Brooklyn Bridge Ventures: The Solo GP Who Pioneered Pre-Seed in Brooklyn

Brooklyn Bridge Ventures holds a special place in New York tech history: founded in 2012 by Charlie O'Donnell, it was the first venture capital fund based in Brooklyn — and it wrote some of the earliest cheques into companies that would define the decade. The Wing, Canary, Hungryroot, Ample Hills, Clubhouse, Imagen and goTenna all took their first institutional money from this one-man fund.

O'Donnell ran Brooklyn Bridge Ventures as a solo general partner by design. Conversations with founders often started pre-product and pre-deck, with cheques averaging $200,000–$250,000 in the early funds and around $350,000 later — deliberately small, first-check investments into New York companies that had not yet raised $750,000. Fund I closed at $8.3 million; Fund II at $15 million, for roughly $23 million under management across the two funds.

The thesis was access and honesty. O'Donnell was famously the most findable investor in New York — email on the front page of his site, pitch-me-anything dinners, a weekly newsletter read by more than 13,000 people. His blog, This is Going to Be BIG!, has run since 2004 and ranks among the most widely read VC blogs in the country. He was named to Business Insider's 100 Most Influential People in NY Tech five or more times.

Before striking out on his own, O'Donnell apprenticed through the asset class: analyst on the original Union Square Ventures team, the General Motors pension fund (a longtime LP in top-tier funds), and then helping First Round Capital build its New York presence — where he sourced early deals including GroupMe and SinglePlatform.

Here is the important part for founders reading this today: Brooklyn Bridge Ventures is no longer making new investments. The firm's own website carries the announcement, and O'Donnell confirmed the decision publicly — he wrote his last venture deal in May 2023 and chose not to raise a successor fund. He now works as an investor coach for venture professionals, publishes the Next NYC newsletter, and is the author of Founder Unfriendly: What Investors Won't Tell You About Getting Funded.

There are no active programmes or perks to apply for. But the legacy matters: Brooklyn Bridge Ventures proved that a tiny, founder-first fund could matter in New York — and its alumni founders, from Hungryroot's Ben McKean to Brigit and Yuvo Health, remain part of the ecosystem's fabric.