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Todd Jackson
Partner at First Round Capital
Todd Jackson is a Partner at First Round Capital, a venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California. He joined First Round in January 2020, bringing extensive experience in product management and startup leadership to the role. Prior to his position at First Round, Jackson held significant roles at major tech companies and startups, including:
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VP of Product & Design at Dropbox (2015-2018): He played a key role in guiding Dropbox through its growth phase and successful IPO.
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Director of Product Management at Twitter (2014-2015): Jackson led the Content & Discovery teams, focusing on enhancing user engagement through product innovations.
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Co-founder and CEO of Cover (2013-2014): His startup, which developed a smart lock screen for Android, was acquired by Twitter.
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Product Manager at Facebook (2011-2012): He worked on critical features such as the Newsfeed and Photos.
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Group Product Manager for Gmail at Google (2004-2011): Jackson was instrumental in the development and expansion of Gmail, significantly increasing its user base during his tenure.
Jackson is known for his expertise in product strategy and has invested in numerous startups across various sectors, including SaaS, consumer products, and health tech. He holds both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Stanford University.12345
Highlights
The magnitude and speed of this is super interesting
Most builders don’t become investors. I’m looking for someone who breaks that pattern and wants to join me @firstround to support the next generation of brilliant founders with a unique insight that’s highly technical.
I spent my career working on products like Gmail’s user interface, Facebook’s Newsfeed, Twitter’s timeline and Dropbox’s bottom-up revenue engine — all products that are extremely technical under the hood but simple and powerful to the user.
I also founded a company back in 2013. I always loved working with investors who thought like builders — because they were builders.
Many VCs pattern match on metrics, TAM, and “heat” in a sector. Few can spot technical breakthroughs before they're obvious. Even fewer can help founders navigate the journey from technical insight to compelling product. In this role, that would be your day job.
I’m looking for someone who’s:
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Been deep in the technical weeds — shipping code to production, scaling systems, building devtools or open source projects.
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Naturally drawn to the cutting edge — reading research papers, testing new programming tools, and forming strong opinions on where technology is headed.
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Thinking about business models as much as technical architecture — studying great infra and security companies, and caring equally about pricing models as the developer experience.
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Already embedded in the startup ecosystem — going to AI hackathons on weekends, joining dev communities, or being the person founder friends turn to for technical advice.
So if you’re merely interested in startups, this role isn’t for you. If you love the idea of investing but haven’t actually built anything, it’s also not for you.
This opportunity is perfect for someone who wants to go seriously deep on learning the craft of early-stage investing and becoming an essential partner to pre-product-market fit founders.
To be clear, this is more of an apprenticeship, not a shortcut to leading your own deals. You’ll work closely with me to develop a strong technical investing perspective, learning how to spot and support pre-PMF founders.
This role is based in the Bay Area. If you’re interested, apply below. 👇
