Josh Kopelman, Founder and Partner at First Round Capital, a seed-stage venture firm that has invested in some of the biggest names, including Uber, Square and Flatiron Health. First Round aims to help early-stage companies build a strong product-market fit and offers some of the industry’s first and best tools from their custom-built software to sharing their deep industry insight with their publication First Round Review.
In this episode, Josh speaks with Eniac Co-founding Partner Nihal Mehta on his journey from being one of the first students at Penn to get an email address to how he leveraged his early experience on the Internet to founding his first three companies - Infonautics, Half.com, and TurnTide. Josh then seized the opportunity to start First Round with Chris Fralic and Rob Hayes when the cost to start a company was decreasing, but the average venture firm tripled in size.
Josh speaks to his advantage of living in Philadelphia, why they are placing big bets in New York and his perspective why it has never been easier to build a company outside of Silicon Valley. He also addresses scaling teams and the regional talent gap.
He speaks to why First Round operates like a startup, continuing to improve and find new products that better serve their founders and community. He also shares why their fund size has remained consistent and how they view fund model vs fund size.
Josh also shares why they left Twitter, DropBox, and Zynga on the table.
If you liked this episode, please share and tag us on Twitter:
@joshk
@firstround
@nihalmehta
@EniacVC
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Send comments or suggestions to seedtoscale@eniac.vc.
Brad Feld, Founder & MD of Foundry Group, on what makes an excellent board member, the biggest reasons startups fail and the 3 machines that must work together for a company to scale (Part 2)
Brad Feld, Founder & MD of Foundry Group, gives advice to himself in the early days and speaks to why it is important to build long-term fund strategies with conviction and consistency (Part 1)
Alex Iskold, tech entrepreneur, investor & former MD of Techstars NYC, on why raising capital should be a side effect of growth and the importance of finding the Magic Moment
Lior Susan, Founder of Eclipse Ventures on why he is bullish on full-stack hardtech startups and what founders should do the second they raise their Seed Round
Chieh Huang, Founder of BOXED, on company culture & how his role as CEO changes every 6 months
Heather Hartnett, CEO of Human Ventures, on the Myth of the Big Idea and looking Beyond the Resume
Mike Maples, Founding Partner of Floodgate, on spotting the Thunder Lizards before they hatch
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