Today we’re excited to “take the cover” off our latest investment – Cover.  Cover is a context-aware Android app that automatically recognizes the places you spend time (home, work, car), learns which apps you use in those places, and puts them on your lockscreen for easy access.  While this sounds simple, we think it’s extremely powerful because the company is harnessing the power of two important trends:

First, we believe that context will be an increasingly important element of the mobile experience.   One of our early investments, Uber, for example, was one of the early apps to take advantage of a very simple contextual-layer (location).  Today we see an increasing number of opportunities to leverage context – so that, ultimately, you have a phone that seamlessly changes based on a user’s surroundings.  Google Now is an early example of an app that leverages context (through software) to enhance value.  And we’re already seeing companies begin to build context detection into hardware (like the MotoX and the M7 coprocessor of the Apple A7 chip).  

We expect contextual awareness to proliferate all all layers of the stack -- and Cover is one of the first stand-alone startups that is 100% focused on context.  Their product today learns when and where you use different apps, using your location as well as the day of week/hour of day (for example, you might use stocks/weather in the morning, and watch Netflix at night. You might use Foursquare/Yelp more on the weekends, etc). Your home and work are recognized through a combination of geo-fencing, wifi networks, and cell towers. Car detection is built using low-power sensors (no GPS) so it doesn’t drain your battery.  (Watch their video here to see Cover in action).

And contextual computing gets even more exciting when you add the “wisdom of the crowd” into the mix.  If everyone who walks into a movie theater puts their phone on vibrate, wouldn’t it be neat if your phone could automagically do the same – even if you’ve never been to the that specific theater before?

The second trend that Cover is harnessing is the power of Android.  We believe now is the right time to bet on Android.   A few reasons why:

• Android phones have really improved in the last two years.  The first Android phone I used was the Google Nexus One – and it was really lacking.  However, I’ve been using the Samsung S4 recently – and have really been impressed with it.  It’s really fast, and the ability to customize the phone has actually made it easier to use.   I see why David Pogue called it a “rival to the iPhone.”  And I’ve heard even better things about the HTC One.
   
• The market for Android has become immense.  Android captured 80% of the smartphone market last quarter (while iOS hit a new low of 14%).  And while there still is a big monetization gap between Android and iPhone, I believe that gap will close over time due to the staggering volume of billions of Android phones and nicer Android phones coming out – resulting in more high-end users switching to Android.  The hardware has now caught up – and as innovation moves to software over the next few years, Android developers stand to benefit.
  
  
• The Android developer toolset has really improved in the last year.  Apple has had Xcode (Apple’s integrated development environment for iOS) for years.  Yet Android announced an officially-supported IDE (Android Studio) just five months ago. Google has been rapidly developing Android Studio, with over 20 new releases since May.  As more developer tools are built to make it easier to develop on Android, I believe you will see an increase in the number (and quality) of Android apps.
   
• Even Android’s infamous “fragmentation” is getting less severe.  The vast majority of Android phones are now running Gingerbread or above, and Jellybean is approaching 50% of the market. That means that developers are benefitting from a more mature platform without the complexities that characterized early versions of Android (and though Gingerbread itself is complex, it is now reasonably well-understood and documented).

We are super-excited to work with the Cover team.  The founders have run massively successful projects at Facebook, Google and Yahoo – and they are building an incredible team of Android engineers.  Unlike most companies (who have just one or two Android engineers) the Cover team understands Android down to the metal.

We’re thrilled to welcome them to the First Round Capital community.  If you use an Android phone, be sure to join the waitlist for Cover here – it’s worth it.

It’s been a little over six months since we moved our headquarters into the city of Philadelphia.  And boy has a lot happened since then:

