Who to contact at a VC fund: 491 partners, 86 below them

Who to contact at a VC fund, in short: write to a partner, because at most crypto funds the partner tier is the only investing seat anyone has put on the record. NAUT tracks 3,337 live crypto investor firms, and across them it names 491 partner-tier people against 40 principals and 46 associates, read on 5 November 2026.

Data note. Every count here was read from NAUT's own database on 5 November 2026, read-only. The scope is the 3,337 live companies NAUT files as investors and the titled people tied to them, out of 14,361 live people rows. A title counts as partner tier when it contains partner and does not contain partnerships, marketing, communications, talent, legal, counsel, compliance, technical, engineering, design or administrative, so a Head of Partnerships and a marketing partner stay out; principal counts when the title says principal and not engineer; associate counts when it says associate and not legal or counsel. Loose word matching, with no filter at all, gives 521 partner titles, 41 principal and 49 associate.

The fund-level tables below come from a pull of 15 named funds. 14 are in the ranked table. a16z crypto is the 1 fund left out of it, for a reason of its own: its stored deal count sits across several NAUT rows awaiting a merge, so no deal count for that firm is quoted here. Multicoin Capital is held under more than 1 NAUT row, so the table links and counts the single row at /investors/multicoin-capital and never combines the 2.

8 claims were put to outside sources, read on 5 November 2026. 2 of the 8 were about what the titles mean. The other 6 were a named person's title and X handle: 1 held and 5 came back contradicted, showing a move or a changed title, so those 5 people are named nowhere in this article. 2 of the 5 sat at a16z crypto, 1 at Mirana Ventures, 1 at Pantera Capital and 1 at IOSG Ventures. Of the 23 named rows in the table further down, 1 had its title checked against the person's own X bio and the other 22 were never put to an outside source. NAUT Research wrote it. Anyone listed can ask NAUT to remove their page at https://naut.so/legal/data-deletion.

Who to contact at a VC fund: partner, principal or associate?

Start at the partner tier and stay there unless the fund gives you somebody better. The reason is arithmetic rather than etiquette: NAUT's 491 partner-tier people outnumber the 40 principals and 46 associates together by close to 6 to 1, so for most funds there is no second seat to aim at.

• The layer below partner is rare on the record. Of the 322 live investor firms where NAUT holds at least 1 titled person, 49 name a principal or an associate. 98 name a partner and nobody below. The remaining 175 carry titled people without any of the 3 investing titles.
• The funds that do carry a layer are the busier ones. Those 49 firms average 37 deals each in NAUT's stored record, against 23 for the 98 that stop at partner.
• A crypto VC partner is the title that answers for the cheque, so a first note to a partner is never the wrong door. It is just the slowest one.
• The word in the title is not the job. 1 of the 23 named rows below is a Finance Associate, which is a back-office seat that happens to carry the word associate.
• Seniority runs associate, then principal, then partner, and the gap is years rather than months. One career guide on the principal seat, read on 5 November 2026, puts it at "Principals spend 5 to 10 years in this role, proving they've got what it takes to level up".

How many partners, principals and associates does NAUT track?

491 partner-tier people, 46 associates and 40 principals at live crypto investor firms on 5 November 2026. The table is ranked by how many people NAUT holds in each tier, largest first, and it also shows how reachable each tier is.

Reachability barely moves between the tiers. An X handle sits on 274 of the 491 partners, 20 of the 40 principals and 18 of the 46 associates, and a LinkedIn URL on fewer than half of each tier. A page of their own is near universal: 479 of 491 partners, all 40 principals and 45 of 46 associates have one, which is where crypto investor contacts actually get looked up.

On the VC associate vs principal question, the 2 tiers are close in size on NAUT's record and far apart in what they do with your email. An associate reads and forwards. A principal can carry a deal into the partner meeting without a partner having asked for it.

Which crypto VC funds name someone below partner?

10 of these 14 funds do, and 4 name partners only. These are the published rows NAUT holds for each fund on 5 November 2026, ranked by deals on NAUT, largest first, with the deal count for each fund in the chart further down. The 5 rows the outside check contradicted are still inside these counts, because the counts are NAUT's own record rather than a verified roster.

