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 👇

Small drones are taking over the battlefield, but they still have an Achilles heel: GPS jamming. That’s why I’m extremely proud to lead Theseus’ seed as they build an unjammable replacement. The disproportionate value that scaled production of cheap drones can deliver is now plain for all to see (contributing to the real fear that the USA is behind here). But because GPS has been so good for so long, we’ve become reliant on it, creating a massive threat. Ukraine is losing 80K drones a month primarily due to jamming. And it’s not just a problem abroad either. Cartels are now using GPS jammers at our southern border to prevent surveillance. Current solves are to 1) manually fly drones to bypass jamming or 2) shell out $$$ for heavier equipment that only works for higher-end drones. Theseus is building the world’s first micro Visual Positioning System (VPS) that plugs into any existing drone and simulates the same GPS signal it would have gotten otherwise. It’s what I like to think of as a “water in the desert” kind of product — a 10x better solution that's cheaper and lighter than anything else on the market, letting us do missions we otherwise couldn’t do. It’s also one of the best examples of tech company speed meeting national security needs. Grateful for the chance to work with Sacha Lévy, Ian Laffey and Carl Schoeller. They are hiring engineers right now. The opportunity to make an impact couldn’t be bigger. More below on their story in TechCrunch today in a great write-up from Charles Rollet.

Congrats to Sneha Sivakumar and Anushka Nijhawan for announcing Spur’s $4.5M seed! We’re excited to back this team as they build a headache-free QA tool for dev teams that spots bugs most traditional website testing software misses. Great story from Business Insider below (link in comments).

The best startup ideas are often the ones that are solving problems that sound mundane, but are actually high-stakes behind the scenes. Like most of the truly useful applications of AI right now, clinical compliance doesn’t sound all that exciting. But all of the documentation that’s generated with every healthcare visit has serious consequences for both patients and providers if things go wrong (clawbacks, violations, shutdowns, misdiagnoses — the list is endless). Auditing that documentation to make sure that patients are being taken care of correctly is important work, but it’s manual and expensive, so most providers only manually spot-check a tiny fraction of charts, leaving countless errors undiscovered. It’s the perfect dusty area to apply AI, and that’s why I couldn’t be more proud to back Zach Rosen and Henry Kasa as they build Brellium, a clinical compliance platform that audits every patient chart against clinical and payor requirements. They proactively audit EVERY patient visit against requirements, flagging exactly which charts need fixing and how to fix them. This catches critical issues like contraindicated medications or accidentally copy-pasted provider notes that might otherwise slip through the cracks. What struck me most about Zach and Henry (who met at Berkeley but are now building right here in NYC!) is just how focused they are — and how impressive their traction has been as a result. They’re already working with dozens of healthcare organizations across mental health, autism care, hospice, and more. And they’ve validated charts across millions of patient visits across all 50 states. It’s also my favorite kind of product: clear ROI with lightning-fast time-to-value. (Providers are able to audit 13x faster, reducing time spent manually auditing by 98%). But what I love perhaps most of all is their confidence and willingness to stand behind it — if a payor claws back reimbursement on a Brellium-approved chart, they’ll foot the bill themselves. Grateful First Round Capital got the chance to support this team. More details on their $16.7M Series A and progress so far in a great story from Erin B. in Axios today below.

Is your company a pioneer or a fast follower? Alyssa Henry — former CEO of Square, first GM at AWS, and 12-year Microsoft engineering leader — thinks most companies fall into one of these two buckets (and rarely can do both well). She says this distinction really matters in product-building: do you need a minimum viable product or a minimum remarkable product? If you’re a pioneer with a new product, it’s viable because it’s remarkable. If you’re a follower, the market isn’t going to care unless your product is 10x better or cheaper than what already exists. This decision shapes how founders design their organizations to best support their business — part of what Henry calls the “environmental condition.” Read more about how Henry thinks about org design: https://lnkd.in/g5dbN6RK

I've worked with many companies in all my years First Round Capital, but I can't remember seeing one that has grown revenue since the day we invested as quickly as Assort Health has. Jon Wang & Jeffery L. set out to build an AI-powered voice agent for healthcare with a simple but powerful vision: Imagine if you could answer every patient’s call, without putting anyone on hold. That’s a tall order — and I speak from experience here. I built and scaled a cloud contact center (LiveOps) to $100M in sales back in the post-dotcom era, so I immediately recognized the technical challenges they were tackling with the new solutions available in today’s AI era. Real-time voice applications are going from novelty to real-world impact this year, but there’s a lot of hidden complexity under the hood. Like all of my favorite founders, Jeff and Jon have gone “unreasonably deep” to truly understand the problem from all angles: the clinic, the patient, the specialty, the tone of voice, the difference between scheduling follow-up appointments and surgical ones. They also care deeply about the machine they are building. They have an obsessive approach to quality, chasing down every edge case and iteratively improving their call handling engine to increase accuracy and resolution rates. This is the unglamorous work that it takes to win. They're incredibly fast-moving and determined to outwork and outship the competition. And the pace they’ve set so far will be hard to match. Grateful for the chance to be early supporters. More in a great Fortune story from Allie Garfinkle today below,  including the great full circle moment story of how Jon & Jeff used First Round’s co-founder dating questionnaire to team up — and why they make all their hires fill it out too.

