Our first hire: Chief of Staff

A few years ago, I started Chapter One with a very simple concept — there should be a venture fund that focuses exclusively on helping founders with all things product. Not the craziest idea.

The concept resonated. Our first fund has become a product partner to 40+ founders from the earliest stage (first check) through the Series B. We already have many breakout companies in Fund One including Roam Research, Misfits Market, Sunday, Alt, and Pipe.

We also launched a mentorship program focused solely on product development called Product Club. 500+ companies applied to the program and we accepted 3 teams.

During the first class, Product Club became my passion. The relationships I developed with the founders of Metafy, Spline, and AZPop are amongst the highlights of my career. The program feels like a family and I love these teams.

Now we want to double down on Product Club and a few other things.

The Chief of Staff title gets thrown around a lot and it’s pretty ambiguous, so I will try to simplify the role into two parts.

Product Club (Program Lead):

I need help scaling Product Club to become the best product program and community in the industry. This is a chance to create a masterclass for teaching entrepreneurs how to build product driven companies.

You are going to own Product Club as your primary focus (programming, operations, community building, etc). Ideally, you have a background in product and design, and have also built a community of some kind.

We proved that the model works in our first batch. Our tiny class of three companies already raised follow on funding from Y Combinator, Forerunner, and many others.

Product Club has the potential to be the best product and design program in our industry and we need somebody to own the program and make this happen.

The program will stay small (this isn’t going to be Y Combinator), but we want to make the experience even better and expand the class size.

Chapter One (Portfolio Support)

You will be a support system to our entire portfolio.

Your primary responsibilities within Chapter One will be to help our companies recruit product, design, and engineering talent.

I have ideas to make this scale, but you should have a strong network with product managers, engineers, and designers already (maybe you currently work in one of these roles yourself).

If you are a community builder and naturally love helping people find new jobs, this is a perfect role. Hard to explain but you’ll know if this is you.

Location: anywhere in the United States for now (remote in H1 2021). That said, we may eventually build an office in the Bay Area or Los Angeles so it’s helpful if you’re in either location.

Start Date: Q1 2021

How To Apply: Apply here or email cos@chapterone.vc

We have seen a trend the past few years of startups who are building in public. Founders share their daily successes and failures to build an early community, usually on Twitter.

We often tell our founders to build in public, but for productivity software, we recommend another approach.

Raycast is the opposite of building in public. They have instead been building in private for the past year, which is oddly refreshing to see in 2020.

Beyond a few screenshots that have been shared on Twitter, the Raycast founders have been heads down since finishing Y Combinator W20 in early 2020.

Instead of making a ton of online noise, they released the product to a small set of beta customers and have been iterating on product, with an obsessive focus on getting the tiny details right.

Productivity tools, and specifically developer tools, have an insanely high quality bar and the built in private approach allowed the founders to create a world class product, without overpromising release dates to the broader community.

When the Raycast product showed signs of developer market fit, the team made the decision to launch publicly. Today they are coming out of stealth, along with the news that Chapter One is investing alongside Accel.

Raycast is a productivity tool that saves engineering teams time on non-coding tasks in apps like Jira, GitHub or Slack.

These tasks take up to 50% of a developer’s day. The product will eventually become “Superhuman for engineers” — a premium software product that saves expensive engineering time.

After two weeks in beta, thousands of developers signed up for the waiting list. Engineers from top companies use the product several times a day.

Thomas Paul Mann and Petr Nikolaev (co-founders) started building Raycast in January. They are both ex-Facebook engineers with exceptional product taste. At Facebook, they built internal tools that gained widespread adoption with engineers at Facebook and showed they can build products which developers love.

One of the most exciting parts of the product will be seeing what developers can build with the Raycast API.

Alongside the public product release, Raycast is launching their developer program today, which gives developers early access to the API.

A Raycast API will allow developers to build custom shortcuts via integrations that can be shared with coworkers to make teams more efficient.

