First Round
@firstround
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Where “imagine if” gets to work. We've helped 500+ companies (like @NotionHQ, @Roblox, @Uber, @Square) take a straighter path from idea to product-market fit.
SF, NY, PHL
Joined July 2008
Most acquisition stories just skim the surface. So when @evolution_iq announced its $730M acquisition in December, marking one of the first major vertical AI exits, we did what we do best on The Review: We went deep. 11K+ words, 45-pages deep. We spent weeks interviewing
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RT @brettberson: About 14 years ago, @joshuareeves, @tomerlondon, and @edawerd spent a summer tinkering on startup ideas. After a string of….
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RT @tomerlondon: I went In Depth with @brettberson and @firstround. He got me to talk about some crazy parts of the journey I haven't thoug….
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Thinking in loops — not features — can hold you accountable to building the right product for your ICP. Read more about @clay_gtm's path to product-market:
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Need to hire an exec for your startup? Skip the months-long search and work with a fractional leader before you’re ready to commit to a full-time hire. Former PayPal strategy & BizOps leader turned fractional COO Amanda Schwartz Ramirez (@2LiveJew) breaks down the use cases she
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Listen wherever you get your podcasts: . YouTube: Apple: Spotify:
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The co-founder and CPO at Gusto, @tomerlondon, seeks rejection. Gusto now has a $9.5B valuation, but in its early days, London’s hundreds of “rejection-seeking” conversations with customers helped turn the product into something small and medium-sized business owners would
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RT @sajithpai: If you are a vertical saas / vertical AI founder, the EvolutionIQ Path to PMF piece will be relevant reading. Lots I found….
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Much more on Sentry’s path from bootstrapped side project to $3B company on In Depth:
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Sentry landed a half-a-million-dollar annual contract through inbound with zero sales dollars spent. How? That customer self-hosted before converting to an enterprise plan. David Cramer (@zeeg) explains how open source won @getsentry SaaS clients with no sales funnel — and
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The last thing @christinacaci sold before @trustvanta was Girl Scout cookies. She shares her biggest founder-led sales lessons for other novice sellers.
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How Superhuman drew inspiration from classic video games as part of its transition from human-led to self-serve onboarding:. 1. Super Mario Brothers — be opinionated about the path you guide your user down to use your product. In the first level of Super Mario Bros, players are.
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RT @BigMekaStyle: “You need to build a repeatable sales process” might be the most hand-wavy advice in startups. Cool. But HOW? When your f….
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Could you replicate your last deal? Your last 10 wins?. “Dig under the hood in the early days and often you'll find two friendlies, a warm intro from your cap table, and your sister's college roommate with spare budget,” says Sam Taylor (who was the first enterprise sales rep at
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RT @LukeVerswey: The 100 Best Bits of Advice from 10 Years of @firstround Review is perhaps the most valuable resource I've found as a newi….
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David Cramer (@zeeg) on why as a founder, being confident shouldn’t come at the expense of being humble:. “Anybody who knows me will tell you I am very confident in everything I say,” he says. “But I gave up board control. I hired a CEO to take my job. I hired a CTO to take my
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