Today, we announced to our team that Brian Harwitt is being made a partner at CoVenture. Honestly, it’s been a long time coming. Brian joined CoVenture in September of 2016 (3 months after closing our first credit deal, and back when we had less than $10M of total AUM). It’s crazy to think about how small we were back then. And it’s a testatement to how much Brian has helped grow our firm to what it is today.
Since he started, Brian has led, sourced, co-lead, and/or been instrumental in helping us make over a dozen investments totaling hundreds of millions of dollars committed and funded. Not one of the investments he’s helped execute or led has lost a dollar for investors, and his investment track record has been remarkable.
Brian has worked closely with companies like Wave, Qwil, Returnly, Clearbanc, Produce Pay, and many others not yet announced. Some of the unannounced companies are, themselves, now very large. The companies Brian has been significantly involved with have gone on to hire hundreds of people, fund billions of dollars, and create meaningful impact in the world.
One of the fun byproducts of Brian making partner is that he’ll finally get recognition (and credit) for so much of the work he’s done and the success we’ve had. Internally, Brian is respected by our team, and I personally consider him a mentor — someone I go to when I don’t know the answer.
It’s hard to express how many times Brian has been in charge of “the most important thing we’re working on at the time” and come in clutch.
Funny enough, Brian and I have been friends since college. I met him when he was still 18 (or 19?) and we were both at Cornell together. Over those years he’s become one of the people I’m closest to both professionally and personally.
Getting to announce Brian as a partner of CoVenture is one of the best moments I’ve had here at the firm — and I hope I/we get to work with him for many years to come.
