I’m excited to announce the public launch of First Harmonic. We are a small team of former operators who invest in early-stage companies and run what I believe is the world’s best go-to-market program for seed-stage founders. We have run six cohorts of the program to date with an NPS of 100 across the nearly 50 founders who have participated.
Over a long career in tech, I’ve had the privilege of working with Steve Jobs and Ed Catmull at Pixar, of taking Twitter from $0 in revenue through IPO as the CFO and COO, and of mentoring hundreds of founders at all stages in 10 years as a YC partner. I’ve also been fortunate to invest as an early angel in several breakout AI companies, including Mercor, Decagon, and Cursor. I’ve seen the arc from inception to IPO many times and recognize what separates winning startups from the pack. It's this multi-stage experience as an operator and investor that is uniquely valuable to the founders in our program.
What’s this program about?
A common challenge that all founders face in the early days is defining their ideal initial customer. Great go-to-market strategy begins with narrow customer selection. Every important decision is downstream of customer definition: roadmap priorities, customer acquisition strategy, sales model, pricing, etc. If you don’t define your customer well, everything else becomes extra hard. In our program, we help founders nail early customer definition through intensive 1:1 work. It’s the point of highest leverage.
Our cohorts are small (10 to 12 companies), and we don’t accept applications. Instead, we select founders who have been nominated by people we trust, increasingly by alumni of our program. The program requires a 3–4 hour weekly time commitment over 8 weeks and sets startups on the right go-to-market path for life.
The program will always be free and non-dilutive to founders. In order to make this possible, we’ve raised an early-stage fund that covers the costs of running the program. But there are no investment expectations or strings attached to participating.
If you’re an early-stage founder, you can read more about what we believe in the link in comments.
If you’re a seed investor, we hope to collaborate with you.
SR005 APPLICATIONS JUST 𝑫𝑹𝑶𝑷𝑷𝑬𝑫!
Want to secure up to $1M for your startup?
Apply here: https://t.co/OBsX64uvaZ (takes 15 mins!)
Application Deadline: May 11, 2025
Notified of Selection: End of June at the latest!
Program Dates: July 29 - Oct 10 in Los Angeles ☀️
Big news: I’m thrilled to officially unveil @TipTopVC — a new pre-seed/seed stage, operator-led venture firm backing the next-gen of Vertical AI founders.
After an amazing 8+ year run as founding head of marketing and CMO at Greenlight Guru — from $0 to tens of millions in ARR, creating the medtech QMS category, and raising $120M+ — I knew I had two paths:
a) start another software company
b) start a venture fund built the way I wish VC worked when I was a founder
For nearly 13 years, it’s been a personal goal to build a top-tier VC firm that the best founders want to work with. But the marketer in me always said: “the world doesn’t need another undifferentiated B2B SaaS fund.”
So I unplugged. Got a cabin in the Rockies with my then girlfriend, and now wife. And after some much-needed clarity, I had four big realizations:
1. I didn’t have one problem I wanted to solve for 10-15 years—but I had unique experience operating in vertical markets that founders could lean on
2. The future of software (and AI) is vertical
3. My experience gave me a unique right to win with the top founders
4. The best VC firms of the next decade would operate like AI-native startups themselves—brand-led, data-driven, community-built
That’s when TipTop Ventures was born.
The Vertical SaaS+ thesis I shared nearly 2 years ago unexpectedly went viral. That post pulled me forward. Fast forward to today—and after 30+ vertical SaaS+ angel deals, over a dozen LP checks written, and 9 TipTop investments closed—I’m proud to announce we’re live.
While I’m just now announcing the firm, here’s what we’ve quietly built so far:
- 9 investments across legacy and underserved industries
- 3 companies marked up out of 6 investments made in 2024
- Raving founder feedback on our support-per-dollar invested
- 30+ founding LPs from the likes of ServiceTitan, Procore, Mindbody, Greenlight Guru and more
It hasn’t been easy going zero-to-one in this market—but the momentum is real.
In fact, based on Carta’s latest fund data, if we were a 2023 vintage (we’re 2024), we’d already be tracking top decile.
And yes, TipTop is led by a solo-GP, but not solo-built.
I’d like to express my deep gratitude for all the support from these early believers:
Thank you to my amazing wife Mari Tippmann for your unwavering support since day-minus-one
Thank you to our LPs for your early belief and trust–it’s taken very seriously
Thank you to Bill Loss for being a rock as founding advisor and LPAC member
Thank you to Ershad Jamil for joining me as a Venture Partner
And most of all — thank you to our founders. You chose us when we didn’t even have a website (or a fund in some cases). I’ll never forget that.
We believe AI is the biggest platform shift since the internet.
We believe the future of AI is vertical.
And we believe the best founders aren’t just building tools — they’re reinventing industries.
If you’re one of those founders: we’re writing $150k–400K checks at pre-seed/seed. Let’s build together.
Join us on the journey to the TipTop.
We just backed a founder for the second time (guess who 😉).
It’s just him, pre-idea, pre-everything.
Would love to support more founders at the earliest stages.
Shoot us an email at [email protected] if you’re looking for a $200K first check to go all-in.
Include your LinkedIn and <3 sentences on what you’re building and why.
I’m looking for a UX designer with strong UI skills and some web3 experience to join my team.
- 4/5 days per week
- fully remote
- mid-senior level
- individuals, not studios
- growth mindset
We work on a range of exciting product design projects in the crypto space