I left UCSF med school to fix a broken part of healthcare. Today, we raised $26M. Why’d I leave? Because I kept seeing the same problem over and over: Patients waiting 35+ minutes on hold to get an appointment. Getting scheduled with the wrong doctor. Giving up on getting care entirely. It boggles my mind that in 2025, booking a medical appointment was harder than ordering pizza. So I took the leap. Left med school. And built Assort Health to fix it. Thrilled to announce in Fortune today (thank you, Allie Garfinkle): we've raised $26M from First Round, Chemistry, and Quiet Capital. Even more important—our AI technology has already helped hundreds of thousands of patients access care. Our AI agents now handle millions of calls for thousands of providers—matching patients with the right doctors, validating their needs, and booking appointments seamlessly. Patients rate it 4.6/5 on average! But the most rewarding part? Getting messages from patients who finally got the care they needed after struggling to get through to doctors for months. A few ones I love: “It was very sweet when I told it I needed a minute to get my insurance card.” “That? Artificial intelligence. Got my appointment. Offered me other slots. Booked it. Thank you.” “Thank you, that experience was ten out of five.” We're hiring across growth, ops, and engineering to help us scale this nationwide. Message me if you're passionate about transforming healthcare access (and yes, we offer great health insurance). If you're a healthcare provider looking to streamline appointment booking and reduce phone wait times, our AI solution can help. Let's connect! ----------------------------- Special thank you to all of the amazing investors and supporters along this journey! Bill Trenchard, Kristina Shen, Matt Humphrey, Mark Goldberg, Ethan Kurzweil, Amit Garg Tau Ventures, Ian Feeney, Ali Javid, Cameron Woodward, Aditya Khosla, Bobby Green, Yury Yakubchyk, Allison Pickens, Jay Desai, Ashwin Sreenivas, Isaac Eaves, Kevin Bunarjo, Kais Khimji, Kearney Shanahan, William Chmelar, Andrew Tan, Jenny Friedman Four Acres Capital, Immad Akhund, Umesh Khanna, Will Yin, Rohit Rustagi, Trevor Martin, Brandon Hull, Kemuel Carey, Parinita Amin, Roy Rosin, Emery Rosansky, and so so many more along the way!

I’m hiring a new Chief of Staff at First Round Capital! After two years of making me more productive, prepared and impactful, Eliza Popa is ready to embark on a new journey. Luckily, she is sticking around first to help me find and onboard an amazing successor. You can find all the qualifications in the job description linked below. About the role: 🎟️ This is an incredible opportunity for anyone who wants to learn more about venture capital with a front-row seat to the early days of company-building. We invest early. We are hands-on. 🧠 A generalist mindset is a must. My focus areas range from healthcare AI to consumer marketplaces to B2B SaaS. If you like the idea of waking up not knowing about an industry and within 24 hours being able to distill what matters most for a company to succeed in that sector, this is the right job for you. 👫You’ll be my right-hand person in everything I do. This behind-the-scenes role is not glamorous. Any day you could be helping me research and evaluate new investment opportunities, drafting emails, prepping for speaking engagements, or chasing down the most helpful resources for founders in our community. 🪩 This role is based in our NYC office five days a week and includes friendly colleagues and great in-office snacks. Our working hours are flexible, but there are often times when we will need to work long hours with intense deadlines and lots of context switching. About you: Capabilities and attitude matter more than experience for this role. I’m looking for someone who is curious and intuitive, yet also highly analytical and logical. You can quickly pick out the most important KPI in a 20-page pitch deck while also noticing what makes that specific founder tick. You’re a strong and meticulous writer and pride yourself on thoughtful, eloquent communication. You act quickly and decisively with high attention to detail. You know the right questions to ask, as well as when to listen and learn. You have the polish, presence, and high EQ to regularly interact with seasoned CEOs. If you know anyone who would be a good fit for this role, please send the job description their way or tag them in the comments below!

Instead of constant outbound, co-founder and CEO of Owner Adam Guild wanted to create a model where customers came to him. So he set out to build his reputation and authority in the restaurant industry by targeting the publications his customers were reading. Learn more about his tactics for growing the business: https://lnkd.in/gyj53aR9

Consistently, the most informative and insightful guidance — month after month. Thanks First Round Capital! https://lnkd.in/g4Y25SPe