Highlands Venture Partners

Co-Founders and Managing Partners Tom Secunda and Joe Muscat lead all investment decisions. The firm operates with a flat partnership structure where both principals are directly involved in sourcing, diligence, and portfolio company support. This concentrated decision-making model is designed to maintain speed and conviction at the earliest stages of company formation.

Highlands focuses on Seed and Series A rounds, where it can act as a lead or co-lead investor. The firm prefers entering at the point of initial institutional capital, often before a company has built out a full executive team or achieved significant revenue scale. It does not typically participate in later-stage growth rounds or pre-seed financings.

The firm invests across enterprise software, AI/ML, fintech, and digital health. Within these areas, it seeks companies with strong technical foundations and defensible engineering moats. Highlands has shown particular interest in applied AI companies that have moved beyond research and into commercial product deployment.

Highlands invests exclusively through direct equity positions in portfolio companies. The firm does not operate as a fund-of-funds and does not allocate capital to outside managers. Its model is built entirely around principal-led direct investments with active board participation.

While the firm reviews opportunities across North America, its primary emphasis is on the New York metro area and the broader East Coast. The partners have publicly articulated a thesis that early-stage enterprise companies on the East Coast benefit from dedicated, technically-oriented capital that understands local talent pools and go-to-market dynamics.