From the First Row
Issue 41 | November / December 2024
Welcome to Issue #41 of our newsletter series, News From the First Row.
Thank you to Jerry Chi and Jessica Kamada for sending some deals our way! That said, no intros are required - any startup can share their investment opportunity here.
📣 Announcements
For the full feed, check out (and follow) our LinkedIn page.
Join us at these upcoming community events
TUE, JAN 7th @ 12:00pm PT (viz Zoom) | Due Diligence Workshop
Join us for this workshop that will walk through the due diligence process for evaluating early stage companies. This workshop is equally helpful for both founders and funders. Register here.
WED, JAN 15th @ 5:00pm PT (via Zoom) | Deals & Drinks
Join us via Zoom for our 'Deals & Drinks' workshop! We bring a founder together with a group of investors (a mix of VCs, prospective angels, students, angels) to hear a pitch. We gather our notes and use them to facilitate a conversation about how we heard the pitch, what we observed, and what open questions we still have. Don’t miss it - RSVP today!
Can’t make the next Deals & Drinks?
Join in the invite list and we’ll include you on the next one!
Our portfolio companies are hiring
Please let us know (hello@firstrowpartners.vc) if you or anyone in your network is interested in these opportunities:
WAVEAI has several openings, including a VP of Business Development, Head of Growth Marketing, and Front-End Developer
Velt is looking for a Founding Fullstack Engineer (Frontend leaning) [India only] and a Founding Developer Success Engineer in San Francisco
Ettos is hiring an Asesora Comercial Y De Bodega in Medellín, Colombia
Esteam is hiring a Temporary Program/Product Manager (Maternity Leave Cover)
And in case you missed it
Wealthmore launched a new Community Plan!
Dr. Maya Ackerman (CEO of WAVEAI) was the keynote speaker at Microsoft on AI and the future of humanity. See our takeaways below.
Humanly’s Prem Kumar gave his thoughts on how to find the right balance of automation activity.
mpathic's Dr. Alison Cerezo was recognized as a Fierce 50 2024 Honoree.
Adauris’ Tina Haertel spoke at Google for Startups first summit to share her insights on how audio can transform brand connections.
🔆 Highlights
Angel Investing 101 for Women | November 13 2024
First Row Partners partnered with Armoire to host an evening dedicated to demystifying angel investing. Yoko moderated a discussion with panelists Sarah Waterkamp (angel investor), Priyanka Kulkarni (entrepreneur in residence at AI2), and Stephiney Foley (angel investor and founder of Yuzi Care). They covered a variety of topics, from ways to engage in the startup ecosystem, to assessing ideas and founders before investing, to finding the "mode" that’s most meaningful to you. Guests also got a special behind-the-scenes tour of the Armoire space following the discussion.
Special thanks to Ambika Singh and Annie Barker for hosting us all in Armoire’s expansive 30,000-square-foot closet.
University of Washington Buerk Center’s Women in Entrepreneurship Leadership (WE Lead) Brunch | November 19 2024
Minda joined more than 100 women leaders, investors, and entrepreneurs from across the Pacific Northwest at WE Lead’s annual Rising Tide – Women Making Waves in the Startup World brunch.
These celebrations offer a way to meaningfully connect and engage with phenomenal women and gender expansive folks from the UW community. The panel featured Karen Fassio (Principal at Abundant Marketing Collective and Co-Founder, Women in Cloud), Jilyne Jarvis (Co-Founder & CEO of ZGirls and WE Lead Advisory Board Member), and Diankha Linear (Founder & CEO of Tribute LLC, Board Member of Lumen Technologies and Vice Board Chair at Swedish).
Seattle Angel Conference Due Diligence Office Hours | November 6-9 2024
Yoko hosted office hours for investors during the due diligence phase of Seattle Angel Conference (SAC) 26. The 3-month program has a “learning-by-doing” philosophy, where a group of 20-40 new and experienced angel investors select, qualify, and evaluate participating startups in order to make a group angel investment.
Due diligence (DD) is a key part of the investment process but it can feel daunting as a first-time investor. What are the key pieces of information to gather, and what are the important questions to ask? How do you keep diligence moving forward and keep your “curiosity questions” at bay? When examining early-stage deals, it’s important to triangulate on asking the “right” (or most consequential) questions. During the office hours, Yoko discussed the miracles and fires for each deal with the team and helped guide teams in identifying the key areas of inquiry for their companies.
If you’re interested in learning more about the DD process, register for our Due Diligence Workshop on January 7th at 12:00pm PT (via Zoom).
📰 What we've been reading
Ben Lang: YC on Why Vertical AI Agents Could be 10x Bigger than SaaS
With AI companies promising to bring efficiency to our lives, we agree that existing organizations will change. However, when we imagine the shifts that AI can bring, it’s not just about organizational size. Instead, we consider how organizational structure, processes, and an individual’s role will shift.
From our perspective, SaaS did more than bring about efficiency gains and AI agents are likely to do the same. With the emergence of SaaS, companies no longer needed to spend months installing servers onsite, hire costly consultants, or deploy a full-time IT team. This had tremendous benefits to productivity and reduced costs. But SaaS - and, importantly, cloud computing - also unlocked an abundance of opportunities for software startups to build at a dramatically lower cost with faster deployment. This created new industries and markets.
So, rather than look at the immediate efficiency gains of the end user, we ask: what bigger change is possible because of AI agents? What shifts will happen now that organizations are leaner and more focused on the problem they’re solving and the product they’re developing?
WAVE AI’s Maya Ackerman: AI & Humanity: Can Machines Make Us More Creative?
Dr. Maya Ackerman, CEO of First Row Portfolio Company, WAVEAI, was the keynote speaker at Microsoft on AI and the future of humanity.
Early efforts, like Google’s Deep Dream and IBM’s Watson Chef, focused on “what can the machine do by itself.” All of these things produced tremendous results yet there was little interest from the general public. The introduction of ChatGPT was a true turning point. Why? It elevated our creativity and enhanced our capabilities; it was no longer just glorifying “what a machine can do by itself.”
Dr. Ackerman believes that focusing on “humble creative machines,” where the human is in the driver’s seat and AI is working in the background, is key to benefiting humanity while producing economic benefits. AI can meaningfully improve our creative processes so long as the tech is deeply interactive and built on human-centered design.
Anna Sun, CEO of Nowadays, Featured on Forbes 30 under 30
Congratulations to Anna Sun, CEO of Nowadays (YC 23), for making the Forbes 30 Under 30 list! First Row Partners met Anna as Nowadays was a finalist in our Ensemble Event Fund process last winter, where investors were impressed at the team’s focused product velocity.
🖼️ Practice | Observing Art
Art & Critical Thinking. We see a bold line connection between the intuitive and critical thinking skills practiced in the arts and the work of evaluating innovation ideas and opportunities.
Looking at art with abstract and complex themes is an opportunity to slow down your thinking and reflect on how you form a point of view (metacognition). Use the self-guided questions provided below to walk through this image:
Take a closer look. Is this a series of shapes and colors, or an illustration of a specific scene/object? Which clues are the most persuasive to you? What would you name the different shapes or objects? Is there any 3D aspect to this image? How do the pieces connect to each other, or not? What themes or similarities do you observe? How would this piece appear different if there we no lines, just shapes and colors — where would you eyes travel in the piece? Do you think the artist did other illustrations and work in preparation for this image, or was it spontaneous? What is one adjective you might use to describe the piece?
👋 Talk Soon!
Wishing you a safe and happy New Years! Please reach out to us so that we can share more about our investment strategies, pipeline, and our fund portfolio.
Minda Brusse & Yoko Okano