Fund	Partner	Principal	Associate
AU21 Capital	2	2	0
NGC Ventures	5	0	1
Polychain Capital	3	0	0
Mirana Ventures	4	1	2
Big Brain Holdings	2	0	1
SevenX Ventures	2	1	0
Mechanism Capital	3	1	0
Hashed	6	0	5
Pantera Capital	3	3	0
IOSG Ventures	1	3	3
Framework Ventures	5	0	0
Multicoin Capital	3	0	0
Paradigm	10	0	0
Electric Capital	5	0	1

Across those 14 funds NAUT publishes 154 titled rows: 54 partner tier, 11 principal, 13 associate and 76 carrying some other title, which is where the research, platform, finance and operations staff sit.

Fund shape varies more than fund size does. Paradigm names 10 partner rows and nothing beneath them. Hashed names 6 partners and 5 associates, the most associate rows in the pull. IOSG Ventures is the only one of the 14 where the layer below partner outnumbers the partner rows, at 3 principals and 3 associates against 1 partner row. Polychain Capital, Framework Ventures, Multicoin Capital and Paradigm are the 4 with no principal or associate row at all, so at those 4 a partner is the only investing name NAUT can give you.

Who to write to, fund by fund

1 named row per tier per fund, 23 in total. The titles are NAUT's record on 5 November 2026. 1 row, Derrick Cui, was checked against the person's own X bio and the other 22 were not.

Fund	Partner	Principal	Associate
AU21 Capital	Kenzi Wang, Co-Founder & General Partner	Kevin Leu, Principal	None in the pull
NGC Ventures	Roger Lim, General Partner	None in the pull	AAAdam Alexander Arreola, Investment Associate
Polychain Capital	Bobby Beniers, Research Partner	None in the pull	None in the pull
Mirana Ventures	David Toh, Managing Partner	ICIsaac Choo, Principal	Checked, left out
Big Brain Holdings	BigBrainTwin, Partner	None in the pull	Derrick Cui, Investment Associate
SevenX Ventures	Yeung Lavenjer, Investment Partner	Yinghao LIN, Principal, Crypto Investment	None in the pull
Mechanism Capital	Steve Cho, General Partner	RRRoland Roventa, Investment Principal	None in the pull
Hashed	RSRyan Sungho Kim, Co-Founder / Partner	None in the pull	JKJake Kim, Associate
Pantera Capital	PBPaul Brodsky, Partner	Checked, left out	None in the pull
IOSG Ventures	Checked, left out	INIshanee Nagpurkar, Principal	SRSiddharth Rao, Associate
Framework Ventures	Ben Floyd, Venture Partner	None in the pull	None in the pull
Multicoin Capital	Matt Shapiro, Partner & Head of Investor Relations	None in the pull	None in the pull
Paradigm	Charlie Noyes, General Partner	None in the pull	None in the pull
Electric Capital	Ken Deeter, Partner	None in the pull	TDTimothy Dougherty, Finance Associate

"None in the pull" means this pull found no published row in that tier at that fund. "Checked, left out" means the row NAUT holds there was put to an outside source and came back contradicted, so it is not printed. Anyone listed can ask NAUT to remove their page at https://naut.so/legal/data-deletion.

Read the exact wording in those cells before you write. Yinghao LIN is Principal, Crypto Investment at SevenX Ventures and Roland Roventa is Investment Principal at Mechanism Capital, and both titles name the asset class. Timothy Dougherty is a Finance Associate, so the word associate is doing different work there. Matt Shapiro is Partner & Head of Investor Relations at Multicoin Capital, which is the seat that talks to limited partners rather than to founders.

How many deals does each of these funds track?

Deal depth spans nearly 5 times across the 14, from 168 down to 36, and the deepest 2 names in the pull are not the best known ones.

Paradigm, at 40 deals, is the 1 fund left off the chart, and it sits between Multicoin Capital at 51 and Electric Capital at 36. AU21 Capital tracks 168 deals and names 2 partners and 2 principals, which is 1 investing name per 42 deals. Paradigm tracks 40 deals and names 10 partners. Deal count tells you how often a fund writes a cheque and nothing at all about how many doors it leaves open.

