This spring marks another anniversary of my time with First Round Capital. These milestones have always been an occasion for me to look back and reflect. In doing so, one thing was clear: the first half of 2008 was the beginning of a tectonic shift. Back then, Facebook Beacon was feeling some growing pains, you could “fan” companies, and Facebook Connect did not exist. The iPhone 3G had not been launched. The iOS SDK was in it’s infancy. The App Store hadn’t been turned on. The original iPad was still two years away. If you focused only on the then current capabilities and uses of these products (or suffered from financial calamity myopia), it was difficult to imagine the landscape that would shortly emerge.
Today, there is the Facebook Open Graph, “Likes” are the attention currency, and Facebook is the de facto online identity. Every company has an iOS plan. Some businesses are built entirely on mobile users. Companies like Path, Uber, Square, Task Rabbit, Hotel Tonight, Flurry and so many others were difficult to conceive of in Spring 2008. Back then, it was easy to think of BazaarVoice as a nice, little reviews company rather than one of the earliest social commerce companies. Today it trades on the Nasdaq.
As these changes were taking root, Phin Barnes and I joined First Round as Principals. The team had just raised their first institutional fund. There was an office outside Philadelphia and a small space in San Francisco. Our Platform effort was led by a single summer intern. Folks in the industry thought our smallish $135m fund was “cute.” We had never held Office Hours nor had we released a holiday video. Super Angels were still just the domain of Christmas pageants.
Things look different now. We have national offices in San Francisco, New York and Philadelphia. Our Platform Team is now 6 people. We’ve raised some more capital. We’ve danced, sung, showered and auto-tuned. We’ve been called Super Angels. And today, Phin and I are now joining Josh, Howard, Chris and Rob as Partners.
Amidst the changes and growth at First Round, it is a constant that I find most innovative. We remain solely focused on building the world’s best seed fund and working with the greatest Founders. We seek people who build their business for the long-term, as we do with our firm. We challenge ourselves to innovate and rethink the ways in which we can assist Founders. We’re passionate about starting companies and think of our ourselves as entrepreneurs. We are a start-up. We just happen to be a fund too.
I still pinch myself everyday that I get to do what I do with the people I do it with, colleagues, founders and co-investors alike. Congratulations to Phin. Thank you Josh, Howard, Chris and Rob. I’m thrilled to be working with you and our community of Founders for years to come.
The best fashion sites have style. They feel luxurious. They offer outstanding service. These are foundational elements. They make the goods being sold that much more alluring. They grant shoppers an experience to go along with their items. Within our portfolio, this has worked particularly well at Fab.com, One Kings Lane and Birchbox. All three have paired value with style & service to create new luxury in online commerce.
However, these elements remain absent from a huge part of online commerce: marketplaces. Take a look at women’s clothing on eBay. The UI is nearly the same as it was over a decade ago. It doesn’t feel luxurious. It feels disjointed. Yet, despite the experience, this is a massive category globally. There is readily available supply from boutiques, designers and fashionistas. There is huge demand from shoppers. Marketplace shopping is ready to be transformed. At First Round Capital, we think Threadflip will lead the way.
Threadflip is a marketplace for women’s clothing and accessories. The items for sale may come from small boutiques, vintage stores or another shopper’s closet. The concept behind Threadflip isn’t new but the execution is. Co-Founders Manik Singh and Jeff Shiau set out to build an experience that made shopping online as fun and as social as heading to a clothing swap or second hand store but as seamless as a trip to Nordstrom. They began with great design and a site crafted with style. They added social elements so you can see who you are buying from, so you can follow both the purchases and sales of stylish people, and they introduced a feed to give a sense of vitality to the site. But what really impressed me was what they did next.
Shopping is an end to end experience. While a great UI can set the tone for a site, it’s not enough to build a brand. Brand is more than just pixels. This is one of the areas where the Threadflip team paid great attention to detail. For example, they’ve designed custom packaging for everything sold on the site. When an item is sold or “flipped” the seller can use the custom designed box, labels and packaging to remove much of the hassle from shipping (or go a step further and check out the White Glove Service). The buyer receives their package in a Threadflip branded box rather than a FedEx envelope. Importantly, the experience is consistent for the buyer. This little touch makes the Threadflip easier for sellers and builds trust & delight for buyers. The team has more of these touches coming in the next few months, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise.
First Round is thrilled to welcome Threadflip to our community of Founders and to be working with Baseline Ventures, Andreesen Horowitz Seed Fund, Forerunner Ventures, Greylock Discovery and Slow Ventures to help Manik & Jeff build a great company.
