Deputy Head of Engineering (Node.js / Next.js)
•Ruby Labs· 2h
EngineeringFull-timeWorldwide
2h ago
Firstround·about 2 months ago
First Round is a venture capital firm that works with founders exclusively at the earliest stages of company building, often when all they have is an “imagine if.” We fill in where we can until the team is filled out, tackling crucial early hiring and equipping those who are great at building product with the skills to sell it, too. By getting the foundational firsts right, we increase the odds of finding extreme product-market fit. Our founders’ “imagine ifs” have turned into companies like Notion, Roblox, Uber, and Square.
At First Round, we invest in founders who possess not just strengths, but areas of true genius, whether it’s technical skill, product judgement, industry expertise, or a deep understanding of their customer’s pain point. But on the other side of every spike in talent are a few areas that are still underdeveloped, parts of the business where a founder doesn't have the skills and expertise — yet.
Simply put, there are many gaps that have yet to be closed when you’re only a 3-person startup. On the path to building a company of consequence, the very best founders are able to level up, both in terms of their own capabilities (by developing new muscles) and in the team around the table (by bringing in complementary talent).
That’s where our Founder Success team comes in, during the pivotal early years of company building. We fill in where we can until there's genius up and down the org chart, closing gaps around existing strengths while helping in the key growth areas on the transition from founder to founder & CEO. This might involve teaching a technical founder how to sell and take their product to market, or guiding them through making their first key hires.
This is a hands-on, founder-facing role to support our early stage portfolio companies with their marketing experiments, with a particular focus on conferences and events.
The role will require 30+ hours of remote work per week, but you must be U.S.-based. This will be a temporary (4 month contract from February to May) role to start, and the potential to continue after the end of the contract.
Project Manage & Strategize Marketing Experiments. Our founders are testing out marketing channels like conferences and client dinners. They need guidance to make sure that not only are the logistics of the events flawless, but that they’re also being thoughtfully strategic about the goals, tracking, positioning, budgets, and tradeoffs of these high stakes events as part of their overall GTM plans.
Teach & Train Founders on All Thing Marketing. We take the “I do, we do, you do” approach with our founder services. You’ll be able to meet founders where they are and provide advice, templates, and/or hands-on help with their marketing projects across a variety of channels, industries, and team sizes.
You have a minimum of 5 years of experience supporting early stage (<$10M in ARR) B2B companies. You’ve done the zero to one thing, working super closely with pre seed or seed stage companies on early demand gen strategies across industries, buyer personas, ACVs and GTM motions. You have a lot of empathy for and experience with working with early stage founding teams.
You have a services mindset. Whether you were at an agency or had your own freelance/advisory gigs, you know how to engage, manage, and transition multiple clients at a time. You love to wow your clients by anticipating their needs and going above and beyond with creative ways to support their goals. You’re amazing at calendar juggling and code switching between wildly different contexts.
You’re prescriptive. You understand demand gen isn’t a one-size-fits-all function. You’ve seen enough variety in your career to be able to deeply digest a company’s ICP/persona/motion and recommend demand tactics that deliver results. In essence, you know how to be prescriptive (not just copy an old playbook).
You’re experimental. You love to create hypotheses and quickly test their validity. You’re amazing at tracking what you’re doing and understanding what’s working / not and iterating along the way. You know how to analyze Google Analytics, LinkedIn ad performance, cold outreach campaign metrics and all the other marketing tactics in between.
You’re scrappy and fast. You always manage to just figure stuff out, even with limited support or budget. You’re extremely hands on and excited to dig in with founders. And nothing is too small for you to do. You love the idea of taking a problem or goal and coming up with new ways to tackle that problem or achieve that goal.
You embody extreme ownership. You own your function through and through. No one has to tell you the next step to take or the next email to write. You’re extremely autonomous and are a driver, pushing things forward and proactively unblocking barriers on the way to the goal.
You are obsessed with details and process. You’ll likely be supporting a handful of companies at one time. This requires an exceptional level of organization and detail orientation. This looks like you having detailed notes on every engagement, using Notion like a pro, having amazing CRM hygiene. You remember the little things and never let a ball drop.
At First Round, we value resourcefulness, team-play, excellence and hustle. To give you a sense of what our team is all about, check out our values that guide our work:
Try harder for founders. They’re our customers — LPs are our shareholders. We go to the ends of the earth for our founders. You might think our role as venture capitalists is to simply maximize returns. But at First Round, we believe when we put founders first, everything will follow — epic returns included. We fill in the gaps on a founder's team before they even have one and get to work on the unglamorous tasks that actually move companies forward. We'll know we've done our job when they're left feeling startled that an investor would go to these lengths for them.
Take the wheel. Welcome to First Round. Everything is now your responsibility. Cartographers, not navigators, are the ones who tend to do well here. There are no career ladders to climb or boxes to check at First Round. If you find ways to do more for the business and our customers, your role will naturally expand alongside it. First Round is a haven for people who see themselves as architects of their reality, not casualties of circumstance. We know we have agency over our agency, and we make the conscious choice to exercise it every day.
Treat the little things like big things. “Magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” We’re all about the carefully crafted, the nitty-gritty, and the bespoke. Whether it’s hand cutting each nameplate, or debating the optimal shape of the dinner table, no detail is too small to sweat. This is decidedly not a "LGTM" culture. It is a culture where the little things are the big things.
Give your unvarnished opinions and unwavering support. We strive to be kind, not nice. Being nice and being kind are not one and the same. In our view, kindness means being generous, helpful, and compassionate. Nice can be used as a convenient shortcut; kindness cultivates long-term excellence. One of the most (counterintuitively) compassionate things you can do is to offer your unvarnished opinion — along with your unwavering support. That willingness to risk a fleeting moment of discomfort in exchange for someone else’s growth is long-term kindness. So while we strive to be a founder’s coach in the corner, part of that responsibility requires being the kick in the ass when they need it most. We try to be as honest as possible in every encounter, whether that’s bluntly telling a founder how they can step up their game, or delivering radical candor in our feedback for teammates.
Invent and wander. “Action produces information." We’re fans of starting small, shipping fast, and obsessively improving. The idea for the First Round Review wasn’t the product of a six-month strategy session — we wrote up a few blog posts and just shipped them. That’s because reality has a surprising amount of detail and edges that are difficult to anticipate. Each step — even the wrong one — reveals new information that improves your next move. We prefer to make the gap between having an idea and knowing if it works as small as possible.