Every developer within an organization can build their own commands and shortcuts, which can be shared via Slack and internal forums. This will create virality internally and give developers who build cool workflows “bragging rights” within their teams.

If you’ve ever built software, you have likely spent time with productivity obsessed engineers who champion their own workflow hacks internally. They are wonderful in the most nerdy way and often celebrated by teammates. Raycast will let these productivity heroes shine.

Raycast is a product purposely designed for community.

Custom workflows built on Raycast can be open sourced for teams outside your organization if you want to share with the developer community.

Imagine Airbnb engineers creating an interesting Raycast shortcut and sharing that with the broader engineering community. With the right community adoption, the API will create goodwill like you see on Github when a startup open sources an internal product.

Welcome to the world, Raycast. And thank you for building in private.

Original article by Gaby Goldberg

At Chapter One, we started this accelerator with the goal of staying small and maniacally focused on product. We received over 500 incredible applications and narrowed it down to three, each with a game-changing product and vision.

Now, it’s time to get started — let’s meet the teams.

Spline

A 3D design tool for the web.

Background

Spline is a 2D approach to 3D design, allowing you to create next-generation experiences in a web-based environment that works on any platform.

Product

Spline, a 3D mix of Figma & Photoshop built on top of Three.js, is a platform shift for 3D design. Spline’s visual tools allow you to seamlessly create and edit 3D content, add interactions, and export production-ready web assets — no coding required.

Team

Spline is led by the insanely creative powerhouse duo of Alejandro León (based out of Chile) and Yenny Fung (based out of Venezuela).

Traction

Join the waitlist of over 300 designers waiting to use the product. Spline goes live at the end of August.

Metafy

1-on-1 online coaching from the best players in the world.

Background

The business of video-game coaching is already a $1B market, and it’s only ramping up. Online marketplace Fiverr saw a 43% jump in the number of video-game coaching sessions booked between January and March, and streaming sites like YouTube and Twitch are also seeing an uptick in business. Sites like these, however, aren’t acutely focused on helping expert gamers & coaches do what they do best — this is where Metafy comes in.

Product

On Metafy, users can book one-on-one time with experts in their game of choice. Users can connect directly with expert gamers to ask questions, play cooperatively, or get advice, while coaches get paid for their time so that they can support their passion.

Metafy takes care of scheduling and payments and protects the privacy of both the user and coach.

Team

Metafy is led by Josh Fabian (CEO) and Thomas McNiven (CTO). Josh is based in Pittsburgh and was the former lead designer at Groupon. Thomas is based in Australia.

Traction

Metafy is still in beta — visit their site to apply for early access.

AgendaZap

The Yellow Pages for WhatsApp.

Background

WhatsApp as a business platform is growing — and growing fast. WhatsApp passed 2 billion users in February 2020, and over 95% of internet users (over 120M people) use WhatsApp in Brazil.

In countries like Brazil, India, Spain, and Italy, WhatsApp is the go-to communication platform, but there’s no streamlined way to find the WhatsApp contact information for businesses and professionals.

Product

AgendaZap is building the dominant discovery & one-click communication platform for businesses on WhatsApp. On the app, users receive a list of businesses + professionals and can start a WhatsApp conversation in a single tap.

Team

AgendaZap is co-founded by childhood friends Daniel Scocco and Fernando Buglia.

• Daniel, a self-taught programmer, has 15 years of experience developing mobile and web apps. He is a serial founder and has won awards from companies like Ford and Mastercard.
• Fernando is a physicist-turned-entrepreneur. He created one infoEnem, of the largest Brazilian portals about the Enem exam (the SAT of Brazil).

Traction

AgendaZap has been downloaded 500,000 times, has 4,000 paying subscribers and is growing an average of 9% each week. They’ve grossed $11k in revenues, growing 29% month-over-month. Stay tuned — AgendaZap is expanding internationally soon.

We’ll be posting public Product Club updates throughout the summer — stay in the loop by checking out the Product Club Notebook.

Time to get to work!

