About
First Round Capital, founded in 2004 by Josh Kopelman and Howard Morgan, revolutionized venture capital by pioneering institutional seed-stage investing when traditional VC avoided early-stage founders. Based in San Francisco with a team of 31 including 8 partners, the firm has become one of the most active and influential early-stage venture investors globally. First Round's investment thesis emphasizes founder quality, team composition, and early traction indicators over market timing or sector specificity. The firm writes typical checks of $500,000 to $2,000,000 in pre-seed and Seed rounds, with active follow-on investment capacity through Series A and beyond. Notable portfolio exits include Uber (where First Round wrote Uber's first institutional check), Slack (valued at $27.7 billion at IPO), Stripe (fintech infrastructure, $95 billion+ valuation), and Pinterest (social commerce, $25+ billion valuation). In 2025 alone, First Round deployed $500,000-$1,000,000 checks into 30 pre-seed rounds, demonstrating sustained capital availability and founder-friendly deployment patterns. The firm maintains a data-driven approach, having analyzed 10+ years of proprietary founding team composition data (since first investment in January 2005), correlating specific founder traits to long-term success. Partners include Josh Kopelman (founder, serial entrepreneur), Bill Trenchard (5x Midas List investor, led Looker, Verkada, Flexport investments), and Todd Jackson (product management expertise from Google, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox). First Round's combination of early-stage focus, operational expertise, and exceptional exit track record positions it as the gold standard for seed-stage venture capital.