First Round Capital

Most people describe finding PMF as an art, not a science. We're here to change that. Introducing PMF Method. After 20 years and 500+ investments in pre-product-market fit companies, we've drawn on our data and worked with some of the world's most iconic enterprise founders, distilling what they did in their first 6 months into a free 14-week intensive experience that helps sales-led B2B founders build epic companies. In tactical sessions, we help early founders discover what customers really want, build the right v1 product, and close your first sales — all while keeping 100% of your equity. You'll work alongside a tight group of other builders at your same stage, and get to learn from the hard-earned insights from founders of $1B+ B2B companies, like Vanta's Christina Cacioppo, Looker's lloyd tabb, Plaid's Zachary Perret, Ironclad's Jason Boehmig, Lattice's Jack Altman, and Verkada's Filip Kaliszan. The Summer 2024 session of PMF Method runs from 5/29 to 8/28.?Any early founder working on a new B2B SaaS company is welcome to apply — just get your application in by 5/7 (or tag a founder friend below!) More details, FAQs, and application link in the comments below ??

One cue to watch for as you’re seeking early signs of traction is how well your idea alone can pull in customers — even if they’ve never browsed the website or played with a demo. Vanta CEO and co-founder Christina Cacioppo knew she’d picked the right idea when the team no longer needed to go out and find customers (it was just Cacioppo and a few engineers at this point). Customers were trickling in through a strong word-of-mouth engine, even though Vanta hardly had a website — just a bare-bones homepage with an email address to contact. On The Review, we rounded up stories from founders about what their startup’s first sparks of traction felt like (link in the comments).

There are obvious signs of success when you bring a product or service to market. Turns out, there are some less obvious ones, too, and our friends at First Round Capital took the time to share them. "Criticism is better than people ignoring you, which means they probably don't need your product. If people start complaining, that's usually a good sign." This is a good reminder that people care for a reason and apathy is worse than critique. Article: https://lnkd.in/e34cSt4j

How do you know if you’re on the right track? When you’re pre-product-market fit, signs of progress aren’t always obvious. Today on The Review, we asked established founders to recall when they finally felt like they’d struck a chord. The moments that jumped to mind didn’t exactly look promising on paper — but in retrospect, they were signs of real traction. Here are a few of the subtler (and sometimes even counterintuitive) cues to watch for: ?? ??????’???? ???????????????? ???? ?????? ???????? ???????????????????? ??????????????????????. “One signal of product-market fit that I recommend you pay attention to: When something is really needed, you’ll find there are lots of very intelligent people at other organizations trying to build a version of it,” says Vercel CEO and founder Guillermo Rauch. ?????????’???? ?????????????? ???????? ?????? ?????????????? ?????? ?????????????? ????????????????. For Clay's Kareem Amin, a flood of asks from customers was proof that the product had real pull. “Sometimes we would ship a bug and then a customer would immediately flag it,” he says. “This is in many ways a good thing because it means that they care and are using Clay. So once those things started to happen, it was clear that we were being pulled along and that a lot of our theses were right.” ??????????? ?????????????????? ?????? ?????????????????????? ?????????? ?????? ??????????????. Negative feedback may be a tough pill to swallow, but it’s far better than hearing nothing at all. “Criticism is better than people ignoring you, which means they probably don't need your product. If people start complaining, that's usually a good sign,” says Gong CPO and co-founder Eilon Reshef.

When we started First Round Capital in 2004, I didn't know what institutional investors did. Heck, I barely knew what venture capitalists did. First Round Capital's first fund was $7M. Then in July of 2007 I got the cold email (below) from Nick Shalek who was then at the Yale University Investments office. After getting to know the Yale team, they decided to anchor our first institutional venture fund. And I quickly learned what institutional investors did ;-) It's not an overstatement to say that Yale University put First Round in business.? They took a chance on?an unproven fund with an unproven model led by an unproven investor.? So much of First Round's thinking and approach was shaped by our interactions with?David, Matt, Tim and the entire Yale team.? Their humility and belief in the alignment that comes from a true partnership have set a benchmark for how I try to approach all relationships.? And?we still found ourselves saying "What would?David?say" when contemplating any shift in our model.? Yale made us an "emerging manager" -- and Yale was the first to celebrate with us when we "emerged". The Investment Office at Yale has now announced their Prospect Fellowship --?an eight-week intensive program that seeks to partner with five forward thinking investment management entrepreneurs.? Want to learn from the best?? APPLY BELOW.? Want a minimum LP commitment of $25 million at launch?? APPLY BELOW.? Want a partner to help your fund go from "emerging manager" to "emerged manager"?? APPLY BELOW. If you are serious about building a world-class investment firm, this is not a hard decision. It is an IQ test. APPLY BELOW. Apply here: https://lnkd.in/ewUQVUWK

Just re-read this great article 'Speed as a Habit' (https://lnkd.in/ebVJWV2B) from First Round Capital on the importance of speed in both decision making and execution for success. A great reminder that one of the keys to success for most successful start ups is speed. Speed requires trust and confidence in your teams. And to get that you need: 1. A clear mission that is communicated and embraced by the team 2. Goals that are connected and shared across individuals, teams and departments - all that roll up to support the mission 3. Colleagues who are empowered to make decisions and move forward - because the dots are connected from the goals to the mission.

