Todd Jackson
@tjack
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Partner @firstround. Former VP Product @Dropbox, Product Director @twitter, co-founder @coverscreen, PM @google, @facebook. Amateur golfer and dad.
San Francisco, CA
Joined March 2009
Big @firstround news today!. We’re launching Product-Market Fit Method (a free intensive 14-week experience for early founders building epic B2B SaaS companies) and publishing the first session on our internal framework for all to read (with benchmarks, Looker's real data, and
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1/ Excited to finally share some news I've been sitting on: As @phineasb and I announced on @twentyminutevc this morning, I'm officially joining @firstround as a Venture Partner. 😀. Thrilled to join the team that invested in me back when I was a founder.
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How do you evaluate products as a seed investor? .(part 1) 🧵👇.
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Seeing founders pitch straight from Figma recently (instead of using Keynote/Google Slides/PDF). Maybe since they're in Figma all the time already, they just use it when they need to make "slides"?.
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A microphone that records meetings and dumps the transcripts into Slack. Dropshipping for ecommerce merchants. A team collaboration tool. These were all ideas @christinacaci explored before landing on SOC 2 and @TrustVanta. As we were developing @firstround's PMF Method, we
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Question: how do you successfully sell a product that provides extreme customer value. BUT that value isn't obvious to the customer until after the product is used. AND there’s upfront activation energy required?. Open to any and all ideas/examples…thanks!.
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There’s no single right way to find PMF. But I’ve met several successful founders with an approach I find interesting. They start by problem hunting — looking for things people hate doing, or tasks that are tedious and time-consuming. .
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Services as Software. Seeing some great founders tackle this theme lately across different verticals: SEO, recruiting, growth marketing, trust & safety, legal, etc. Things that you'd traditionally hire an agency, BPO, or consultants to do for you. But well-designed AI systems.
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Over the past year, I’ve interviewed dozens of founders on one of the most important, yet elusive, parts of company building: finding product-market fit. I’m excited to share these fascinating stories in a new series launching on the @firstround Review today— details below ⬇️
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Before founding Looker, @lloydtabb was CTO at several companies. At each one, he built internal data tools to help people understand what was happening in the business. After the third time, he realized that if you’re building the same thing over and over, that’s a signal that
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👇My framework for what makes a great product manager. I think this works for about 70% of companies but may look a bit different depending on your industry, business model and size. Is there anything you would add or remove?
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📣 I'm looking for a new Chief of Staff to work alongside me at @firstround! . You can learn more about what I'm looking for in this critical role and how to apply here: .
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Big congrats to @TaraViswanathan, @RosaHamalainen and the entire @Rupa_Health team for announcing their planned merger with @FullscriptHQ today. I could talk about Rupa’s impressive growth, from the number of practices and lab order volume to the 100s of thousands of patients
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I don’t know how to comprehend these highlight reels of police brutality (in response to protests of police brutality) and the President sitting back and fanning the flames. .
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The past few days have been extremely challenging for everyone in LA. I'm deeply saddened for so many families in our community — and so grateful for the teams of firefighters who have been working heroically around the clock. We were able to visit our house on foot this.
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The flames in LA are largely out — thanks to our incredible firefighters. Now everyone here is learning about what comes next. For homes that survived, it’s masks, air filters, house inspections, industrial hygienists helping remediate. For homes that didn’t, I’ve heard.
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After almost 3 wonderful years @Dropbox, excited to announce my new role as Founder in Residence @FirstRound! (1/2).
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Launching Dropbox Professional! w/ Smart Sync and a new feature called Dropbox Showcase. Let us know what you think.
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Dropbox Design just DOMINATING the Dribbble popular page right now.
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It’s such a treat to be on @lennysan’s podcast today. We dig into Product-Market Fit Method, @firstround’s new framework and program to help B2B founders increase their odds of finding product-market fit. We cover a lot of ground, including:.🪜 The 4-levels of our PMF framework
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Super excited to kick off PMF Method this weekend with a group of exceptional, accomplished and kind founders 🎉. The reason @firstround decided to run this program is pretty simple — we strongly believe that Product Market Fit is the single most important thing for founders to
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Seeing lots of design-focused founders who would have done a consumer startup 5 years ago now focused on SaaS. Future of work is ☀️.
