Venture Capital

First Round Capital

First Round Capital is a seed-stage venture capital firm founded in 2004 by Josh Kopelman and Howard Morgan, headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York and Philadelphia. First Round invests almost exclusively at the earliest stages of company creation, typically writing lead checks in the $750K to $4M range, and partners (many of them former founders) work side-by-side with companies through their first few years. The firm is a generalist that seeks contrarian insight into how markets work, with concentration in enterprise software, AI, fintech, healthcare, hardware, and consumer. Since founding it has backed 500+ startups and was the first institutional investor in Uber; its portfolio includes Notion, Roblox, Square, Looker, Upstart, Verkada, Warby Parker, Flatiron Health, and Clay. First Round also runs The Review, a widely read operator-focused editorial publication, and self-reports roughly $2.5B in assets under management.

25 portfolio companies 25 publish APIs here 11 properties
Venture CapitalSeedSeries ADeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareArtificial IntelligenceFintechHealthcareConsumerNorth America
Portfolio Strength across 25 profiled portfolio companies on the network
7 top-rated API companies 2 exemplar · 5 strong
10 agent-ready companies 3 agent-native · 7 agent-ready
Average quality of the book:
Composite thin 34.9
Agent-Readiness agent-aware 24.4

Firms are ranked by cumulative portfolio strength — how many highly-rated API companies they've backed, weighted by tier across composite quality and agent-readiness. The averages below are a secondary read on the typical company in the book.

First Round Capital has 25 portfolio companies tracked on the APIs.io network, of which 25 (100%) publish APIs indexed here.

Its highest-rated API providers on the network are Notion, Fal, Looker, Uber, Reducto.

Portfolio on the Network

Portfolio companies that publish APIs indexed on APIs.io, grouped by their API Evangelist rating. Exemplar and Strong are expanded by default.

Exemplar 2 Complete, well-documented, and agent-ready
Notion 6 APIs 79.1 Fal 12 APIs 75.1
Strong 5 Solid coverage with minor gaps
Looker 10 APIs 63.0 Uber 20 APIs 59.8 Reducto 17 APIs 58.4 Verkada 1 API 58.2 SingleStore 9 APIs 57.4
Developing 5 Usable, with meaningful gaps to close
Rillet 28 APIs 55.1 Square 5 APIs 53.3 Stedi 21 APIs 50.3 Ring 1 API 48.1 Clover Health 2 APIs 43.2
Thin 3 Limited public surface area
Roblox 8 APIs 39.9 Together AI 38 APIs 34.8 Flexport 10 APIs 32.8
Emerging 4 Early or largely undocumented
Upstart 1 API 25.2 AppNexus 1 API 23.1 Pomelo Care 14.1 Flatiron Health 13.9
Minimal 6 Almost no public developer surface
Clay 1 API 11.6 Loyal 9.0 Warby Parker 8.9 EvolutionIQ 8.7 K2 Space 5.0 Mint 5.0

Properties

Portfolio

Where the firm publishes its investments

Portfolio
Portfolio
 Portfolio
Portfolio
 InvestmentThesis
InvestmentThesis

Team

Partners and investing staff

Team
Team
 Team
Team

Content

Blog, podcast, newsletter, and research

Blog
Blog

Firm

The firm itself

Website
Website
 Jobs
Jobs
 Crunchbase
Crunchbase
 LinkedIn
LinkedIn
 Twitter
Twitter

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
aid: first-round-capital
name: First Round Capital
description: >-
  First Round Capital is a seed-stage venture capital firm founded in 2004 by
  Josh Kopelman and Howard Morgan, headquartered in San Francisco with offices
  in New York and Philadelphia. First Round invests almost exclusively at the
  earliest stages of company creation, typically writing lead checks in the
  $750K to $4M range, and partners (many of them former founders) work
  side-by-side with companies through their first few years. The firm is a
  generalist that seeks contrarian insight into how markets work, with concentration
  in enterprise software, AI, fintech, healthcare, hardware, and consumer. Since
  founding it has backed 500+ startups and was the first institutional investor in
  Uber; its portfolio includes Notion, Roblox, Square, Looker, Upstart, Verkada,
  Warby Parker, Flatiron Health, and Clay. First Round also runs The Review, a
  widely read operator-focused editorial publication, and self-reports roughly
  $2.5B in assets under management.
x-type: venture-capital
x-category: Venture Capital
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://firstround.com/favicon.ico
tags:
  - Venture Capital
  - Seed
  - Series A
  - Developer Tools
  - Enterprise Software
  - Artificial Intelligence
  - Fintech
  - Healthcare
  - Consumer
  - North America
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-17'
specificationVersion: '0.20'
apis: []
common:
  - type: Website
    url: https://firstround.com/
  - type: Portfolio
    url: https://firstround.com/companies
  - type: Portfolio
    url: portfolio/first-round-capital-portfolio.yml
  - type: Team
    url: https://firstround.com/team
  - type: Team
    url: team/first-round-capital-team.yml
  - type: InvestmentThesis
    url: https://firstround.com/how-we-work
  - type: Blog
    url: https://review.firstround.com/
  - type: Jobs
    url: https://jobs.firstround.com/talent-network/login
  - type: Crunchbase
    url: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/first-round-capital
  - type: LinkedIn
    url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/first-round-capital
  - type: Twitter
    url: https://x.com/firstround
  - type: Features
    data:
      - 'Stage: Seed (early-stage focus, occasional Series A)'
      - 'Typical check: $750K-$4M (lead)'
      - 'Sectors: enterprise software, AI, fintech, healthcare, hardware, consumer'
      - 'Geography: primarily North America'
      - 'AUM: ~$2.5B (self-reported / third-party sources)'
      - 'Founded: 2004'
      - 'Founders: Josh Kopelman, Howard Morgan'
      - 'HQ: San Francisco, CA (offices in New York and Philadelphia)'
      - 'Portfolio: 500+ startups backed since 2004'
    sources:
      - https://firstround.com/
      - https://firstround.com/how-we-work
      - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Round_Capital
    updated: '2026-07-17'
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com
    url: https://apievangelist.com
  - FN: APIs.json
    url: https://apisjson.org
  - FN: First Round Capital
    url: https://firstround.com/