Jeff Morris Jr.
Gaby Goldberg
Daniel Heintzman

At Chapter One, smaller is better. When I created Fund One, I wanted to keep AUM small to make sure I know what the hell I am doing.

I’ve seen first time fund managers raise massive funds, which is cool, but I’ve always thought of Chapter One as being a product with Fund One as my MVP.

When I became a full-time investor, people told me that I would miss the quick feedback loops — but Chapter One is iterating and today we’re releasing our most exciting product to date.

We are excited to launch Product Club, an early stage product mentorship program specifically designed to help you build your products from scratch.

I’ve wanted to launch an accelerator for over 5 years. During this time, I thought hard about how to compete with Y Combinator, which isn’t the right goal. I spoke with people who spent lots of money trying to beat YC, and most no longer exist.

I also did a ton of user research in 2019 and 2020, and I kept hearing the same thing from entrepreneurs — “accelerators are too big now”. The best program in the world graduates 200 companies per batch, which can be overwhelming for founders and investors.

I also love Y Combinator. They are the best in the world at what they do and I’m not naive enough to think that I can compete. So, I am taking the opposite approach: smaller classes sizes that are focused on a single value proposition.

Product Club will focus on accelerating a small number of companies with an intense focus on product development and design, starting this summer.

The principles that make us different from YC or other programs:

Maniacal Focus On Product & Design:
We are going to spend a lot of time building the product together. If you prefer a program that is 100% focused on product development, then you should apply.

Private product sessions with best-in-class product leaders:
Every week, teams will have a private 1:1 session with top product leaders from Uber, Twitter, Slack, Adobe, Robinhood, and Tinder.

The workshops will be very tactical and customized to your specific team needs. Our insanely talented group of product mentors include:

Access To Top Designers for Free:
Each team will get 10+ hours of free design work from hand-picked design partners for anything you need. We carefully selected designers with different skills (branding, mobile, web, etc.) and will be adding more soon.

Our partners who you will get “free design hours” with include:

• Ty Wilkins (Robinhood, Google, Scale) — one of the best visual designers I’ve ever worked with and created Robinhood Gold branding.
• Madeleine Lee (Squarespace, Snackpass) — Squarespace product designer and helped create gamification mechanics at Snackpass.
• Ryan Mick (Tinder) —my longtime collaborator. Lead designer on Tinder Gold, with a deep consumer mobile background.

Sprint Planning & Standups:
We will do sprint planning every two weeks along with and daily standups (fast so they’re not annoying). This process will simulate the same one we used to develop all of our revenue products at Tinder.

Smaller Is Better:
We jokingly call ourselves “the world’s smallest accelerator” and are only funding up to three companies per batch. If you find an accelerator that is smaller, please don’t tweet at us.

Built in Public:
Most accelerators keep things relatively quiet until Demo Day, but we recognize that everyone can learn from a founder’s journey as they build out their product. Thus, we’ll be sharing as much as we can — publicly — along the way so Product Club can benefit more than just the three companies in our 2020 batch.

Other helpful things to know:

Deadline: Apply by July 19th
http://chapterone.vc/product-club

Demo Day with our 80+ LPs:
Our LPs are tier one funds and angels. Our demo day will be three companies only, so you’ll get their full attention.

Deal Terms:
Selected companies will receive $100,000 to run their early stage product experiments in return for 5% equity.

At the conclusion of the program, we will help you raise your seed round with investor network via an online demo day with our top LPs and angels.

Dates:
Program begins on August 3rd and lasts 10 weeks.

Let us know if you have any questions during the application process. Talk soon!

Jeff Morris Jr.
Gaby Goldberg
Daniel Heintzman

Chapter One is hiring our first Designer in Residence (summer internship role), based anywhere in the world with an internet connection.

You are wildly creative and have designed some weird, out-of-the-box shit on mobile and web. You love 0–1 design and building original concepts, but also know how to design a deck.

