AI-native CRM and emerging AI verticals (legal, accounting, insurance) → does his own category research and signals thesis before deploying capital; he'll engage more if you meet him at the thesis level.
Built Community Connect in the 1990s before social networking was a category → pattern-recognition instinct runs early; he trusts conviction over consensus timing.
Board member at Coupang since 2010, a multi-decade board relationship → values long-term accountability over transactional deal-making.
Appeared on GTM panels and an AI strategy podcast in 2026 → comfortable being visible and shaping the public conversation around the sectors he bets on.

Conversation tips

→ Come with a specific thesis on an emerging AI category — he publicly researches AI in legal, accounting, and insurance; showing you've done the same work gets his attention faster than a pitch deck summary.
→ Reference Community Connect and the 1990s community-platform era specifically — it's the origin story he returns to in interviews and it signals you understand his pattern-recognition, not just his fund.
→ Ask about Altis directly — it's the thing he's building inside the VC world, and most people don't know about it; it shows you read past the Primary homepage.
→ He's NYC-focused and NYC-proud; if you have a connection to the New York tech scene, name it early — it's a real filter for him.
→ Possibly — given his investment banking start, he'll appreciate precision on numbers and market-sizing; vague TAM claims will land poorly.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on Altis — he co-founded a venture-intelligence company to build research infrastructure for the VC market, which is an unusual move for an active GP; ask what gap he saw that Primary's existing tools couldn't fill.
Reference the Community Connect origin story: three community platforms — AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, MiGente — among the top 25 highest-trafficked internet properties in the late 1990s, before 'social network' was a term anyone used. It's a specific, verifiable fact that most people gloss over.
Lead with his 2026 LinkedIn posts on AI-native CRM — he asked 70 CRM buyers a pointed question and published the results, which is primary research, not punditry; engaging on the finding rather than the topic shows you read it.

Discovery questions

You backed Coupang in an early round and sat on the board from 2010 — what did you see in that market that most US investors were missing, and how does that inform how you look at category-creation bets today?
Your LinkedIn writing focuses on AI entering professional verticals like legal, accounting, and insurance — where in that stack do you think the durable company gets built, the workflow layer or the data layer?
Altis is building research infrastructure for the VC market from inside Primary — how does running a portfolio inform what you're building, and do you see Altis becoming a standalone product or staying internal?

Avoid

Don't pitch him on a company without a clear NYC angle or a thesis he can map to an existing category he tracks — he is explicitly NYC-focused and thesis-first, and a generic national rollout story with no category conviction will read as underprepared.

Make it yours