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.