You find happiness from prototyping things and building brands from scratch. Although you’re a designer first, you are probably pretty technical (or nerd out in esoteric no code debates).

The internship is paid and will last from the sunny summer months of June 2020 to September 2020.

We are specifically looking for a product designer who is in college or a similar career stage, and has already built a unique design portfolio through summer roles or personal design work.

Maybe you have interned at an ad agency or somewhere like Figma. Or perhaps you go to art school and learned how to design online.

A few parts of the role that will feel different:

Work with our entire portfolio & have exposure to many industries:
We will support our early stage portfolio companies by helping them design mobile and web products from scratch. We have 17 portfolio companies in Fund One (and many others throughout the portfolio).

You will be their pinch hitter when needed — and will get the chance to solve problems in education, labor marketplaces, productivity tools, and a bunch of other things. Check out our portfolio to see the wide range of companies (http://chapterone.vc/companies)

Design new products for Chapter One:
We are shipping a new product this summer at Chapter One that has not been announced. The product is currently in development and you will be the lead designer on the project.

Ship original experiments that you come up with:
We will support your creative ideas and encourage design experiments that help people get jobs, find happiness, or whatever else you want to do to make the world less sucky right now.

To apply, send a note with your design portfolio or something similar to internship@chapterone.vc — with the subject line “Designer In Residence”

-JMJ

Chapter One is an early stage fund that has many of Silicon Valley’s top funds and investors backing us. We would list off LP names but VC Brags is probably reading this as we speak.

In early April, Ryan Hoover called to talk about an idea he was exploring with his partner at Weekend Fund, Vedika Jain.

At the time, “Fundraise From Home” didn’t have a name, but the basic idea was to create an easier way for entrepreneurs to meet top quality investors with a single video call.

I thought the idea was interesting for three reasons:

1. Fundraising is expensive and should be democratized:
Early stage entrepreneurs spend an insane amount of time pitching individual investors. Before COVID-19, this often included plane flights, Uber rides, and dozens of meetings. In a world with Zoom, this is a waste of time and money for entrepreneurs and investors.

In many cases, paying for these expenses out-of-pocket is not possible, especially for entrepreneurs living outside of traditional tech hubs.

As Harry Stebbings (The Twenty Minute VC) says, Fundraise From Home can “democratize access to funding” for founders around the world.

2.“One Click” access to multiple funds is a disruptive idea:
By giving entrepreneurs “one click” access to five top new funds, an entire seed round could happen in a one-hour Zoom call.

Fundraise From Home seems like a no-brainer as you apply to accelerators like Y-Combinator or raise traditional seed rounds.

I imagine a world where every entrepreneur starts their fundraising process by submitting a “Fundraise From Home” application because it’s so easy, almost like the common application for universities.

If the experiment is successful, Fundraise From Home could become the “next-gen of YC” (again credit Harry for the quote).

3. New funds are collaborative and have loud microphones:
Early stage investors are collaborative because we are usually not competitive. We think of ourselves as being a collective of investors rather than separate teams.

We are often former operators with very specific skills like product, design, and go-to-market. Now entrepreneurs can build an operator-led cap table that offers tangible value with a single-click.

As a bonus, we have loud microphones to help build your early community (perhaps more than any single fund). A few examples:

• Harry Stebbings runs the largest startup podcast in the world, The Twenty Minute VC , which has millions of listeners.
• Alexia Bonatsos was the co-editor of Techcrunch for many years and is a widely respected tastemaker throughout our industry.
• Ryan Hoover founded Product Hunt, which has a massive global footprint of entrepreneurs and investors. He and Vedika Jain are now building community products like Fundraise From Home at Weekend Fund.
• Niv Dror founded Shrug Capital which already has one of the most distinctive brands for a venture firm (all within about a year)

I am excited to see where this goes and encourage every entrepreneur in the world to apply. For a few minutes of your time, this feels like a no-brainer.

Apply: https://fundraisefromhome.com/

Thanks Ryan and Vedika for creating this special idea.

