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 searching for an Investor to work alongside Todd Jackson. You'll connect with world-class builders today, help us find the next generation of iconic founders, and bring them into the First Round community. This role is based in San Francisco with Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday required in-office.
Your core role as an Investor will include:
- Build relationships with founders everywhere they are - at events, meetups, and across the startup ecosystem.
- Conduct in-depth diligence on companies under serious consideration for investment.
- Contribute to research efforts and help craft thoughtful, data-driven investment memos.
- Support the execution of PMF Method, our intensive four-day program designed for early-stage B2B founders.
You could be a great Investor at First Round if:
- You have a technical foundation. Whether through a CS degree, engineering experience at a startup, or building something of your own.
- You excel at building relationships. Others find you approachable, authentic, and easy to connect with.
- You’re reliable and hyper-organized. No matter how full your calendar or inbox gets, you don’t drop balls or leave people hanging.
- You’re curious by nature. You dive deep into how things work and constantly explore new ideas, products, and markets.
- You do whatever it takes to get the job done. When the work requires speed, late nights, or weekend effort, you step up without hesitation.
We know this isn’t your traditional investor role! We’re open to people with diverse skills, stories, and journeys.
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.
