First Round Capital

Pre-seed and seed lead investor; founded 2004 (Philadelphia; offices in SF, NYC). Notable portfolio: Uber, Square, Notion, Roblox, Looker, Flexport, Clay, Persona, Verkada.

Serval Relevance

• Co-led Serval’s ~$8.7M seed (Q3 2024) with General Catalyst.
• Doubled down at Series A (Oct 2025) and Series B (Dec 2025).
• Two First Round partners on the deal:
  • Bill Trenchard (Partner since 2012; 5x Midas List). Operator background (ex-LiveOps CEO, ex-Jump Networks). Founding Partner at Founder Collective. Trenchard had known Stauch since his Verkada PM years. Per his Dec 11, 2025 X post: “I’ve known @jakeserval since his product building years at Verkada.”
  • Brett Berson (Partner; First Round intern → partner). Hosts “In Depth” podcast (recorded the Stauch episode). Enterprise/GTM-focused (Clay, Persona). Per his post, First Round led seed “before idea crystallization.”
• First Round did “well over a hundred customer intros” post-seed and ran a 4-day founder-led sales retreat (Stauch on The Peel podcast, ~1:05:54).
• Bill Trenchard quote: “In just 90 days since their Series A, Serval has grown revenue by 500%, tripled headcount, and raised another round at a $1B valuation. This team is moving at a pace I’ve rarely seen in all my years at First Round Capital.”

The Trenchard social graph

Trenchard is the connective tissue across Serval’s cap table:

• Seeded Verkada (Stauch + McLeod’s prior employer)
• Seeded Looker (where Series A angel Serval-angel Colin Zima was Chief Analytics Officer)
• Led First Round’s seed in Omni Analytics (Zima’s current company)
• Co-led Serval seed and doubled down

Explains why both Stauch/McLeod (ex-Verkada) and Colin Zima (ex-Looker, currently Omni) ended up on the same cap table.

Related

• serval
• series-a

Fundraise intel (2026-05-25)

Status in CRM: LOST (closed 2026-04-28). Dead-tier — light pass.

Firm profile (raise lens)

Pre-seed/seed franchise, founded 2004 (Philadelphia; SF + NYC offices). Portfolio: Uber, Square, Notion, Roblox, Looker, Flexport, Clay, Persona, Verkada. Classic seed-lead behavior, “before idea crystallization” (Berson). Stage fits init.inc — but see the direct competitor conflict below, which is the dominant fact.

Why this relationship is dead/lost

Connector collapse (same mechanism as Madrona). Per CRM: “No remaining path to firm. Isaiah was the only connector here, and he is now joining the team as a co-founder so can no longer act as an intro source. Closed 2026-04-28.” CRM names POC Nick Rubin. No partner engagement ever happened — the door closed when Isaiah moved in-house. Even if it hadn’t, FRC’s deep Serval conflict (below) would block this anyway.

POC (CRM contact) — ⚠️ disambiguation

• Nick Rubin — confirmed a current First Round generalist early-stage investor (ex-founder; Stanford; “former founder myself,” organized hackathons, launched dorm-room apps) per firstround.com/team/investing/nick-rubin ^[verified two sources: FRC team page + Equilar]. He is NOT the Serval deal partner — Serval was Bill Trenchard + Brett Berson. So the CRM POC is a distinct, junior-to-mid investor with no documented competitor entanglement. Re-touch value: low — connector gone AND firm-level Serval conflict. A light person stub for Nick Rubin is not warranted (dead-tier, no live relationship, generalist with no init.inc-specific angle surfaced).