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AI legal startups are a thing in 2024. But as @ironclad_inc’s @jboehmig puts it, “nobody was trying to buy an AI legal assistant back in 2015.”. Ironclad has one of the most interesting and underexplored stories out there IMO. As we were developing @firstround's PMF Method, we
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Back in 2008, @amasad wasn't trying to launch a startup. He was a college student in Jordan with a wild idea: What if you could code collaboratively in a browser?. "I was always attracted to the entrepreneurship track, but I've always ultimately been guided by my worldview when
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Last day in the @twoffice. Gonna miss this building and all the people in it. Also, obligatory laptop+badge photo. http://t.co/MyJpPiOyWS.
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I find there are two types of people. A).Respond critically in areas they know.Respond skeptically in areas they don’t know. B).Respond patiently in areas they know.Respond curiously in areas they don’t know. I prefer B.
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We recently published the 10th article in our Paths to PMF series! I've learned so much already, and it's reaffirmed how incredibly challenging (but rewarding) the journey to finding product-market fit is. Here are my top 10 takeaways from my conversations with founders:.
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Just left a meeting with Dylan and Jake*. A total waste of time!! I asked what is going to happen this morning, is Dylan going to BRUSH HIS TEETH? Dylan said, NO. I said bye-bye, nothing else works!! SAD! (*my two young children).
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When they see a consistent pain point often enough, they start by *manually* doing the work for those people. Through this, they learn the hard parts of doing the task and figure out whether it’s possible to “productize” the work.
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To celebrate @LaminiAI’s $25M Series A news today, I revisited @realSharonZhou and @GregoryDiamos’ original seed pitch deck from August 2022. Here’s a few observations on what I think they got right that might be helpful to other founders starting out on a similar journey:. 📚
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If you’re an early-stage founder, finding out what your customers *really* want so you can build the right product is critical. I’m excited to share some of @FirstRound’s PMF Method program with @GaganBiyani on Friday!. Gagan has founded 3 companies including Udemy, Sprig, and.
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Feeling privileged to have worked @twitter – thanks @kevinweil, @aroetter, @utkarsh and everyone else who makes this place so special.
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A SaaS founder recently shared a great framework for identifying painkillers (vs. vitamins):. 1. Does the customer have a problem?.2. Are they aware of it?.3. Are they actively looking for a solution?.4. Have they cobbled together a solution?.5. Would they pay to fix the problem?.
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Learn more about PMF Method here: Apply here by 5/7: FAQs answered here: And read our framework in full in this essay here:
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If it seems possible, then they build the product and iterate with those early customers until the product is able to do 80-90% of the task for them. Then they launch the product, and no surprise, lots of people want it!.
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Christina (@christinacaci) is an awesome founder. She uncovered the brilliant insight that became Vanta by interviewing folks about security and listening for their real needs. She had never built a security company before and now runs one of the best.
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1/ How do you evaluate products as a seed investor? .(part 3) 🧵. We see a lot of pre-product pitches @firstround. Here's how we evaluate when all we have are:. 🖌️ Figma mockups.💻 Slides.🧦 An adjacent proof of concept ('Uber for X').🔮 A ‘dream with me' scenario.
How do you evaluate products as a seed investor? .(part 1) 🧵👇.
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If you’re curious about angel investing, consider applying to Angel Track! It’s the program that helped me discover that I wanted to switch from building to investing ☺️.
1/ We've got some exciting news to share. Our Angel Track program was previously run out of our office locations in SF & NYC. Today we’re opening applications for our fall cohort—and for the first time expanding access across the US. Apply here by 8/28
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What does good retention look like?. By @lennysan and @onecaseman — great resource for founders, investors, and employees.
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I'll be on Lenny's Podcast this Thursday talking more about Product-Market Fit Method — tune in!🎙️.
I got a peek at this PMF framework and it's VERY GOOD. If you're an early-stage B2B founder, don't miss this. And this Thursday, I've got @tjack on the podcast who'll share the framework, and many of the lessons he and his team have learned about finding PMF from 20 years and.
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Today's the last day we're accepting applications for @firstround's PMF Method! (Get yours in here: . We've been blown away by the response, and are capping things off with a brand-new resource for B2B builders on The Review today:.
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Evaluating products as a seed investor (part 4) 🧵. In my @firstround Angel Track session on product, the last thing we covered was evaluating business models — these are often tough to predict accurately at seed, and we try to avoid false precision. Here's what we do instead.