JMJ

Cofounder Collective

In the past week, I have received emails from many talented people who have have been impacted by COVID-19. One of my first questions to each person has been “have you ever thought about starting a company?”

I was pleasantly surprised that many people said “yes” — they will consider starting companies as one of their future options.

My instinct is that there are many people throughout the world that haven’t emailed me who are considering creating companies right now. These folks are likely looking to meet investors and potential co-founders.

Some people who emailed me have very clear ideas of the companies they would like to build.

Others folks have areas they are interested in exploring, but haven’t found the big idea yet, which is okay, too.

I will open source a list of people who are looking to potentially start companies next week. I am calling these folks future founders.

If you have been impacted by COVID-19 layoffs and are exploring the idea of starting a company, I would encourage you to fill out this form.

Also, feel free to participate if you are still employed and want to be a founder one day (you could potentially team up with these folks).

There are two goals for open sourcing the list:

1. You might find investors who are interested in meeting you.
2. You might find potential co-founders to collaborate with as you explore new ideas.

If interested in participating, fill this out:

Join The Cofounder Collective

Stay safe,

JMJ

In San Francisco, there is a small music venue called Rickshaw Stop in Hayes Valley. I used to go there when I was young and cool.

I sometimes went to the venue on a random night and saw people waiting in long lines for a band I had never heard of. Without asking questions, I would hop in line too, knowing something special must be happening inside.

More often than not, the music would start playing and the 400'ish fans inside knew the lyrics to every song. The shows were a religious experience for these people. It almost felt like being part of a cult.

About a month ago, I discovered a piece of software that reminded me of those nights at Rickshaw Stop.

I was on a Zoom call with one of my most discerning engineering friends (Alex Sharp) and he showed me his Roam Research workspace — a meticulously managed operating system for many parts of his life.

Alex kept track of books and articles he was reading, to-do lists, work projects, and research ideas. The product also became his daily journal. Like I said, an operating system for his life.

I tried the software myself and was blown away. After signing up, I opened my Daily Notes and just started typing, and typing, and typing. I haven’t stopped typing ever since.

Roam has became a replacement for my personal workspaces in Google Docs and Notion. Like so many others, I became obsessed with the product and how the bi-directional page architecture helps me express and rediscover ideas. And yes, I have become part of the cult.

• I joined their Slack channel and discovered 1000+ passionate developers hacking on Roam in their free time. The vibe feels like a popular Github open source project. There is a #secretfeatures channel where engineers are creating new products for fun. A community member even created a Roam page that lists the secret features. This is what I wake up to every morning:

• I took a course called Effortless Output with Roam that taught me how to use the product better. Even more shocking, I found out that the course creator has already made $50,000+ on these tutorials which is crazy for a software product that is literally 4 months old for the public.

• I found a Roam Cult Twitter account and a very active #roamcult hashtag on Twitter. It is very rare to create cults via software, especially this early in the lifecycle of a product. If you search for Roam Research on Twitter, you will find posts like this all day long:

After 10+ hours of Zoom conversations with Conor White-Sullivan (CEO), I knew that I wanted to help build this company as an investor with my fund Chapter One. Erik Torenberg saw the same vision, so we all figured out a way to work together and are now permanent members of the Roam Cult.

Naturally, everyone is rushing to ask the obvious Silicon Valley questions. Part of our job as venture capitalists is to make simple comparisons to other companies so people feel comfortable with our investment decisions:

Is Roam a future Notion competitor? (most popular question because Notion just raised at a $2B valuation)
Wikipedia 2.0?
Quora 2.0?
Evernote built by devs?
A Google Docs replacement?
Github for ideas?

We love asking questions. But none of us really know. The product will be built by the cult, and not at investor dinners. That’s why I invested.

Finding a great artist or software product that you love before they go mainstream is rare. And like my nights at Rickshaw Stop, I am enjoying the music right now.

The audience will get larger soon. Until then, there is something beautiful about hanging out with diehard fans at a tiny venue, as we realize that life won’t always be this way.