"Brand is the business value of delight" says Krithika Muthukumar, who heads Marketing at OpenAI. Krithika's been the first marketing hire at both OpenAI and Stripe. She’s also had marketing stints at Retool, Google, and Dropbox. She recently shared some great marketing advice on First Round Capital's 'In Depth' podcast, especially for those marketers looking to become the first marketing hires at a startup. Here's what I've learned: - Look beyond your industry/category for brand inspiration. Stripe did this early on and found success. - A ‘brand’ is owned by everyone – it's the sum of all actions across the company. - Choose your brand strategy early on - 'Branded House' (like Apple) or 'House of Brands' (like Meta). You can’t be somewhere in between. OpenAI is a Branded House. - Advice to the founding-marketer: -- Create a 'state of the funnel' report by understanding sales or buying motions. This becomes your foundation for diagnosing issues and spotting growth potential -- Go deep in understanding your customers and their pain points; join customer calls -- Take early action and dive into launches from day one rather than observing from a distance - Attributes of the first marketing hire: -- Someone who can tailor their approach to the needs of the company, and not just follow a playbook -- Has intellectual curiosity - played with the product, gone through the onboarding flow, understanding of the customer, etc. --Is genuinely excited about the product and brings a lot of enthusiasm -- Focuses on real impact, and not just vanity metrics This also has an article which captures the conversation. Both, the podcast and the article are good sources to learn from. Link in the comments. Happy weekend!

“Brand is the business value of delight. When you spend that extra time on craft, you increase the chances of reaching audiences beyond your core ICP,” says Krithika M. (former marketing leader at Stripe, now VP of Marketing at OpenAI). She shares an example from Stripe when going that extra mile to add in whimsical details won the team a hit campaign — even if it took longer to ship. “We wanted to launch a page that showcased our open-source contributions. But we delayed the launch of that page by almost a month and a half because our design team wanted to implement the Game of Life in the header background of that page,” she says. “It went viral. And that speaks to the craftsmanship that we place on our product.”

Time is precious when you are pitching your startup in front of VCs at a partner meeting, so you want to make sure you are utilizing all your time correctly. One technique to try here is to practice two versions of your slides: short and long. “The former will help prepare you for a situation where you’re being interrupted non-stop, while the latter helps you in the situation where all you hear are crickets,” says First Round Partner Liz Wessel. As a former founder, Wessel remembers the significance (and the pressure) that comes from preparing for a first-time fundraise. She shares seven more strategies of how seed stage founders can nail their first VC partner meeting at the link in the comments. ??

I’m SO excited to share my most recent First Round Capital investment…. M7 Health, founded by Ilana Borkenstein RN, MBA & Eric Gruskin The story behind M7 is one anyone who has been to a hospital (let alone any nurse!!) can relate to. During COVID when she was a nurse working on floor M7 at Memorial Sloan Kettering (before leaving to attend Harvard Business School where she met Eric), Ilana saw how broken nurse schedules were… it caused financial strain on the hospital with unnecessary use of overtime hours, and even worse, it led to much less happy (and retained) nurses. (Side note - I remember being admitted to an ER after my prophylactic mastectomy caused an infection, and speaking to a nurse for a while who comforted me while also telling me about how she was missing her son’s school recital — which she told her boss about months before — due to schedules being so unfair and seemingly random. It irked me so much, and I still think about how upset she was while bringing me so much comfort to this day.) Anyway, back to M7…. So when Ilana spoke to friends working at other hospitals, it turned out that they all faced the same issues at their respective hospitals. Either they had pen + paper schedules, or they had old software that didn’t optimize for the right things. So Ilana & Eric teamed up to build M7. Since launching, they’re used by over 8 hospitals nationwide. Their user-level adoption is one of the strongest I’ve seen of a seed stage b2b company – 51% of nurses who have an account use it DAILY, and 99% of staff login MONTHLY. Yeah, you read that right??? This all results in nurses being much happier (they can plan for the schedule they want in a fair and equitable way) while saving hospitals MASSIVE amounts of money (no more unnecessary overtime payments). Here’s the thing. Their (already awesome) team needs to grow. Market/customer pull is strong, so they're hiring ASAP to keep up with demand.?Please check out their open roles & apply! (And if you work at a hospital & want a demo, I’d love to introduce you to the founders!) Big shout out to all the amazing nurses out there. And obviously to Ilana & Eric for starting something special. And to Heston for introducing me to these incredible founders, and to my incredible colleague Roy for diving right in to help the team. M7 Health is already taking off, and I can’t wait to see it in every hospital around the country!!? (Blog post + link to their jobs in the comments below ?? )