First Harmonic

We are early stage investors who run a go-to-market program for founders.

[Michael Tan @TheManMikeTan]

One of my favorite evenings in recent memory. We hosted 40 of SF’s best engineers at our Builders Table dinner with @bcherny, @mikeyk, and members of the Claude Code team.

We took a quick poll in the middle of dinner on some topics, and we had some interesting results:

1) It turns out that out of all the agentic coding tools out there, most folks in the room (to no surprise) trusted Claude the most 🤖

2) The next application layer unlock will come from persistent memory and better context ingestion.

3) The room was pretty split on whether there would be more or fewer software engineers in the world in 5 years.

Thanks so much to the @AnthropicAI team (@kandouss, @alistaiir, @OmidMogasemi, @jwbaskerv, and especially @RazRazcle), and to everyone who spent their evening with us.

If you're an engineer or researcher interested in a future @firstharmonic dinner, DM me.

[Ali Rowghani @ROWGHANI]

We hosted a Builders Table event with leaders from @AnthropicAI last week. It was amazing to hear about their experiences using Mythos internally, managing the unprecedented growth they are seeing, and learning about new products they are hoping to build.

Thanks so much to the @AnthropicAI team (@bcherny, @mikeyk, @alistaiir, @OmidMogasemi, @jwbaskerv, and especially @RazRazcle), and to the great engineers who spent their evening with us.

[Mia Mabanta @miamabanta]

This was maybe my favorite Builders Table yet. We hosted @bcherny, @mikeyk, and members of the Claude Code team to talk about how coding will evolve and what it means for the day-to-day experience of engineers.

40 of SF’s top engineers came. Some results from our mid-dinner poll:

1/ The biggest coding bottleneck is verification, not model capability.

2/ The next application layer unlock will come from persistent memory and better context ingestion.

3/ The jury is out on whether there will be more or fewer engineering jobs in five years, but for now the coding "tool" people trust most after Claude is... themselves. Keep thinking indeed.

Thanks so much to the @AnthropicAI team (@kandouss, @alistaiir, @OmidMogasemi, @jwbaskerv, and especially @RazRazcle), and to everyone who spent their evening with us.

We're hosting another one of these next month, on the topic of AI safety. If you're an engineer or researcher and want to come, DM me!

[Ali Rowghani @ROWGHANI]

Actively AI (@useactively) is leading an inevitable transformation in the modern sales stack. Within five years, no one will believe that sales teams used to work without per-account agents working alongside them to guide their actions with intelligence.

I heard about Actively two years when a CRO told me it was the most transformative sales tool he’d ever seen. We then worked closely with @mgarimella and @agupta_108 in the @firstharmonic program and were blown away by their tenacity and commitment. We see enormous potential in their business.

Today, we're very excited to co-lead Actively's Series B and help realize their vision of intelligence-led revenue.

[Mihir Garimella @mgarimella]

📣 We just raised our $45M Series B from @TCVTech and @firstharmonic, with participation from @BainCapVC, @firstround, and @AlkeonCapital.

Sales is the most expensive function in most companies — and one of the hardest. Hundreds of accounts, different context, different stakeholders, different dynamics, and a different path to close. No one can do that perfectly. Critical things get missed.

So we gave every account its own AI agent — working 24/7, maintaining full context, progressing it through the funnel, and guiding reps and leaders on what to do next.

The greatest privilege has been building alongside companies like @Samsara @tryramp @ironclad_inc and @attentiveHQ — enterprises with thousands of sellers who are already living in the future.

There are only two unbounded upside problems out there: building and selling. Every company sells. and @useactively is building the system they'll all run on. We’re excited to pull every revenue team into the future we know is inevitable.

[First Harmonic @firstharmonic]

Congrats to early First Harmonic alums @handotdev, @hahnbeelee, and the team at @mintlify! We loved working with you.

[Han Wang @handotdev]

We just raised a $45M Series B at a $500M valuation led by @a16z and @SalesforceVC to build the knowledge infrastructure for AI

[Mia Mabanta @miamabanta]

The way we align and shape model behavior is evolving quickly. Last week, we had the pleasure of gathering SF's post-training experts from companies like @appliedcompute, @OpenAI, @cursor_ai, @thinkymachines, @mercor_ai, @cognition, @xai, @flappyairplanes, and others.

