First Round Capital

Overview

First Round Capital is a seed-stage venture capital firm founded in 2004 by Josh Kopelman and Howard Morgan that backs technology startups at their earliest stage, often writing a company’s first formal round of funding (PitchBook). Based in San Francisco with offices in New York City and Philadelphia, it is best known as the first institutional investor in Uber, a bet that came to define the firm’s seed-first identity (PitchBook).

This profile covers the venture firm First Round Capital — not the funding round it is named after — and follows it from its founding through its fund history, its signature exits, and its seed investment in the trading-card platform Alt.

The seed-first model

Kopelman founded First Round with Morgan “with a focus on helping founders start their companies,” after a run as an entrepreneur himself (PitchBook). In 1992 he had co-founded Infonautics, an information services company that went public four years later, then founded Half.com in 1999, a seller of used books, movies and music that was purchased by eBay, and helped create TurnTide, an anti-spam startup quickly acquired by Symantec (PitchBook). Morgan retired from the firm in 2018 and became chairman at B Capital Group, the venture firm founded by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin (PitchBook).

The firm’s name describes its investment philosophy: it backs startups at the earliest possible stages and helps build them into companies that can generate large returns (PitchBook). PitchBook ranked it the sixth most active seed investor in the United States, with 180 seed-stage investments over the preceding decade-plus (PitchBook). Its initial investments typically ranged from $500,000 to $750,000, and it reserved about 75% of its capital for follow-on fundings rather than spending everything on first checks (PitchBook). Through a programme called Pitch Assist it helped portfolio companies raise more than $500 million in follow-on capital (PitchBook).

The partnership behind that model included Rob Hayes, who joined in 2006 and led the firm’s investment in Uber; Hayley Barna, the firm’s first female partner and a Birchbox co-founder; Chris Fralic, who joined as a partner in 2006; Bill Trenchard, who became a partner in 2012; and Brett Berson, who started at the firm as a college intern and was named partner in 2016 (PitchBook). The firm also seeded student investing directly, putting $2 million behind the first Dorm Room Fund, which invests in entrepreneurial college students (Crunchbase News). Geographically it was a US-centric investor: PitchBook data showed 392 investments in California, more than 58% of its US deals, with New York second at 171 deals and Pennsylvania fourth at 23 (PitchBook).

Funds, exits and Alt

First Round’s fund sizes rose steadily as seed rounds themselves grew larger. Its third fund closed on $130 million in 2010 (PitchBook). Fund 6 was announced in September 2016 at $175 million, and the Fund VII filing of October 2018 targeted $209,392,283 plus a $10,607,717 sidecar — about $220 million in total and the largest flagship fund the firm had raised to that point (Crunchbase News). Crunchbase News noted the firm was on a two-year tick-tock capital-raising rhythm, and that larger seed and early-stage rounds required larger checks even if the firm made no more investments per fund than before (Crunchbase News).

Fund	Year	Size
First Round Capital III	2010	$130 million
Fund 6	2016	$175 million
Fund VII (target)	2018	About $220 million

The Uber bet remains the firm’s signature story. As the first venture backer of the ride-hailing company, First Round gave Uber its first office — the company worked out of a conference room at the firm until it outgrew the space (PitchBook). PitchBook put Uber’s first round of venture funding at $1.5 million at a $5.5 million valuation, while Crunchbase News separately reported that First Round led a $1.25 million angel round in Uber in 2010; the two figures are attributed separately here because the sources do not reconcile them (PitchBook; Crunchbase News). Other early stakes from the same era included Boxed, Flexport, Warby Parker and Roblox, plus a Series A investment in car-insurance company Metromile and a $5 million early round in home-wifi company Eero (Crunchbase News). In 2018 the firm saw Ring acquired by Amazon for $1 billion and Birchbox picked up by Viking Global Investors for $15 million (Crunchbase News).

The seed-first habit continued into the collectibles boom: in the span of a few months in early 2021, Alt wrapped a seed round led by First Round and a Series A led by Seven Seven Six, raising more than $31 million combined for its trading-card marketplace (TechCrunch). Crunchbase News corroborated the shape of the deal, listing First Round among the Series A investors alongside SV Angel and BoxGroup (Crunchbase News).

What this profile does not claim

• The firm’s headquarters city is not resolved: PitchBook lists San Francisco as headquarters, while Crunchbase News in 2018 calls the firm Philadelphia-based. All three office cities are stated; no headquarters move is claimed.
• The two Uber first-round figures ($1.5 million and $1.25 million) come from different sources and may describe different rounds; they are reported side by side, not merged into one number.
• Current fund sizes, assets under management and headcount are not stated: aggregator figures disagree and were not verified from fully-read editorial sources.
• The founding month in 2004 and the details of Howard Morgan’s departure beyond PitchBook’s note are not claimed.