❯We're focal.vc. Your first lead.
We exist to put moonshot founders in business.
A firm built to back technical founders at inception.
Your first lead
We exclusively back AI native builders with speed and conviction.
We designed our firm to be your catalyzing first partner.
When we say nothing's too early, we mean it.
Every check is a core position. No option buying, no discovery checks.
Partner to moonshot founders
We back people first and foremost. They all have three things in common:
- Obsessedwith pursuing the most asymmetric opportunities in AI (no small ideas).
- Technicalbuilders who ship with speed and intensity (at least one on the team).
- Hungryto win, be challenged, and be better tomorrow than today.
That leads us across industries and verticals with an open mind. Only two non-negotiables:
- It's your first financing
- Your startup is based in the US or Canada
When we decide to partner, we move fast, often going from first meeting to investment in a few days.
Your VC of record
focal is Pascal, Sydney, Daniel, and Amine.
We are founders of our own firm and run focal like a startup. We know the rejections, the failures, and the hard-earned lessons that come with building a company. This gives us empathy and understanding for the ups and downs of the founder journey. Read why we started focal here.
To our portfolio, we are high-bandwidth partners who work hard to earn the trust to be the partner you turn to first in the most crucial moments. We work very closely with you as you get your company off the ground. You lead the charge, we challenge and support you to get there faster.
Here's what our founders say about us:
This is my 5th company, and I've raised from some of the biggest names in venture. Focal is the firm you want backing you at the very start. If I ever start a 6th, they'll be my first call.
5th-time founder, previously backed by a16z & Bessemer
Focal has been an incredible sounding board outshining any large multistage firms I've worked with. They provide invaluable feedback, especially on go-to-market efforts.
2nd-time founder, previously backed by Lightspeed & Canaan
A true operational partner, big on fundraising, hiring, and intros i.e. to 150+ investors, which reshaped our round. Focal is the partner you want in your corner.
2nd-time founder
Focal gets the challenges of going from 0 to 1 and their passion is unmatched. It was a no-brainer to have them lead our pre-seed for a second time (after our first exit together).
2nd-time founder
Focal articulates what matters and surfaces strategic opportunities without overcomplicating things. Offering an honest view of reality while trusting founders to lead.
From the start, focal dug their heels in every week on our messaging, product strategy, mapping out the pathway to seed, etc. They truly understand pre-seed, are great humans, and have our back.
An AI native venture firm
We’re building focal like the companies we back at the cutting edge.
Our firm is a learning system with an autonomous sourcing engine that quantifies every signal we can reach; agent swarms and rankers trained on every decision we make; a self-improving codebase that lets us build our own harness, tailored to our needs, and increase our velocity with each step the frontier does, and MUCH more.
Meaning we treat the firm itself as the model: Every signal is an input, every decision is a label, every outcome is a delayed reward, and the humans are the part of the loop that still sees what the data can't. The firm gets better with every decision, every new data source and every model release, on a self-improving codebase.
In charge of this is Amine who's an exited technical founder with an AI infra background.
Your early GTM, supported by 200+ operators
Distribution decides more outcomes than ever.
That's why we spend a lot of our time on your early GTM and plug you into The GTM Circle, our invite-only network of 200+ revenue executives at today's leading Seed through Series D startups.
90% of our founders draw on it regularly.
Members of The GTM Circle include:
- // Revenue Lead @ Anthropic
- // Head of Product Marketing @ Anyscale
- // Partnership Lead @ Langchain
- // Head of Growth @ Deel
- // Head of CS @ Notion
- // Head of Growth @ Delphi
- // B2B Product Marketing Lead @ Lovable
- // Head of CS @ Coder
- // Head of GTM Strategy & Ops @ Harvey
- // and 200+ more
portfolio.md · resources.md · team.md · residency.md · faq.md · blog.md