first-check
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The Check That Comes Before You Have a Company Bank Account
Farooq Abbasi built Preface Ventures to fund the engineers behind enterprise infrastructure - and got in so early on DX that a $2.8M-funded company became a $1B Atlassian deal.
The Fund Betting That 60% of the Economy Will Soon Be Grown, Not Made
Jennifer Kan spent years at a Nobel laureate's bench teaching enzymes new tricks. Now her fund backs the founders trying to grow the physical economy - chocolate, copper, chemicals, even data - one engineered cell at a time.
Brittany Walker
Brittany Walker is a General Partner at CRV in San Francisco who writes first checks to technical founders in AI, infrastructure software, and frontier technology. She joined CRV in 2020, was promoted to General Partner in 2024, and co-founded The Table, a community for women building in enterprise.
Founders, Inc.
Founders, Inc. (f.inc) is a 42,000 sq ft campus, community, and first-check fund at Fort Mason in San Francisco — built for the wildly ambitious founders solving hard problems at the edge of what's possible. Not a traditional VC and not a time-boxed accelerator, it combines pre-seed investment (up to $250K), a dedicated workspace with hardware labs and media studios, daily meals, and an indefinite community of 80+ builders. Founded in 2020 by serial builder Furqan Rydhan, it has backed 100+ companies across AI, AR/VR, Web3, and hardware — including thirdweb, buildspace, LiveKit, and Sync Labs. Featured in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.