Who to contact at a VC fund when you are raising?

A founder raising and a BD lead selling want 2 different things from the same page. The founder wants the person who can champion the deal internally. The seller wants whoever will reply.

• Aim at the deal seat first where it exists. At IOSG Ventures that is 3 principal rows and 3 associate rows, and at Pantera Capital 3 principal rows.
• Aim at the partner where no layer is published. At Polychain Capital, Framework Ventures, Multicoin Capital and Paradigm the partner tier is the whole list.
• Use an associate as a route in, not as a decision. An associate who likes the deal carries it up, which is why 18 of the 46 associates on NAUT carrying an X handle is worth something.
• Check the seat before you send. 5 of the 6 named rows put to an outside source on 5 November 2026 came back contradicted, and that is the single highest-yield check in this list.
• Send 1 note per fund. 54 partner rows sit across these 14 funds, and 3 copies of the same pitch inside 1 firm are visible to everyone who got one.

Related reading on NAUT: How to research a VC fund: 6 checks, 23 rounds, 27 partners and Crypto VC partners: 141 at 45 funds, 41 with a channel.

Can you pull this data through the NAUT API?

Yes, through people search and the fund endpoint: GET https://api.naut.so/v1/people?q=principal&contactType=team&limit=100 returns the titled people rows behind the tier counts above, and GET https://api.naut.so/v1/investors/iosg-ventures returns 1 fund with its team and portfolio in a single call. Each data call costs 5 credits with the key sent as $NAUT_KEY, lists come back paged with page and limit (100 is the maximum), and the parameters are documented at naut.so/docs/api with plans from $49 a month at naut.so/pricing. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for these partners, principals and associates unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so start a 7-day trial if you need the channels.

Who to contact at a VC fund FAQ

Who should I contact at a VC fund?

A partner, at most funds, because no other investing seat is on the record. NAUT named 491 partner-tier people at its 3,337 live crypto investor firms on 5 November 2026, against 40 principals and 46 associates, and only 49 of the 322 firms with a titled person name a principal or an associate at all.

Should I email a partner or an associate at a VC?

A partner when the fund publishes nobody below that tier, which covers 98 of the 322 firms NAUT holds a titled person for, and the principal or associate when the fund has one, which covers 49. An associate can carry a deal up to the partner meeting, and 18 of the 46 associates on NAUT have an X handle you can use for a first note.

What is the difference between a VC associate, principal and partner?

Seniority and authority, in that order: associate, then principal, then partner. One career guide on the role, read on 5 November 2026, says "Principals spend 5 to 10 years in this role, proving they've got what it takes to level up", which is the gap between the middle seat and the one that signs.

Where can I find crypto VC partners, principals and associates with their contact channels?

On NAUT. Its investor pages carry the team for each of the 3,337 live crypto investor firms it tracks, including the 14 ranked above, and 479 of its 491 partner-tier people, all 40 principals and 45 of 46 associates have a page of their own. Pull the same rows with GET https://api.naut.so/v1/people?q=principal&contactType=team&limit=100, or 1 fund with GET https://api.naut.so/v1/investors/paradigm. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so start a 7-day trial if you need the channels.

Sources

• NAUT's own database, read on 5 November 2026, read-only: the 3,337 live companies filed as investors, the 14,361 live people rows, each person's job title, X handle, LinkedIn URL and slug, and each firm's stored deal count, which is where the 37 and 23 deal averages by tier come from. Every people count above was computed from those rows at that time, under the title rules set out in the data note.
• The 14 fund pages on naut.so, read on 5 November 2026, for the deal count each one publishes. Those are the figures in the chart and in the prose around it.
• The X bios of 6 named people on those fund rows, read on 5 November 2026, each with a second source (the fund's own team page or the person's own site). 1 of the 6 matched NAUT's title, Derrick Cui at Big Brain Holdings, whose own bio names the fund he invests for and whose GitHub account carries the same handle. The other 5 showed a move or a changed title and are not named here.
• globalcareerconsultants.us/partner-vs-principal/, read on 5 November 2026, for the ranking of associate, principal and partner and the time spent in the principal seat.