About First Round
First Round is a venture capital firm that works with founders exclusively at the earliest stages of company building, often when all they have is an “imagine if.” We fill in where we can until the team is filled out, tackling crucial early hiring and equipping those who are great at building product with the skills to sell it, too. By getting the foundational firsts right, we increase the odds of finding extreme product-market fit. Our founders’ “imagine ifs” have turned into companies like Notion, Roblox, Uber, and Square.
We're looking to add a Chief of Staff to our team who will work directly with founder and Partner Josh Kopelman as his trusted right hand in one of our two offices, New York or Philadelphia – but the first 90 days will need to be in person with Josh in Philadelphia.
At First Round, individuals in this role supercharge our investment team by creating and managing processes that deliver world-class services and experiences to entrepreneurs. This role will engage across all functions of the partnership at First Round, including portfolio engagement, special projects, internal operations, reviewing new investment opportunities, financial reporting and management of administrative staff. Critically, this person will also drive and support First Round's AI operations and product builds – shaping, testing, and shipping the internal products and automations the partnership relies on day-to-day. This role is a balance between strategy and sharp execution.
Your Responsibilities Will Include:
- Managing and tracking new investment opportunities
- Conducting research and investment diligence
- Managing Josh’s projects and events
- Initiating and leading special projects (building internal products and programs, research deep dives, etc.)
- Driving First Round's internal AI and tooling work – helping shape, test, and operationalize the products and automations the partnership uses day-to-day
- Managing and tracking relationships and communication within the First Round community and partner networks
- Managing and processing email communication
- Ensuring Josh is ready for every meeting and moment — prioritizing his time and days around what matters most
- Overseeing scheduling and contact management performed by executive assistant
This position is not:
- An associate position nor a partner-track role. Instead, it is an ideal opportunity to get involved with building incredible companies and to learn from the best of the best.
- Expected to source companies or to be directly entrepreneur-facing. Rather, you will work with Josh to help review, analyze and prioritize existing deal flow.
- All glamorous. It involves a lot of behind-the-scenes work. Josh spends a large portion of the day in his inbox — and you will too.
This is a unique opportunity in which individuals from many backgrounds could excel. Here are just a few examples of profiles we think could be great:
- An aspiring entrepreneur who wants a rare window into the VC and fundraising side of the business.
- A generalist with a passion for technology and a penchant for learning new things fast.
- An AI-native operator who is fluent in the latest tools, and sees their job as building the systems that eventually do it for them
- A project manager who thrives keeping the trains running on time with little oversight.
You might be a good fit if the following describes you:
- You're fascinated by technology and how today's entrepreneurs are shaping the future. You don't necessarily need deep knowledge of the venture capital industry, but you should be excited about the field and eager to learn the business quickly. Most importantly, you are a fast learner and laser focused on execution with the drive to get things done. You're deeply organized, detail oriented and reliable above all else.
- You're a great teammate with no ego who is self-motivating and takes initiative.
- You're curious and intuitive — a creative and unconventional thinker, yet also highly analytical and logical. You're a fantastic (and prolific) writer and pride yourself on thoughtful, eloqent communication. You are observant (and caught the typo in the prior sentence). You know the right questions to ask, as well as when to listen and learn. You have the polish and presence to regularly interact with seasoned CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs.
- We hope to meet with candidates with at least 3–5 years of working experience.
Our Values
At First Round, we value resourcefulness, team-play, excellence and hustle. To give you a sense of what our team is all about, check out our values that guide our work:
- Try harder for founders. They’re our customers — LPs are our shareholders. We go to the ends of the earth for our founders. You might think our role as venture capitalists is to simply maximize returns. But at First Round, we believe when we put founders first, everything will follow — epic returns included. We fill in the gaps on a founder's team before they even have one and get to work on the unglamorous tasks that actually move companies forward. We'll know we've done our job when they're left feeling startled that an investor would go to these lengths for them.
- Take the wheel. Welcome to First Round. Everything is now your responsibility. Cartographers, not navigators, are the ones who tend to do well here. There are no career ladders to climb or boxes to check at First Round. If you find ways to do more for the business and our customers, your role will naturally expand alongside it. First Round is a haven for people who see themselves as architects of their reality, not casualties of circumstance. We know we have agency over our agency, and we make the conscious choice to exercise it every day.
- Treat the little things like big things. “Magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” We’re all about the carefully crafted, the nitty-gritty, and the bespoke. Whether it’s hand cutting each nameplate, or debating the optimal shape of the dinner table, no detail is too small to sweat. This is decidedly not a "LGTM" culture. It is a culture where the little things are the big things.
- Give your unvarnished opinions and unwavering support. We strive to be kind, not nice. Being nice and being kind are not one and the same. In our view, kindness means being generous, helpful, and compassionate. Nice can be used as a convenient shortcut; kindness cultivates long-term excellence. One of the most (counterintuitively) compassionate things you can do is to offer your unvarnished opinion — along with your unwavering support. That willingness to risk a fleeting moment of discomfort in exchange for someone else’s growth is long-term kindness. So while we strive to be a founder’s coach in the corner, part of that responsibility requires being the kick in the ass when they need it most. We try to be as honest as possible in every encounter, whether that’s bluntly telling a founder how they can step up their game, or delivering radical candor in our feedback for teammates.
- Invent and wander. “Action produces information." We’re fans of starting small, shipping fast, and obsessively improving. The idea for the First Round Review wasn’t the product of a six-month strategy session — we wrote up a few blog posts and just shipped them. That’s because reality has a surprising amount of detail and edges that are difficult to anticipate. Each step — even the wrong one — reveals new information that improves your next move. We prefer to make the gap between having an idea and knowing if it works as small as possible.
