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The General Partnership
Ben Curnes and Anthony Kline's San Francisco venture firm embeds a full engineering team inside seed-stage startups, operating from a $250M fund closed in...
The General Partnership
The General Partnership was formed in 2021 by Ben Curnes and Anthony Kline, both former investors at Thrive Capital, the New York firm led by Josh Kushner. Curnes and Kline decamped to San Francisco with a thesis built around what they call 'sweat equity'—providing not just capital but a salaried engineering bench that ships code inside their startups. The firm operates as a traditional venture partnership, raising closed-end funds from institutional limited partners. The firm targets seed and Series A companies where its in-house engineers can materially accelerate product development. Its primary focus spans enterprise software and AI/ML, with additional activity in fintech, industrial technology, and proptech. Rather than acting as passive advisors or board observers, TGP's engineering team—reportedly 20-plus engineers—integrates with portfolio company sprint cycles, building internal tools and production features. The firm participates in both priced rounds and select pre-seed opportunities, typically with check sizes estimated in the $500K to $4M range. Geographic concentration centers on San Francisco and New York. TGP secured approximately $250M for its second fund in 2023, a step up from its roughly $75M debut vehicle in 2021. May 2023: Closed The General Partnership Fund II on around $250M in capital commitments (per Axios, May 2023). The firm's model—essentially a venture fund with a captive software consultancy—attracts founders who value engineering horsepower alongside strategic capital. The partnership structure keeps investment decision-making concentrated between Curnes and Kline. The firm's structural differentiator is the embedded engineering team itself—a recurring cost center funded by management fees rather than project-based billings to portfolio companies. This architecture aligns TGP's incentives with founders from day zero, as the engineering resource is pre-paid and carries no separate invoice. The approach signals a broader experiment in venture capital: whether a fund can productize technical talent at scale as effectively as it deploys financial capital.
General information
Firm type
Venture Capital
Year founded
2021
AUM
$150M - $350M (Altss estimate)
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
San Francisco
Corporate office
San Francisco, CA, United States
Principals
Ben Curnes
Co-Founder & General Partner
Anthony Kline
Co-Founder & General Partner
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
What does the embedded engineering team actually do inside portfolio companies?
The firm employs 20-plus salaried software engineers who join portfolio company sprint cycles to build internal tools, ship customer-facing features, and accelerate product roadmaps. Unlike external dev shops, TGP engineers operate as an extension of the startup's own team—writing production code, not advisory decks—without billing the company separately. The cost is absorbed by the fund's management fees, making the resource effectively free to founders.
How does The General Partnership source deals?
Curnes and Kline draw on networks cultivated during their tenure at Thrive Capital, where they invested across enterprise software and fintech. The firm's engineering team also generates inbound through technical founders who value the hands-on build support. TGP does not publicly disclose a proprietary data-sourcing platform, and its deal flow appears relationship-driven with a strong technical founder bias.
Who runs investment decisions at The General Partnership?
Co-founders Ben Curnes and Anthony Kline serve as the firm's General Partners and control investment decisions. Both were previously investors at Thrive Capital. No additional General Partners or independent investment committee members have been publicly disclosed.
Does The General Partnership participate in fund commitments or only direct deals?
The firm conducts only direct investments in operating companies, primarily at the seed and Series A stages. There is no publicly available evidence that TGP allocates to external venture funds or acts as a limited partner in other managers' vehicles.
What investment stages does The General Partnership target?
TGP concentrates on pre-seed through Series A, with the majority of disclosed activity at seed stage. Check sizes are estimated between $500,000 and $4 million. The firm occasionally follows on in later rounds but does not position itself as a growth-stage investor.
How is The General Partnership structured—single family office, traditional venture firm, or something else?
It is a traditional closed-end venture capital firm raising successive institutional funds from external limited partners. Fund I closed in 2021 on roughly $75 million, and Fund II closed in 2023 on approximately $250 million. The firm is not a family office, corporate venture arm, or rolling fund.
Which sectors does The General Partnership explicitly avoid?
The firm has not published an explicit exclusion list. However, its focus on enterprise software, AI/ML, fintech, industrial technology, and proptech implies limited appetite for consumer social, media, pure biotech, or deep hardware plays requiring capital-intensive lab infrastructure.
Profile maintained by Altss using OSINT (open-source intelligence), regulatory filings, licensed data partners, and verified direct submissions. Read the methodology. Last updated: . Continuous refresh with full update cycles at least every 30 days.
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