You’re not for everyone.
Neither are we.

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.

The biggest factor in our decision-making is always the founding team. How innovative, resourceful and resilient are you? What’s your superpower? Why are you going to be the ones to prevail where others won’t? What in your history shows that you thrive off the beaten path? Of course, we evaluate product and market too, but to be honest, we mostly look at those to evaluate the founders too.
Looking at what you’ve done already for this company — and before in your career — gives us a record of hundreds if not thousands of decisions you’ve made to get to where you are today.

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.

Yes! While we have large concentrations of investments in San Francisco and New York, we’re interested in companies nationwide. We are proud to fund companies like Crossbeam in Philadelphia and Kandji in San Diego, as well as fully distributed companies like Subscript and Maven (just to name a few).

We tend to focus exclusively on companies based in the U.S. because that is where we have the most experience and can be the most valuable partners. We’ve made a few exceptions for companies headquartered outside the U.S. and companies whose management is located in the U.S. with overseas development teams.

While most of our decisions are driven by founders, we like to spend at least three to five hours on any company before we make a final decision. Sometimes that happens over a 72-hour period and sometimes it happens over weeks or even months. Whether it’s days or months, this is a serious decision in both directions and we want founders to learn about us as much as we learn about you.

Generally speaking, here’s what you can expect:

1. Initial meeting: Before an initial meeting, we’ll review materials you share, determine whether the business fits our basic investment criteria, and try to ensure it’s not directly competitive with any of our existing investments. Your first meeting (or call) with a member of the investment team will typically be less than an hour. We let founders do most of the talking.
2. Follow-up: Most of our “passes” occur after the initial meeting. If you’ve made it past that meeting, you’ll spend more time with your First Round point partner as we both continue to learn more about each other. We sometimes bring in another First Round partner, typically the person with the most “domain expertise” in that company’s area.
3. Partner meeting: If these conversations go well for both of us, we’ll typically make some reference/diligence calls and invite you to meet with the rest of the partners at our twice-weekly investment meeting. Here, you’ll have about an hour to tell your story to the entire partnership and answer questions.
4. Final decision: Our partnership will discuss your company in great detail with the goal of giving you a final answer the same day. Typically, we fund about half of the companies that make it to our partner meeting.

Our investment team reviews every single investment opportunity we receive, and we strongly value referrals from people we know and trust. This includes people at existing First Round companies, angel investors, other founders, etc. A direct referral will get a quicker response, but don’t be afraid to reach out cold. We invested in Kandji after a cold email back in 2018. Good ideas can come from anywhere.

Thankfully, our partner Liz Wessel penned an in-depth guide on this very subject.

Our initial investments typically range from $1 million to $7 million, but we’ve gone higher and lower in some cases. Currently, our average initial investment is right around $3.5 million.

Unlike some traditional venture funds that require 20 to 25% ownership, we don’t. We like to own enough of the company to make sure that we can dedicate meaningful time and resources to helping you build. Our ideal ownership is roughly 14% after your seed round, but we’ve gone higher or lower in some cases — but rarely below 10%.

No round is too small for us to invest. Our average initial investment is $3.5 million, but we’ve invested in rounds as small as $100,000 and as large as $20 million. Regardless of check size, you get the same First Round experience.

No. We don't care about terms like lead, co-lead or follow or worry about who else is investing. We make our own decisions and have a long track record of partnering with outstanding seed-stage VCs and angels.

We do care about having a meaningful stake in every company we partner with so we can spend meaningful time trying to help you win.

No. We’d explain why in detail here, but we think Brad Feld does a great job in his blog post, Why Most VC’s Don’t Sign NDAs.