One day, I will tell people that I fell in love with a band called Roam Research before they blew up.

JMJ

P.S. Here are some notes from my Roam Research investment. Written in Roam, of course:

P.S.S. Nathan Baschez published an article yesterday called “Why Roam is Cool” — you should read it: https://divinations.substack.com/p/why-roam-is-cool

Chapter One is hiring our first intern, based out of Los Angeles or anywhere in the world.

This is a unique opportunity, as you will be an investor and build product at the same time. If you can’t decide whether you want to become a VC or a product manager, I’ll help you figure it out.

The internship is paid (we all need to live) and you will be included in every aspect of building a new fund, while shipping product alongside me.

I am specifically looking for someone who is in college or a similar career stage, though that’s not required as smart people come from everywhere:

Working with LPs: fundraising, LP management, etc. I will give you full exposure to every part of working with LPs and include you in every meeting possible. If you one day want to work for any of my LPs, I will recommend you if you work hard and do a good job.

Finding Amazing Companies: sourcing (aka hunting), diligence calls, making hard decisions. You will be with me during the entire process and participate in investments from start to finish.

Supporting Companies: when we invest in a company, you will help support them with me. We are a product driven fund — so much of the help we offer is with hiring product managers, roadmap planning, and supporting early stage CEOs who have not hired their VP of Product yet.

Study Club: You will build product with me as we ship Study Club. You will help design the early product and work with engineers as we build the product together. There is potential to run this full-time as the CEO eventually.

To apply, send a note with your resume or something similar to internship@chapterone.vc

-JMJ

Chapter One is an early stage fund that has many of Silicon Valley’s top funds and investors backing us. We would list off LP names but VC Brags is probably reading this as we speak.

Over the next few months, Chapter One will be running an experiment called Study Club, which are online professional support groups to talk about real life stuff (you can apply for the first “product study club” here).

At UCLA, I had a study group that met every week to grab coffee, work through homework together, and have fun. The people in my study club became some of my best friends on campus.

In the professional world, we learn every single day and solve similar problems within different areas. But it’s hard to find your “work life” study club because there is no physical classroom and we are all busy.

Study Club #1: Product Team

Many people ask me about learning about product — so I thought that I’d create a study club called Product Team to focus on this topic. Now feels like the perfect time to launch this study club as many of us will be stuck at home for awhile and could use a little community.

Product Team is a study club that will focus on helping each other get better at product (ideation, leadership, team building) while providing a private support group to talk about real-life challenges we face at work. Everything will be confidential so you can actually talk about things happening in your daily lives within a safe space.

The study club will not be an instructor teaching students because I am not an instructor and study clubs should feel more like a group of friends grabbing coffee and talking through problems together. And frankly, I want to learn from you. Maybe a “not-so-serious professional support group” is the right analogy.

Applications: You must apply to be accepted into the first study club. Admissions will probably be competitive because of the small group size. I’m looking for diverse backgrounds and differentiated points of view so everyone brings a unique voice to our study club. Applicants should have a background working on product teams. This is not a study club for beginners.

Limited Spots: The first study club will be 10 members only so we can get to know each other really well. Like my experience at UCLA, I am hoping that we become friends for the rest of our careers. The only way to do that is to keep the groups small.

Duration & Time Commitment: The first study club will last for 6 weeks. We will meet once a week on Tuesday evenings for two hours (12 total hours). After the study club is over, we can still be friends.

Cost: $100. Everyone in the group should demonstrate upfront commitment. The most obvious way to do this is to charge a small fee which you can probably expense anyways.

Format: We will meet on Zoom for two hours on Tuesday evenings and I will come prepared with a specific topic to jumpstart the study club — then we will see where the conversations goes.

Starting A Study Club: If you want to host your own study club for any topic (engineering, design, investing, crypto, astrology, dating, etc.), send me a DM on Twitter and I will consider creating other Study Clubs.

Thanks,

JMJ