Fundraise Relationship (light)

• Ask/strategy verdict: Do not pursue. Two independent blockers: (1) sole connector Isaiah is now a co-founder (path gone); (2) FRC co-led competitor Serval’s seed and doubled down at A + B — firm-level conflict on a direct AI-native ITSM rival.
• Conversation log (newest first):
  • 2026-04-28 — LOST / closed. Isaiah (sole connector) joining init.inc as co-founder; no remaining intro path to Nick Rubin or the firm.
• Mutual connections / warm path: Isaiah only — now internal, unusable. No alternate path.
• Competitor-conflict flag: ⚠️ YES — firm-level, strong. FRC co-led Serval’s ~$8.7Mseed\ast \ast (withGeneralCatalyst)and\ast \ast doubleddownatSeriesA(Oct2025)+SeriesB(Dec2025,$1B val). Bill Trenchard is the cap-table hub linking Verkada→Looker→Omni→Serval. Direct competitor exposure — this stays dead on the merits regardless of the connector loss.

Best data channels for this firm

firstround.com/team (confirms current roster + bios — used to disambiguate Nick Rubin) → partner X posts (Bill Trenchard, Brett Berson — they announce/quote on their own deals, e.g. Serval) → firstround.com “In Depth” podcast (Berson’s show; recorded the Serval/Stauch episode) → TechCrunch for round mechanics. The Serval social-graph is best documented via Trenchard’s own X posts + the existing wiki.

Cross-check vs existing wiki

Fully consistent with the existing competitor-investor content above — the page already documents FRC’s Serval seed/A/B and the Trenchard social graph. New + reconciling fact: the CRM POC is Nick Rubin, who does not appear anywhere in the existing Serval-deal content (which names only Trenchard + Berson). No contradiction — Rubin is simply a different, non-Serval FRC investor. The fundraise read reinforces, not conflicts with, the existing conflict flag.

Pass 2 deal pattern (2026-05-27)

Seed lead-rate / check / stage. FRC is publicly quieter than the multistage firms but in-window leads/co-leads include Artemis $70Mcombinedseed+A(Apr2026,FRC-ledseedperJoshKopelmanframing—AI-nativesecurity)\ast \ast and\ast \ast Quartermaster$43M Series A co-lead with Quiet Capital (May 2026, Bill Trenchard quoted — maritime AI “hive mind for ships”). CRV’s 2026 benchmarking summary describes FRC’s typical seed check at “$1M-$7M, 10-15% ownership” — classic seed franchise scale. Earlier doubled-down at Serval Series A ($47MOct2025)+SeriesB($75M Dec 2025, $1B val, FRC follow-on). Pass 1 had 4 rows: Serval ✅ re-confirmed; Gumloop B participation ✅; Clay + Persona historical anchors remain ❓ (couldn’t get cleaner anchor this pass).

Competitor exposure (re-confirmed). ⚠️ Serval seed co-lead RE-CONFIRMED ✅ — CBInsights now explicitly lists FRC alongside General Catalyst, Redpoint, Meritech, Sound and 14 others as Serval backers. Tracxn confirms Serval timeline: 2024-founded, $127M raised over 2 announced rounds (Series A Oct 22 2025 / Series B Dec 11 2025), unicorn status from first announced round, with seed having been a Q3 2024 pre-announcement. Trenchard + Berson are the deal partners — re-confirmed across multiple sources. Nick Rubin (the CRM POC) remains a distinct, junior-generalist FRC investor with no Serval-deal entanglement — disambiguation holds. Pass 2 found NO new competitor exposure beyond Serval.

Best data channel for this firm. firstround.com/review (long-form essays + podcast — Josh Kopelman’s “In Depth” Artemis episode is the single best partner-attribution signal for in-window seeds) > partner X posts (Trenchard, Berson; Trenchard quoted on Quartermaster in TechCrunch) > TechCrunch for round mechanics. CBInsights + Tracxn for cap-table reconciliation. FRC announces less prominently than the multistage firms — Pass 2 surfaced fewer leads-of-record than Accel/Madrona despite FRC being a seed-specialized franchise. Implies our recall is genuinely lower at FRC than at the multistage firms; treat absence of P2 finds as recall gap, not signal of inactivity.