Chris Fralic
“I joined First Round as a Partner in 2006, investing in areas including advertising and marketing technology, social and mobile, ecommerce and travel, and connected devices and gaming. In 2019, I shifted to Board Partner, where I continue to work with existing companies, but no longer make new investments.”
Chris has over 35 years of technology industry experience, with significant Internet business development roles since 1996. He was VP of Business Development at social bookmarking and tagging company del.icio.us through the Yahoo! acquisition. He was also an early employee and VP of Business Development at Half.com starting in 1999, and after the eBay acquisition spent six years at eBay in a variety of business development, media, and entertainment roles.
Chris has attended the TED Conference for over 25 years and worked with them in 2006 to help launch TEDTalks, which have now been viewed over 10 billion times. He teaches and guest lectures widely and is involved with several non-profits and museums.
Several of his First Round investments became public companies, including Roblox, Warby Parker, and Double Verify. Some of his investments have been acquired, including Ring (Amazon), Hotel Tonight (AirBnB), Flurry (Yahoo!), Invite Media (Google), Demdex (Adobe), Adaptly (Accenture), Yapta (Coupa), CoTweet (ExactTarget then Salesforce), Troops and Clipboard (Salesforce), and Arbor.io and Circulate (Axciom).
Connecting with people has always been my core competency — in business and in life — and I love that my work lets me blend the two. I get to partner with people I like to work with, support entrepreneurs who inspire me, and help them find the people and resources they need to go the distance.
