Joining First Round Capital's Expert Network

I started working with First Round Capital in July 2015 as part of their Expert Network.

As many entrepreneurs have discovered, finding strong advisors can be a difficult proposition. The goal of the Expert Network is to reduce the friction that happens all to often when entrepreneurs attempt to find an advisor to help with a specific need:

The First Round Expert Network is a carefully curated community of over 100 experts across domains — like product, design, engineering, marketing, finance, business development, and human resources — who are available to advise First Round companies to help solve their biggest problems, today.

This is different than the work I do with StartX as a Lead Mentor in several ways — most notably that while StartX takes no equity in any company, FRC has invested in all the companies that take advantage of the Expert Network. Additionally, StartX is an incubator whereas FRC is a venture capital firm.

In the first six months, I have had two main areas of focus:
  • Advisor to CEO - advising CEOs in areas related to engineering, hiring, culture, financing and scaling a business
  • Technical advisor - advising CEO/CTOs in areas related to mobile, cloud computing and global scale
Time commitment is always a big concern of mine - domain specific advisory roles keep interactions focused and productive. FRC gets a definite “thumbs up” on this one!

If you are interested in learning more FRC’s Expert Network, head over and sign-up. 

StartX: Vynca.org

The latest class of companies officially joined Stanford's StartX incubator in late 2014. As a Lead Mentor, I am fortunate to mentor two companies, one of whom is Vynca. 

Mission

Vynca.org was founded on the idea that we could all benefit greatly from making early decisions about our end-of-life care. 

Working with their initial customer, Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), Vynca is striving to make end-of-life care discussions part of the doctor/patient relationship. 

Vynca and OHSU are using the POLST framework ("Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment") to enable patients to specify what type of care they would want in various medical situations. Their ePOLST system enables the sharing of POLST data with state registries and other healthcare systems.

While this might not sound like the "normal" mentoring engagement, the mission of the company resonated with me immediately. Also, the team has many of the same challenges that any startup has including technical implementations with large healthcare systems, how to navigate the world of venture capital, hiring and more.

Team

The Vynca team consists of 2 PhDs and 2 MDs, a great combination that understands both the medical and technical aspects of their business. Keep your eye on them as they continue to make progress!

StartX

Quick note - company applications for the next session must be submitted by February 1st, 2015.


Juntos Wins the BASES Social Entrepreneurship Challenge!

Last week, Ben Knelman and the team at Juntos won the Social Entrepreneurship Challenge, part of the BASES $150k Challenge!

Big congrats to the team - as one of their mentors at SSE, I've been continually impressed with the progress the team has made in the last several months.

Their Demo Day presentation is next week, check it out if you are attending the sessions!