Before joining First Round, I spent most of my career in the go-to-market functions of early-stage startups. This includes time in the trenches as an outbound sales representative at Silo (a fintech platform) and honing go-to-market strategies as a revenue operations analyst at Seso (software for agriculture). Although sales strategy and venture investing may not seem to have a lot in common at the surface, they share a fundamental focus: making the best decisions possible with limited information. Whether it is building a framework of the when and why to reach out to a prospective customer or digging into the attributes that make a founder successful, I love navigating through the uncertainty of complex business processes and disentangling the threads.
At First Round, I work closely with Sid, our Insights and Analytics Lead, to guide our partners through the uncertainties of investment decision-making. We use data to help First Round’s investment team make informed decisions, embrace inevitable errors, tinker with our process for finding and choosing companies, and refine their understanding of the venture ecosystem. My goal is to raise the floor of First Round’s decision quality and sharpen our collective view of the venture landscape.
When I’m not working out of the San Francisco office, you’ll find me running in the Presidio, Nordic skiing in the Sierras, or venturing into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) near my hometown in Northern Minnesota.