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05: Discovering hidden baseball talent to leading Sales at Stripe all applied to finding outliers in tech - Meka Asonye, First Round Capital
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Meka Asonye, a Partner at First Round Capital, started angel investing in 2018 while working at Stripe and joined First Round in 2021. He has made dozens of Angel investments and 13 Venture investments, and he's just getting started! While he focuses on B2B SAAS, he has not shied away from investing in audacious founders, from modernizing 911 call centers to putting the biggest satellites in space. Meka shares his approach to finding true outliers, a practice he began while uncovering hidden talent for the Cleveland Guardians.
Meka writes checks of $2M to $5M as the lead at pre-seed and seed.
Highlights from the discussion:
- Meka's unconventional path to VC: from discovering high-potential baseball talent to leading sales at startups to VC
- Meka's first angel investment came from Craiglist!
- Exploring the frontiers: investing in Space and GovTech
- How Meka supports founder friends, honestly
- Leveling up in VC by learning from partners, retros, reviews, and reflection powered by process and data
This is for information purposes only. This is not investment advice.
Topics
- (00:00) - Kicking Off the First Funders Podcast with Meka Asonye
- (03:52) - First Round Capital's role in Meka and Shaherose's transition from Angel to VC
- (05:53) - Meka's Unconventional Path to Venture Capital: from baseball talent to management consulting to startups to VC
- (10:54) - Meka's purpose is rooted in being a part of the founder's village
- (13:55) - The Art of Angel Investing: Meka's First Investment Story came from a person he met on Craiglist!
- (18:37) - Thoughtful reflection: outliers can't be discovered via pattern matching
- (20:15) - How Meka assesses for money smells and hustle in a founder
- (23:16) - Missed deals like Anthropic keep Meka up at night.
- (28:10) - How Meka supports founder friends
- (33:42) - Outcomes and up rounds thus far: Rimeto, CODA, K2Space, Prepared
- (36:16) - Exploring the Frontiers: Investing in Space and GovTech
- (37:42) - Meka's betting on a pair of brother's putting big satellites in space
- (39:04) - Unexpected VC bet: Integrating tech into every 911 emergency call
- (43:31) - Meka is a generalist investor with a focus on B2B SAAS, Fintech and hard tech
- (44:54) - Investing in YC companies and maintaining an orientation towards prioritizing ownership over valuation
- (49:28) - First Round Capital's approach is rooted in consensus not conviction, they invest as team
- (52:17) - Leveling up in VC by learning from partners, retros, reviews, reflection powered by a process and data
- (01:07:47) - Outro
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