Primary Investments
Why consider primary investments?
Primaries can offer investors access to companies years before they are available to public market investors, from innovative companies at the earliest stage of formation, or venture capital; companies in need of value-added expansion capital, or growth equity; and established companies with potential for transformation or optimization, known as buyouts. This can offer investors a number of benefits.
A diversified primary portfolio may include 20-40 funds leading to a portfolio of 500+/- underlying companies across venture capital, growth equity, and buyouts. In this way, primaries allow you to build a portfolio diversified by stage and size of company, geography, vintage year, and manager.
Importantly, investing in private companies years before they are available to public markets provides investors a long runway for potential outsized returns. The larger opportunity set in private companies combined with higher expected growth rates, and the ability to construct diversified portfolios creates the potential for outsized returns. If investors can consistently access top managers and high-quality emerging managers, they can potentially deliver strong outperformance relative to public benchmarks.
At HarbourVest, our approach is differentiated — due to our experience, scale, and relationships.
Committed*
Team members
Years of experience
As of 12/31/25
Our approach to primary investments
The primary platform is where HarbourVest’s business began in 1982 when our founders Brooks Zug and Ed Kane formed one of the first multi-manager fund-of-funds.
At HarbourVest, our approach is differentiated due to our experience over more than four decades with an experienced and tenured team. With over 225 global investment professionals across various strategies, our platform and scale positions us for strong origination, selection, and decision-making. Similarly, our strong relationships with top managers provide access to high-potential companies.
As a result, we believe our primary fund investment portfolios offer our investors access to some of the world’s most attractive private market opportunities.
Primaries are the foundation of any private markets portfolio, offering access to the roughly 95% of companies that are not publicly traded.
Primaries can allow you to build a portfolio diversified by stage and size of company, geography, vintage year, and manager, while also and most importantly, offering potential for outsized returns.
Investors: Why consider HarbourVest?
Our depth of experience comes from evaluating and building relationships with fund managers over the course of multiple decades. We believe when investors want access to high-quality, differentiated private markets opportunities, and comprehensive coverage of global private markets, they turn to HarbourVest.
