Coatue General Partner Matt Mazzeo Departs to Launch Fund

Matt Mazzeo, a general partner at New York-based investment firm Coatue Management since 2018, has left to start his own investment fund, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. Mazzeo’s deals at Coatue, one of the world’s biggest private tech investors, included augmented reality developer Niantic and OpenSea, a marketplace for buying and selling nonfungible tokens.

Mazzeo plans to focus his next investments on early-stage startups, one of the people said. His exit comes as crossover funds such Coatue and Tiger Global Management—the VC firms with roots in trading public equities—retrench following one of the worst stock markets in years. Coatue placed big bets on late-stage startups, including grocery delivery app Instacart and banking app Chime, whose private valuations are now under pressure.