Bill Trenchard
Partner·First Round Capital
Bio
Professional summary
Bill Trenchard is a Partner at First Round. His official profile describes him as a repeat founder who started two businesses as an undergraduate: LiveOps, a cloud contact center company that he scaled to $100 million in sales, and Jump Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft. Before joining First Round in 2012, he invested as an angel and as a Partner at Founder Collective in companies including Uber, IronPort, Adroll, PowerSet, Lending Club, HomeRun, Tapulous, Slide, and Chegg. At First Round, his listed investments include Looker, Verkada, Flexport, EvolutionIQ, Together AI, Superhuman, Rillet, and Serval. His profile explicitly says he looks for pre-product-market-fit founders who go deeply into complex problems.
Investment focus
Stage, sector, and overall fit
Stage
Sector
Thesis
Notable companies
Selected portfolio companies the partner has backed
How to approach
Framing and angles for outreach
Pitch framing
Strong fit for pre-PMF founders attacking complex, deeply technical or operational problems with unusual insight and founder-market depth.
Partneralization hooks
- 1Show that the team has gone unusually deep into the problem’s mechanics, not just market-level analysis.
- 2If relevant, connect to AI infrastructure, enterprise operations, logistics, security, or metabolic-health-adjacent personal interest.
Recent signals
What the partner has said or done recently
Official profile lists Together AI, Rillet, and Serval among companies he has backed at First Round.
Background
Career, education, and skills
Career history
- First Round CapitalPartner
Education
- Cornell UniversityDegree
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