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It’s a great day for @rupa_health as they announce their Series A with @BessemerVP! . @TaraViswanathan is a truly special founder who recognized the huge potential in root cause medicine early on and built a platform beloved by doctors and patients.
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So proud of all the teams at Dropbox who worked towards today's launch!
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1/ I love building + investing in “power tools” — complex under the hood but simple and powerful to the user:. Dev tools.Data tools.Design tools.Productivity tools.Etc. I like that founders are rethinking all of these with AI. These are some ideas I’m searching for lately:.
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There are many ways companies approach product definition, but we tend to see these 3 paths over and over:. 🎨 Creating a new product category.🛠️ Reinventing an existing product category.🔐 Unlocking new (or latent) behavior.
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My wife just told me I am much better at doing complicated things than simple things. Is this a compliment?.
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I’m so excited to welcome @cjc to @firstround!! Between her deep work company building at Stripe and Notion to her extensive experience angel investing, I know she’ll be an incredible asset to our team and founders. 🙌.
📣 After spending 12 years at startups like @stripe & @notionhq, I’ve joined @firstround as a partner! I knew I wanted to make supporting founders my life's work and am thrilled I get to do that as part of an incredible team. Sharing more on that. 1/7
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What are the traits of a great Chief Product Officer?. From what I’ve seen, it’s someone who:. ✅ Thinks holistically across product and GTM.✅ Acts as the cross-functional anchor (across execs and execs+1).✅ Attracts great talent and aligns it with company strategy. What else?.
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Open application for our next partner @firstround — please share! We strongly believe that our next partner can and should be from outside our current network.
Some news to share from the @firstround partnership: We recently began the search for an additional partner, and have decided to open up the role so that anyone can apply. Learn more about what we're looking for and how you can get in touch here:
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Felt super lucky to be part of @firstround’s Angel Track — an amazing group of budding angel investors learning from some of the best. Still keep in touch with so many folks from my cohort. Building deep, lasting community is First Round’s greatest strength as a firm.
Grateful to everyone who's helped turn this angel investing experiment into a true community, from the 80 members across the SF/NY cohorts to the investors who share their wisdom every session. 😇 Learn more in this story from @JoshConstine @TechCrunch
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East Bay Engineering friends!. I'm super excited about Snackpass, a food pickup app that's insanely popular on college campuses. They're backed by YC & First Round. I'm proud to be an advisor. Snackpass is hiring great engineers in Berkeley. Apply here!.
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And that’s a wrap on @firstround's PMF Method Summer '24! . An incredible retreat to summarize the last 12 weeks, where we shared learnings, answered burning questions, and gave each other feedback 🎉 I'm so inspired by this group of 20 founders, and can’t wait to see what they
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“S/he was a superstar at our company, and a total pain in the ass to manage” . ➡️ great thing to hear when doing reference calls on a founder.
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We just opened up applications for the Spring 2025 cohort of @firstround’s PMF Method, and if our previous cohorts are any indicator, the caliber of builders in this group will be off the charts. Here’s a small subset of our alumni:. - @snirkodesh, former head of eng at Retool
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Proud of the Dropbox Design team (and their Eng/PM partners) for launching the redesigned today!
New blog post! 📝 "Influencing redesign - how to convince your company to do a redesign" by @edchao
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. the only hopeful things right now are the images of police officers marching with protesters in New Jersey, Santa Cruz, and Michigan, and black protesters protecting stores from white looters. Everything else is tragic and chaos.
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When text-to-image models first burst on the scene, it was pretty mind blowing. But as you started using them more, it could also be kinda slow and tedious to get things just the way you wanted. If you’ve had an ultra fast image generation experience recently, chances are it was
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Founder-led sales with Emery Rosansky (PMF Method Session #6 @firstround). Emery is the GTM 🐐!
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🔍 Here's a question I often ask myself when meeting a new company: If I squint, can I see this product eventually creating a category, reinventing a category, or unlocking new or latent behavior?.
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1/ Continuing with Part 2 of evaluating products as a seed investor. 🧵. It's really important to adapt your approach depending on the stage of the product when you see it. As seed investors at @firstround, the pitches we see generally fall into one of 6 buckets. .
How do you evaluate products as a seed investor? .(part 1) 🧵👇.