• We announced the Dorm Room Fund here in Philadelphia.  We received interest from over 700 students to serve on the investment committee.  We selected 11 students.  And they have already begun to make investments at a rapid pace!  So far they’ve committed over $150K for investment into 8 companies founded by Philadelphia-area students. We’re so happy with the traction that we’re seeing here in Philadelphia, that we’re even expanding the Dorm Room Fund to other cities.
• We’ve hired over a dozen interns from Penn and Drexel, including six Portfolio Consultants – who have completed over 30 consulting engagements for our portfolio in the last month!
• We’ve hosted thousands of people at dozens of events in our new space.  These events help bring us closer to the Philadelphia tech ecosystem.  From meetings to help plan Philly Tech Week, to Open Angel Forum meetings, to Startup Corps weekly mentorship meetings, to Girl Develop It Philadelphia meetings, to Good Company Ventures Investor Day -- we’ve met some really incredible people. 
• And in the last six months we’ve been thrilled to see other investors step up to support Philadelphia entrepreneurs.  Goldman Sachs committed $10 million in loans to Philadelphia startups.  Blackstone (in partnership with Temple University, Philadelphia University, and the University City Science Center) announced a $3M LaunchPad program to provide mentorship and venture consultation to entrepreneurs, Drexel University unveiled plans for a new fund --  Drexel Ventures  -- which will provide seed funding for technology startups.  The University of Pennsylvania Healthcare System, Blue Cross and DreamIt Ventures teamed up to launch DreamIt Health – an accelerator that provides investment, mentoring, and customer-access to healthcare entrepreneurs.  And we’ve been approached by several suburban venture firms who are contemplating moving to the city!

Finally, today we are excited to announce that First Round Capital has been selected by the City of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) to manage the Startup PHL Seed Fund, a new fund announced by Mayor Michael Nutter to increase the availability of investment capital for Philadelphia-based startups.  This fund will be a co-investment fund – where the PIDC has allocated $3 million to be invested alongside $3 million from First Round Capital in qualified, Philadelphia-based startups.  We’re hoping that this fund will result in more companies starting – and staying – in Philadelphia. 

It’s been a busy six months – and I can’t wait to see what happens in the next six!

First Round Capital is an entirely new kind of venture firm built from the ground up to help the world's best entrepreneurs build better companies.   One of our key tools to deliver on this promise is crafting incredible in person experiences for the entrepreneurs we work with – it's something we now do over 50 times per year.  We're creating a new role at First Round, a Platform Experience and Operations Manager, to help us take these events to the next level, continue to innovate and create experiences we haven't even thought of yet – and build systems and process to allow our entire Platform team to scale.

As a Platform Experience and Operations Manager you will be responsible for running and innovating on all aspects of our in person experiences that range from intimate dinners with the most influential names in technology through CEO and CTO Summit, our internal conferences that bring together the leadership teams from our 170+ companies.  You will have the opportunity to work with the entire First Round team as well as directly with the founders and companies in our portfolio.  In addition, you'll help our 7 person Platform team scale through innovative systems and processes.  This team includes business development, recruiting, learning and research.

The qualities we care most about:

• Relentlessly resourceful – you need to be able to see a project from idea stage through successful completion – and whatever it takes to make it a success. You're looking for an opportunity to take on huge responsibility and grow in a high velocity work environment.
• Get things done – this role will require you to get an incredible amount of work done in very short time periods.  We bias towards action.
• Curious – you're interested in learning new things and can learn very quickly.
• Pixel perfect – in everything we do, we try to bring care and thoughtfulness to our work.  So while the big ideas matter – we care deeply about the details.
• No ego – you're willing to do anything and the phrase "that's not my job" is not something you'd ever say.  Ever.
• Passion for technology – everyone on our team is passionate about technology, startups and company construction – and you need to be too.

We're looking for someone with anywhere from 0-3 years of professional experience.  The position is based out of our San Francisco office.

If you're interested in joining First Round and helping us turn venture capital upside down – email [email protected] with 3 specific examples of when you were relentlessly resourceful and your résumé.

When you have the opportunity to partner with Jeff Atwood (aka Coding Horror) on a new company, it's hard to say "no". And when you learn his new company is reinventing forum software, a product that hasn't seen change in a couple decades, it becomes a pretty easy "yes".

 I was recently looking around online and found my very first forum post (Usenet post from 1993) on the topic of Prodigy pricing changes.  You can see that post here.  What you quickly realize from reading this brief exchange (besides for my age) is that online forums as we know them have been relatively unchanged for the past couple decades.  It's one of the last areas of the web that hasn't been touched by modern software or product thinking.  Blogs have changed substantially with Blogger, WordPress and Tumblr.  Connecting with friends has been rethought with Facebook and news and information flow has been forever altered with Twitter.  But forums, an area of the internet that still produces massive amounts of content and valuable knowledge, haven't been touched.  In Jeff's recent post on his new company, he throws out just a few examples of the robustness (and sometimes quirkiness) of online forums today:

• A 12 year old girl who finds a forum community of rabid enthusiasts willing to help her rebuild a Fiero from scratch? Check.
• The most obsessive breakdown of Lego collectible minifig kits you'll find anywhere on the Internet? Check.
• Some of the most practical information on stunt kiting in the world? Check.
• The only place I could find with scarily powerful squirt gun instructions and advice? Check.
• The underlying research for a New Yorker article outing a potential serial marathon cheater? Check.

