I'M Just Confused by the Interaction....
Fund: First Round Capital
Posted by GrowthCapital on 2007-12-04
I'm genuinely confused by my interaction with FirstRound.
I spoke with Rob Hayes quite some time ago - a fellow entrepreneur made an introduction to Josh Kopelman and Rob followed up. We had a very brief conversation in which I mentioned we were not yet looking for funding but I wanted to connect and introduce myself because we would be shortly. Rob asked some very reasonable, very standard checklist questions, and I thanked him for his time and indicated that I'd follow up when ready.
A couple of months later, I was about to reach out again when yet a different contact alerted me that he would write to Josh at FirstRound recommending us. I figured that another endorsement couldn't hurt. Out of the blue, I got a Facebook friend request from Josh (who I've never met and my only interaction was via the above introduction). I accepted his request and wrote back saying that while we'd never connected, I had spoken with Rob and our company was actually ready to look for Series A financing. Josh never responded to me at all. He did respond to the contact trying to connect us, saying simply that he looked in the database and "they had already passed." I never heard anything from him or FirstRound again.
It was just a totally different interaction than I've had with any other VC. If a VC isn't interested in my plan, that's fine. There was just something unsettling about the weird contact and the fact that they "passed" on our plan without being offered an opportunity to invest, and without ever telling us.
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