Beginnings Matter

We’re focused on being the world’s best partner for founders at the very first stages of company creation — so we’ve designed First Round to do just that. You get super active partners (most of whom are former founders themselves) to work side-by-side with you across your first few years. You also tap into an extenstive team designed to help you fast forward through the tough nitty-gritty of those early years so you can focus on what makes your company special. Whether it’s GTM experts mapping out your initial sales strategy, or recruiters connecting you with top-tier candidates for critical early hires, we’re here to fill in until your team is filled out.

Usually founders have to choose between early stage focus and that kind of functional expertise, but with First Round you can have your cake and eat it too.

Above all, we look for compelling and contrarian insight into how the world works. What do you understand about a market or a need that no one else does or that other companies in the space get wrong? And why is your company the most likely to win at addressing this gap?

Second, if you have a product in market, we’re always excited to see a small group of passionate early customers. As an extension of this, we want to see creative thinking around go-to-market strategy as well as product. The best startups take both seriously.

Third, we take a close look at the market you’re going after. Let’s say you win the whole thing — is the prize worth winning? The game is long and hard, and some markets are more rewarding than others. To mix metaphors, before a founder starts building their castle, they have to make sure they’ve picked the right piece of land.

No. We don’t think VCs predict the future — founders do. And we look to founders to teach us what’s next. We were fortunate to invest in Uber before the rise of the on-demand economy. We invested in Flatiron in 2012 before everyone jumped into health tech. But all of our companies have one thing in common — we met the founders when they were just starting out.

Our investments do tend to cluster around enterprise, AI, hardware, healthcare, fintech, and consumer. But that’s not where our curiosity ends. If you’re building something outside of those areas, we still want to learn about the future you’re imagining. We're interested in founders who see opportunities others miss, whether they're building bigger satellites, teaching robots how to fold laundry, cryogenically freezing cadaver bone marrow, helping trucks capture their own carbon emissions, extending the lifespan of dogs, or equipping patent attorneys with AI.