There are few better people on earth to take on this huge challenge than Jeff Atwood.  Jeff has spent a majority of his life thinking about text exchange on the web.  When we first starting talking, it was clear that the "exchange of paragraphs" as he calls it was something deeply important to him.  And that it was very different from his last company, Stack Exchange, a Q&A platform that allows domain experts to share answers with one another (without the free-form dialog that occurs in forums).  He's also built an incredible following on his blog, Coding Horror, where he explores everything from technology to the judicial system (if you haven't read his post on being on a jury called "Somebody is to Blame for This" - please do it now.)

 So with that, I'm thrilled to welcome Jeff and Discourse to the First Round Community and can't wait to be a part of the next two decades of online forums! Try out the beta here...

We host 50+ events for our portfolio companies a year -- and historically we've held off on sharing the content widely, since we viewed it as a benefit that came from being a member of the First Round Capital community.  But some talks are so good they are meant to be shared with the world.  So today we released a talk that Kellan Elliott-McCrea (the CTO of Etsy) gave at our last CTO Summit entitled "How Etsy Grew their Number of Female Engineers by 500% in One Year".    After witnessing first-hand how challenging it can be to attract women engineers, Kellan shares lessons in building a process and culture to attract female engineers.   Really compelling stuff -- on a very important topic...

I’m a startup guy.  And from day one, we’ve always viewed First Round Capital as a startup. We're building First Round Capital just like any entrepreneur would build their business.  We are a company - not a “firm” or a collection of independent partners that come together for Monday meetings.  We have customers (our entrepreneurs) and shareholders (our Limited Partners).  In every part of our business, we try our hardest to innovate and delight our customers - and think differently about what a venture fund could be.  Whether it's public initiatives like Dorm Room Fund or internal products like our propriety online collaboration tool, FRC Network, which connects the 7,000+ employees across our investments - we try to push ourselves every year to move faster and faster - and come to the office willing to invent (and to fail).

As each year comes to an end, we do our best to take stock and plan for the future.  As companies mature, they often begin to solidify this process in an annual report - where they publicly share what happened in the previous year.  For the first time ever, we're choosing to do the same thing.  To open up our community and share where we've been and what we've done.

In the process of crunching the data and reflecting on the year, it's clear it was a busy one.  This year was filled with 37 new companies in our Community, the addition of 5 new members to the First Round team, more than 50 new software product features built and shipped for our proprietary FRC Network, 55+ company only events, a ton of additional services, thousands of new relationships and one new fund.

You can find more details on all of those key milestones in our 2012 Annual Report (a huge thank you to our design partner on this project, Alice Lee - she really helped turn data into beauty) - and also some really interesting data - here are a few of our favorites:

• First Round Capital companies raised a total of $910,000,000 in 2012
• 5.5% of all dollars invested in Tech/IT companies by every venture firm in the country went to a FRC company
• The First Round Capital companies that exited (through M&A or IPO) in 2012 were worth 2,500,000,000+ at the time of exit
• The most common CEO name in our Community is David - there are 11 Davids
• The First Round Capital Holiday Video was viewed over 100,000 times, that's 164.2 days of human attention
• Every dollar First Round initially invests in a company is typically followed by $36 of follow-on capital from other VCs
• 2012 was the first year in our history where consumer companies represented less than 50% of our initial investment dollars
• Our partnership flew over 480,000 miles in 2012

So as we start 2013, we sincerely thank the 7,000+ employees across our community who worked millions of hours to help our 300+ founders build industry changing companies. We're excited to have the opportunity to support you in the year to come.

You can see our entire Annual Report here: www.firstround.com/annualreport2012 (and be sure to check out the premier of "The Making of Call Me First Round Style" at the very bottom).