Maven

Called First Round for a reason. Your first money in is one thing. But so are your first hires, your first product and your first customers. They've helped Notion, Roblox, Uber, Square, and 300 others tackle these firsts and more. First round is building the world’s best product for founders who are just getting started.

Fund established by operators for operators.

Early-stage fund focused on improving the way we live and the way we work

Invest in companies led by women, people of color, and LGBTQIA+ founders.

One of the most active global food-tech VCs. We invest in teams and tech building a better food system.

Naval Ravikant is the CEO and a co-founder of AngelList. He previously co-founded Epinions (which went public as part of Shopping.com) and Vast.com. He is an active Angel investor, and have invested in dozens of companies, including Twitter, Uber, Yammer, Stack Overflow and Wanelo.

Andrew invests in consumer technology, including social, marketplace, entertainment, and gaming experiences. Andrew is a prolific writer and leading voice on mobile, metrics, and user growth. For the past decade, he’s covered the topic on andrewchen.com. He is the author of The Cold Start Problem, which explores how new start-ups launch and scale by leveraging network effects. He is also a board member and instructor at Reforge, which offers selective growth-focused programs for experienced professionals in marketing, product, data, and engineering. Prior to joining a16z, Andrew led the Rider Growth teams at Uber.

Lenny is the author of Lenny's Newsletter, the #1 business newsletter on Substack, where he talks about growth, products, startups, and more. He also interviews world-class product leaders and growth experts on his podcast.

Alda invests in inspirational founders solving real problems. Prior to joining Initialized, she was a managing partner at 137 Ventures where she led investments in Planet (IPO), Wish (IPO), Coupang (IPO), CourseHero, and Work Market (acquired by ADP). Additionally, she made personal early-stage investments in Maven, Tia, Legalzoom (acquired by Permira), SpaceX, and Knowde. Before that, she was COO at Airtime, general counsel at Founders Fund, assistant general counsel at Clarium Capital Management, and practiced as a litigator for IP disputes at WSGR. She is a mother of three and is always thinking about what she is going to eat next.

Founder and CEO of Gumroad. Previously, he was early at Pinterest.

Leads consumer investing for the firm and supports portfolio companies in their comms, community building, and go-to-market strategy. Prior to joining Variant, she was founder and managing partner at Atelier, a VC firm investing in the creator economy and future of work. Atelier and Variant merged to join forces in the fall of 2021 to invest in software that is owned and operated by its users– aligned on the belief that the future of consumer software is crypto. Before founding Atelier, Li was a consumer partner for 4 years at Andreessen Horowitz.

Built a venture capital fund from the ground up, while homeless. She is the Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital, a fund that is dedicated to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential founders who are people of color, women, and/or LGBT. Started from scratch in 2015, Backstage has now raised more than $15 million and invested in more than 170 startup companies led by underestimated founders.

Co-founder and Advisor at Rough Draft Ventures