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Wrapping up the first weekend of PMF Method and feeling so excited for these founder journeys!. In Session 2 we talked about “dollar-driven discovery” — how to validate that customers will truly need and pay for your product. This means before jumping on customer calls to
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I knew these founder stories would be interesting but had no idea how many incredible insights and tales of grit and determination we’d uncover over a couple months of conversations. I hope you enjoy reading about their journeys and learn the same valuable lessons I did!.
🆕 A guide to validating your startup idea, by @tjack. Todd spent 2+ months interviewing the founders of @Flexport @TrustVanta @LaunchDarkly @PinwheelAPI @Snackpass_ @RecRoom @OfficialGoodDog @Meet_Cocoon about their ideation and validation process. Here's what he learned 🧵👇
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Engineering friends!. Vanta, an awesome early-stage security company (YC '18) is hiring. Great team of ex-Dropboxers w/ early product-market fit, growing quickly. - securing the internet, increasing trust in software companies, keeping consumer data safe.
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tfw you’re listening to a podcast and hear @rahulvohra from @Superhuman quoting your wife 😂 👋@hiiamArielle. (via @getshuffleapp)
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Sometimes getting the right positioning for your startup is more challenging than getting to the product itself. “Often it’s not that you don’t know who the customer is, it’s that you’re not picking — you haven’t committed to one hypothesis over the other. That’s what creates
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PMF masterclass from @zachperret 💯.
What we now know as @Plaid started out with a consumer budgeting product. What’s perhaps less well known is that @zachperret and @williamhockey spent quite a bit of time on this initial idea, building 6 different versions of tools for budgeting, expense management, and analyzing
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When I discovered @createwithplay on Twitter, I spent the whole weekend designing in it. I was blown away by the UX. I couldn't believe they packed this much power into a mobile UI.
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Last week I had a great time leading @firstround Angel Track's Session 4 on Product. We covered 100 slides in 2 hours, but I wanted to summarize it quickly here on Twitter, starting with how to evaluate products as a seed investor — especially when the product doesn't exist yet.
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Had a blast at LA @techweek_ last night! Huge thanks to Eddy for his amazing storytelling and the behind-the-scenes look into @goatapp’s journey to product-market fit. And of course, to all the founders, startup enthusiasts, and @firstround team for showing up to support 🙌
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Psyched to be joining Twitter! RT @coverscreen Cover is joining Twitter! Excited for the future of Android and what’s to come.
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I've been doing deep dives with founders and keep landing on the same realization:. You can do everything else right but if your idea validation process is broken, you’re in for a rough ride. It’s fine to trust your gut as long as you validate it too. Longer post coming soon….
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Sunday 5:40pm during quarantine. Cheers to all the families like ours who are already done with dinner!!.
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Introducing Dropbox Paper -- a collaboration tool built for teams. We're excited to announce an early beta: http://t.co/t4kit7gMip.
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You don’t outgrow the need for design partners. This was my biggest takeaway from my conversation with Eilon Reshef on @Gong’s path to product-market fit. I was super surprised that even at Gong's current scale (Series E, $7B valuation), his team of 20+ PMs still use them,
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Founders! (especially technical ones). How you articulate your product benefit is super important, but for many founders a new skill to learn. Many great frameworks from @hiiamArielle:.- The Bar Test.- The Cinderella Spectrum.- The 5-point star test for an interesting brand.
New on In Depth:. @hiiamArielle shares the most common early marketing missteps she's seen after working with hundreds of startups. From category selection and positioning, to brand personality and PR, this episode is full of examples and frameworks. 🎧:
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Chatted with a founder on how the CEO role shifts as startups grow from 10 → 100 ppl. You go from being friends with everyone to being the boss — which can feel lonely. Also, small interactions that feel insignificant to you can seem really big to the team. What else changes?.
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Our PMF Method founders had the chance to learn from founders a few steps ahead of them last night — amazing dinner with @christinacaci, @rauchg, @jaltma, @jboehmig, and @dvdhsu!. We learned about Vanta’s bet that building the right product would grow the market significantly;
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Steno is transforming the way the legal industry does depositions during COVID. Proud to support them at First Round!.
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Always look forward to dinners with this amazing product brain trust (@kcoleman, @kevinweil, @twephanie @dflieb, @claraliang)
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True product-market fit means customers a) love your product and b) form a line at your door. I see startups that achieve a) with a handful of customers, but never get to b). For companies that have done both. did they do a) first and then b), or did it happen all at once?.
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