42: Phin Barnes, General Partner at First Round Capital

Square One: Conversations with the Best in Business

There's a lot of noise in the venture ecosystem today on differentiation. When I think of a venture firm that defines differentiation, I think of First Round Capital. This week I chatted with Phin Barnes, General Partner at First Round, on a whole host of topics. Phin brings a unique operating background to the table - he spent six years helping to scale AND 1 Basketball from $15 million to over $225 million in revenue. - and has scaled this experience to a number of fantastic companies. In this conversation we discussed:

- Intentionality and why the best Founders have it (specifically he referenced Notion, Modern Fertility, Steady, Clearbit)

- Initially working for free for First Round Capital with no intent to ever become a Partner

- The importance of moving slow and challenging the cult of speed

- Success being found in moments of discontinuity vs. continuity

- Compensation for judgement vs. time

- Tech enabled businesses vs. pure play software businesses (e.g. Peloton, WeWork)

- Pattern recognition as a code for intellectual laziness

- Measuring learning on a "per dollar" basis

- Why diversity isn't talked about enough and how he wants to change that