Imagine owning a piece of a company you believe will succeed. The customers are arriving. The product works. There is only one inconvenience: you cannot spend the valuation. Your stake may eventually pay for a scholarship, a pension or another investment. Today, it pays for nothing. Industry Ventures has spent more than two decades working on that peculiar interval between being right and getting paid.
- It buys existing venture investments from owners who want cash.
- It also backs small VC funds, growing companies and technology buyouts.
- Goldman Sachs completed its acquisition in January 2026.
The investment has two clocks
Hans Swildens’ biography locates the beginnings in his Russian Hill condo in late 1999. The firm dates its founding to 2000. Before this, he had co-founded Microline Software and helped start Speedera Networks. He arrived at investing with experience building the things investors buy.
A secondary transaction changes the owner of an investment already made. Buy an existing shareholder’s stock and the seller receives the money. Buy a limited partner’s fund interest and you inherit exposure to the fund’s portfolio. Neither transaction requires the underlying companies to reach the stock exchange first.
The distinction matters because a company and its owner keep different calendars. One needs time to develop. The other may need to rebalance a portfolio. In his October 2026 Goldman Sachs interview, Swildens described a market that had moved from predominantly distressed sellers toward profit-taking and risk management. Selling early need not mean losing faith.
Four doors into the same market
Industry Ventures extended that starting point into four complementary strategies. Its secondary funds purchase existing stakes. Its Partnership Holdings funds combine commitments to emerging managers with early secondary fund purchases and direct company investments. Its direct strategy invests alongside venture managers. Its technology buyout strategy addresses businesses that can move into different ownership.
The emerging-manager strategy grew from an observation by Roland Reynolds: established venture firms were raising larger funds, leaving room for smaller investors focused on the earliest stages. Partnership Holdings began in 2007. The opportunity was partly about size. A growing investment firm could support small managers without asking those managers to become large ones. That choice also gave Industry Ventures a reason to maintain relationships long before a company needed a secondary buyer.
There is a practical reason for the mix. A small venture manager may spot a promising company but lack enough capital to maintain its ownership in a later round. Industry Ventures can help finance the manager’s pro-rata rights - the opportunity to keep participating. The relationship continues after the first fund commitment.
Buyouts add another destination. The firm’s stated approach targets technology businesses typically generating $10 million to $50 million in revenue, at or near profitability. A software company can become a sensible acquisition before it becomes a plausible public listing. For a founder, that creates another conversation about the business’s future.
The information is part of the investment
The firm describes a proprietary database and a network of manager relationships supporting its decisions. Investing in funds creates continuing contact with people building portfolios. Those relationships can also surface company investments and sellers of existing stakes. Taken together, the strategies suggest a useful advantage: information gathered in one relationship may help evaluate another opportunity.
That advantage has competition. StepStone raised $3.3 billion for a venture secondaries fund in June 2024 and also describes an integrated fund-and-direct investing approach. Industry Ventures’ proposition rests on its particular relationships, judgment and transaction structuring. Having several strategies does not, by itself, make the firm unique.
Patience has a price
The customers supplying capital include pensions, endowments, foundations, financial institutions and family offices. The counterparties needing liquidity may be investors in funds or shareholders in companies. Industry Ventures manages money for the former while buying positions from the latter. Its economics include management fees and carried interest, a share of investment profits.
A public pension presentation from 2021 makes that concrete. Proposed Partnership Holdings VI terms included a ten-year life, a 1% management fee and carry varying by investment type: 5% for primary commitments, 10% for early secondaries and SPVs, and 20% for direct co-investments. Those are historical proposed terms for one fund, not today’s price list.
Partnership Holdings VII commitments.
Money for the fund’s investments, rather than a financing round for the management company.
That $900 million hybrid fund followed the September 2023 closes of Secondary X, with more than $1.45 billion, and Tech Buyout II, with more than $260 million across the fund and affiliated entities. The amounts describe different pools with different jobs. They should not be mistaken for company revenue.
The buyer knew the business
Goldman Sachs agreed to acquire Industry Ventures in October 2025 and announced completion on January 5, 2026. The terms specified $665 million in cash and equity at closing, plus up to $300 million contingent on performance through 2030. The distinction between an upfront price and a possible future payment matters.
Goldman had been a fund investor for more than twenty years; Petershill had held a minority stake since 2019. In his October 2026 interview, Swildens explained the sale through changing ambitions for the business. Goldman had already built capabilities Industry Ventures wanted to develop. Years of working together had also established trust.
“the definition of success changes through your life”
Hans Swildens / Goldman Sachs Exchanges / October 2026
The activity continued after the sale. An October 16, 2026 SEC filing for Secondary XI reported about $1.34 billion sold to 428 investors. That is a fundraising snapshot for the named vehicle, rather than a final fund close. It shows the distinction that runs through this business: the firm itself can change owners while its investment vehicles keep doing their work.
A plan for the waiting
The transferable lesson is to plan liquidity alongside growth. A manager can discuss co-investment capacity before a portfolio company’s next round. A shareholder can evaluate a secondary sale before cash becomes urgent. Neither has to make the IPO calendar the only calendar that counts.
But transferring a stake does not repair a weak business. A buyer still needs a defensible price, adequate information and the ability to hold. If seller and buyer cannot agree on value, the transaction stalls. The investment still needs an eventual source of cash. Industry Ventures changes who waits, and on what terms. The waiting itself remains.