It’s more of a marathon than a sprint. That goes for VCs as well as it does for founders. Different sides of the same coin. So it’s always interesting to be along for the journey as new funds come into being. And one of those new funds — Founder First Fund — has some recent progress to highlight.
Team news first via our friends at GeekWire:
The fund is led by Josh Carter, a longtime entrepreneur and former director at Washington Maritime Blue, a nonprofit based in Seattle that supports maritime startups.
Carter is general partner at the firm, along with Justin Vandehey, an entrepreneur who sold his startup Disco to Culture Amp in 2021 and is currently CEO of sales automation startup Thread.
Founder First Fund recently added former Twilio exec Bobby Napiltonia as a venture partner.
The firm announced Tuesday that it has raised investment from Saeed Amidi, CEO of Plug and Play, the Silicon Valley-based innovation group that recently planted its flag in the Seattle region.
And that team is starting to have a local impact by picking up the funding for the early stage round at Bend Venture Conference, this year:
I’ll continue to track on this one. We haven’t had a new locally focused tech VC fund around these parts since Elevate Capital started up nearly a decade ago, so I’m curious to see where this goes. More news as it becomes available.
For more information on the fund, visit Founder First Fund.
More Oregon startup news
