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BFD Expert Voices - Private Credit

BFD Expert Voices

Startups have long focused on tech-savvy millennials and Gen Z.  Primetime Partners, a venture firm co-founded by Alan Patricof and Abby Levy, has focused instead those 50 and above.

Why it matters: The strategy is now gearing up for its sophomore act, with previously unreported SEC filing showing that the firm has raised $42 million of a planned $60 million second fund.

Axios caught up with managing partner Levy on how the firm is approaching its unconventional strategy, four years after its founding.

Patricof (who founded Greycroft Partners) and Levy (founding president at Thrive Global) raised the first fund in 2020, gathering $50 million.

Levy, who declined to comment on the SEC filing, says the firm invests across health tech and fintech.

Context: This comes as the average age of the U.S. population is expected to trend higher amid declining birth rates and rising life expectancies.

Today, about 18% of the population is 64 or older. By 2054, that figure is expected to reach 23% of the population, according to Pew Research.

"Medicare spending is a trillion dollars, retirement savings gap is $70 trillion globally, and then older adults control 50% of the household spend, so there's a lot of money at play," says Levy.

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

What is different about selling to an older population?

What we've seen is that an older audience is less likely to try new brands — and there's been tons of research on this. Take robo-banks, for example, that might be de novo businesses. They often need to be associated with an affiliate that's already a known brand to get someone excited about it.

Take Trust & Will as an example. A very big part of their go-to-market strategy is marketing through credit unions and smaller banks. You want to borrow someone's trust — so its B2B2C distribution.

What are you interested in within fintech?

Fraud protection is something we're very interested in. Older adults are the disproportionate subject of fraud and scams. And a lot of AI companies are coming online focusing on that topic.

So why haven't you made a bet on that space yet?

It's the question of efficacy. Trust is so important for an older consumer — the pace of innovation for those that commit fraud is as fast, if not faster.

Until we feel really confident in the technology, where we're not going to invest.

There are a bunch of companies that are more manual, that don't actually rely on technology and are more of a service. There are call centers that forward calls and screen the calls for you. But those are also hard to scale, so we haven't invested in those.

There's often there a tension between the "greater good" investments and venture capital model, which needs to make money.  Are there certain areas that you've looked at within this market where there's a problem you want to solve, but it doesn't make sense from a for-profit business model perspective?

Yes. The No. 1 way we can close the retirement savings gap is to have older adults working longer. If you're retiring at 55 and you're living to 90, that is increasingly a problem.

But one of the main reasons people aren't working longer is ageism in the workplace. So we have been very keen to find startups to help keep people in the workforce longer, to help employers figure out how to keep their employees longer, to encourage flex-tirement.

That could mean employers recognizing the knowledge that older employees have, and their mentorship capabilities, and finding ways to to use that within the organization. Another is helping older adults start their own businesses as contractors.

Editor's note: This Q&A has been corrected to note that Trust & Will is not a Primetime Partners portfolio company.

Primetime Partners talks aging adult opportunity, amid fund raise

Co-founded by Alan Patricof and Abby Levy, the firm is raising a second fund.

Photo illustration of Abby Levy, surrounded by color blocks and an image of an older woman on a laptop. 

Photo illustration: Axios Visuals. Photo: Courtesy of Primetime Partners

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Startups have long focused on tech-savvy millennials and Gen Z. Primetime Partners, a venture firm co-founded by Alan Patricof and Abby Levy, has focused instead those 50 and above.Why it matters: The strategy is now gearing up for its sophomore act, with previously unreported <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="SEC filing" data-vars-click-url="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2025221/000202522124000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml" data-vars-content-id="ea422200-ca9e-4ab3-becb-de1056ceb7ed" data-vars-headline="Primetime Partners talks aging adult opportunity, amid fund raise" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2025221/000202522124000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml" target="_blank">SEC filing</a> showing that the firm has raised $42 million of a planned $60 million second fund.

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Primetime Partners talks aging adult opportunity, amid fund raise

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