Post-training is a nascent field, and I learned a ton:

1/ Reward modeling is becoming the bottleneck. The gap between what we can train models to do and what we can reliably evaluate is widening fast.

2/ The line between post-training and product is blurring. Teams that treat RLHF and fine-tuning as an afterthought are falling behind those that treat it as a core part of the product loop.

3/ Evaluation is still surprisingly artisanal. The tooling isn't where it needs to be, and there's a real opening for better infrastructure.

This event was part of @firstharmonic's Builders Table series: intimated, curated dinners where you almost certainly won't be the smartest person in the room. DM me if you're interested in coming to the next one.

[Mia Mabanta @miamabanta]

We hosted 30 of SF’s best engineers at our Builders Table event with @cursor_ai last week. The way we code is changing fast, and Cursor is one of the companies at the forefront. The team shared their perspectives on questions like:

- Will engineers even look at their code in a year?
- Will the future of coding be in the IDE, the CLI, or in something else entirely?
- What will the role of an engineer look like in the future?

There are many forums for founders to learn from each other, but fewer for engineers. We loved creating one and hope to do more. If you’re an engineer and interested in attending a future @firstharmonic event, DM me!

[cat @catheryn_li]

Excited to announce that @simpleailab has raised a $14M seed round led by @firstharmonic.

For the past year, we’ve been building AI voice agents to transform direct-to-consumer sales. We fundamentally believe that voice AI is the future of all B2C calls.

[Ali Rowghani @ROWGHANI]

Very excited to back @catheryn_li and @Zach_Kamran who are build AI agents that can sell

[J.J. Fliegelman @JdotJdotF]

Huge congrats to the Artie team! Incredibly hard product to build and it's amazing what they've accomplished over the past couple years.

[First Harmonic @firstharmonic]

🤝

[Emir Karabeg @emkara]

agents meet optimizations @joshpxyne

[Mia Mabanta @miamabanta]

First @firstharmonic alumni reunion in the books! Thanks for bringing the good vibes.

[First Harmonic @firstharmonic]

Thanks for visiting @AntWilson @kiwicopple!

[Ant Wilson — e/postgres @AntWilson]

If we ever get an office I hope it vibes like this

[hareem @hareemmannan]

such a good episode with the best @ROWGHANI

[Pedro Franceschi @pedroh96]

Ali is a special operator and investor. He joined a @brexHQ all hands a few months ago, and was one of the most profound guest speakers ever.

One of the learnings from working with Steve Jobs: he was obsessed with the quality of his own thinking.

I’m really glad @jaltma captured some of his wisdom on a podcast. Highly recommend listening!

[Ali Rowghani @ROWGHANI]

I get asked a lot what it was like to work with Steve Jobs. Probably the biggest thing I learned is that there is no "good enough" when it comes to the basics: communicating, motivating, and most importantly, thinking. Steve was obsessed with the quality of his own thinking. He was able to generate a mental map of a problem space faster and more deftly than anyone I've known because he worked at it. Over the course of a career, that skill compounds more than anything else.

Thanks for the conversation @jaltma

[First Harmonic @firstharmonic]

Congrats to @unifygtm on their Series B! @austinh___ and @HeggieConnor were part of the first @firstharmonic cohort and remain a shining example of how far you can get and how quickly you can move when you are hyper-focused on the right customer.

[Austin Hughes @austinh___]

Excited to share that we’ve raised a $40M Series B at @unifygtm to transform growth into a science.

Many of the fastest growing companies like Cursor, Perplexity, Flock Safety and Airwallex choose Unify to reimagine growth in an AI-native world.

This round comes just 9 months after announcing our Series A, and was led by Battery with participation from OpenAI, Thrive and Emergence 👇

[Mia Mabanta @miamabanta]

👋 Sharing a great opportunity for anyone out there who loves to read, write, and learn. We're hiring a part-time writer at @firstharmonic to produce a series of research essays on topics that early-stage founders care about. Probably two pieces per month, each about 1,000–2,000 words, month-to-month contract.

Maybe you're an engineer but want to stimulate your brain in a different way. Maybe you work in banking or consulting and are VC-curious. Maybe you're still in school. If you enjoy thinking about businesses and you appreciate good clear prose, it'll be a great time.

Email me if you're interested or know someone who might be! (mia@)

[Connor Heggie @HeggieConnor]

@ROWGHANI Congrats!! Going through this was a huge accelerant to Unify, can't rec it enough to other founders