First Round Capital
also referred to as: first round
14 statements across 3 episodes · 3 bullish · 2 bearish · 2 people on the record · first statement Jul 3, 2017 by Chris Douvos · said 62 times in 10 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
Mentions by year
brought up most by Chris Douvos (29), Ted Seides (16), Ali Hamed (8), Bill Trenchard (4), Henri-Pierre Jacques (2), Fabrice Grinda (1), Chris Sacca (1), Ashvin Chhabra (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2023 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2022 9 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- Chris Douvos – The LP's Perspective from Ahoy Capital, Venture is Eating the Investment World 2 (Capital Allocators, EP.230)
- Ashvin Chhabra – The Aspirational Investor (Capital Allocators, EP.260)
- Ali Hamed – Novel Venture Investing at CoVenture, Venture is Eating the Investment World 5 (Capital Allocators, EP.233)
- Fabrice Grinda – Canvassing Seed Stage Marketplaces at FJ Labs, Venture is Eating the Investment World 4 (Capital Allocators, EP.232)
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 37 mentions in 2 episodes 19 per episode
2018 7 mentions in 1 episode
2017 6 mentions in 1 episode
Everything said about First Round Capital, oldest first
Jul 3, 2017 positive
Venture Platforms Scale Best by Treating Portfolios as Founder Communities
“Rather than the venture capitalist being the hub in the middle of this kind of hub and spoke network, could you push, you know, he called it the Napster of venture, right? Could you push the interactions out to the frontier where entrepreneurs are interacting …”
Dec 9, 2021
First Round holds two weekly partner meetings to ensure 72-hour pitch turnarounds
“We have two partner meetings a week now rather than one. We used to have just one on Thursdays. Now we have one on Monday and one on Thursdays. And so you're never more than 72 hours from getting in front of the whole partnership.”
Dec 9, 2021 neutral
Venture capital is commoditized; strong founders choose investors based on value-add
“Capital is a commodity now. Good founders with good ideas are making a decision about who should have their equity based on what value they bring. If they're good, they've got plenty of options for getting where they get the capital. It didn't used to be the c…”
Dec 9, 2021
Dec 9, 2021
Seed checks of $500K to $750K no longer buy 10-15% equity
“It used to be that when we wrote a 500 K check to seven 50 K check, we could buy 10 to 15% of the company when we were early in the life of first round. That is no longer the case. That is not the market price clearing price for a seed round today.”
Dec 9, 2021 negative
Most Silicon Valley VCs default to cheerleading to protect founder-friendly reputations
“I'd say in the Valley today, there's really two types of investors and most fall in the first bucket. There's the cheerleaders and the people that'll give you the tough love. And I fall in the second bucket for sure. And I think the reason why a lot of people …”
Dec 9, 2021
Dec 9, 2021 positive
First Round has historically stayed within 1.5 to 2x original fund sizes
“First Round has been historically a very size disciplined firm, whereas a lot of their peers have now grown to managing in each fund many, many hundreds of millions of dollars. They've still stayed pretty much only one and a half to two times their original si…”
Dec 9, 2021 negative
Founders would likely fire half the operating staff at most VC firms
“If a founder walked into most venture firms, I think they would probably fire half the team from an operating standpoint, because it is not the thing that is traditionally driven returns is building great services and delivering great quality of service to fou…”
Dec 9, 2021
First Round partners act as an independent board for their operating team
“Our partnership. Acts like a board of directors for our operating team, and we've released a very much a board operating cadence with them that we meet every four months, and they present an operating plan to us. All the senior level, senior members of the tea…”
Dec 9, 2021 positive
First Round partners silently score pitches in Airtable before debating disagreements
“When a founder leaves the room, we don't talk. So they come and pitch typically for an hour. We ask questions. It's relatively conversational type of approach when we, when they're pitching the partnership. And then we literally just write for about 15 minutes…”
Dec 9, 2021
Dec 9, 2021 neutral
First Round reviewed over 1,000 applications for a public venture partner listing
“We posted publicly and rethought the whole process. We said, we're hiring a new partner. We put out a post. We had a lot of people apply over a thousand people apply for the job. We looked at every single one of them.”
Jan 10, 2022 neutral
First Round Capital compressed its deal decision time to 50 hours
“And when they came into the venture business in 2005, They started tracking time from when they saw a deal to when that deal was done, whether or not they actually did that deal. And I think in 2005, it was a hundred days. In 2016 or 17, when they said, man, t…”