Founded in 2004 by serial entrepreneur Josh Kopelman (Half.com) in Philadelphia, later relocating its center of gravity to San Francisco. It helped define institutional seed investing as a category distinct from Series A venture.
Seed-only discipline: first institutional check, heavy post-investment community and content support, deliberately modest fund sizes.
Software, consumer, fintech, developer tools
Uber, Square (Block), Notion, Roblox, Warby Parker, Looker
Uber IPO (its ~$510K seed stake became one of the best seed investments ever), Square IPO, Looker ($2.6B to Google)
Its editorial arm, First Round Review, is widely considered the best content operation in venture, and its annual holiday parody video is a Silicon Valley tradition.
| Company | Rounds | Invested |
|---|---|---|
| Dyna Robotics Robotics | 1 round, 1 led | $120M |
| Parallel Web Systems AI | 1 round | $100M |
| Clay SaaS B2B | 1 round | $100M |
| Omnea SaaS B2B | 2 rounds | $70M |
| Endurance Energy Energy | 1 round | $54M |
| Gumloop SaaS B2B | 1 round | $50M |
| David AI AI | 1 round | $50M |
| Pinwheel Fintech | 1 round | $50M |
| Noon DevTools | 1 round, 1 led | $44M |
| &Open Marketplace | 2 rounds, 1 led | $33.2M |
| Prepared AI | 1 round | $27M |
| Solidroad SaaS B2B | 1 round | $25M |
| Kubecost DevTools | 1 round | $25M |
| Siteline Fintech | 1 round | $15M |
| Atrium SaaS B2B | 1 round | $13.5M |
| Rillet SaaS B2B | 1 round, 1 led | $13.5M |
| Central HR Tech | 1 round, 1 led | $8.6M |
| Legl LegalTech | 1 round | $7M |
| Crunched | 1 round, 1 led | $6M |
| Flai SaaS B2B | 1 round, 1 led | $4.5M |
| The Token Company | 1 round, 1 led | $500K |
| Sprout Technologies Media | 1 round, 1 led | $0 |