Ali Jamal is a venture capital investor at First Check Ventures who spent over a decade building products at companies like Zynga, Agoda, Rappi, and PayClip across the US, Asia, and Latin America before becoming a full-time investor, giving him pattern recognition in emerging markets rather than just Silicon Valley. He completed more than 200 angel investments and now uses his operator background to connect founders from Latin America, Asia, and Africa with growth and product expertise across regions, positioning himself as the earliest institutional believer who stays involved through multiple funding rounds.

• Strong focus on investing in emerging markets, particularly within Latin America. Frequently highlights travel to regions like Mexico City and Guatemala and explicitly lists countries like Venezuela, Brazil, and Vietnam as active investment zones, noting that the vast majority of his investments are outside the United States.
• Openness to unprompted cold outreach from founders. Validates that cold messages can lead to funding by sharing a specific success story regarding his portfolio company Shop Circle, where he invested after the founders simply reached out via a LinkedIn message.
• Requirement for preparedness and specific materials during the initial pitch. Insists that founders must include a pitch deck or a one-pager when reaching out, explaining that he cannot make a decision based on a single sentence description given that he receives around 300 decks every week.
• Active interest in increasing diversity within the portfolio. Expresses a specific desire to see more pitches from female CEOs after noticing they make up a very small percentage of his incoming deal flow, while noting that a high percentage of his current founders are people of color.
• Strategy of entering deals at the earliest possible stage. Emphasizes a mandate to provide the literal first check into a company, often entering at the pre-seed stage and doubling down in subsequent rounds as seen with his support for the delivery super app Yummy.
• Exploration of Generative AI capabilities. Discusses testing different AI tools to assist with work and research, comparing results between platforms like Google Bard and OpenAI to see which provides more accurate information for investors.