Todd Jackson

Partner @firstround. Former VP Product @Dropbox, Product Director @twitter, co-founder @coverscreen, PM @google, @facebook. Amateur golfer and dad.

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

Big @firstround news today!

We’re launching Product-Market Fit Method (a free intensive 14-week experience for early founders building epic B2B SaaS companies) and publishing the first session on our internal framework for all to read (with benchmarks, Looker's real data, and tactical advice from iconic enterprise founders).

Even though finding product-market fit is the single most important thing for a startup, it’s still underexplored and seen as more art than science. We wanted to change that.

I’ve personally talked to hundreds of founders about this topic, digging into what they did in the first 6-9 months of company building. (We’ve published dozens of those interviews on The Review in our “Paths to PMF” series.) This video previews some of what we learned — thanks to @christinacaci, @zachperret, @lloydtabb, @jboehmig, & @jaltma for sharing their lessons!

In addition to that research, we’ve also drawn from our own 20 years of data and 500+ pre-PMF investments. What emerged was a very consistent set of patterns for sales-led B2B companies — the basis for our new framework and PMF Method’s 8 tactical sessions.

In the program, we help early founders discover what customers really want, build the right v1 product, and close their first enterprise sales. We ran a beta version late last year with a tight-knit group of founders (ex Stripe, Plaid, Airbnb, Twitter, Greenhouse, Grammarly) and the feedback was great — my personal favorite was: "I feel like I shaved 12 months off the time it would take us to get to PMF.”

Here are a few key dates and details:

- The Summer 2024 session of PMF Method runs 5/29 - 8/28.
- Application deadline is 11:59 PDT May 7th.
- Any early founder working on a new B2B SaaS company is welcome to apply. Bonus points if you’re technical, have a clear product idea but haven’t raised yet and are <12 months into working full time on your idea.
- PMF Method is 100% free. It costs you $0 and we own 0% of your company.

Like with The First Round Review and Angel Track, our mindset is to openly share knowledge that we’ve put hundreds of hours of work into curating with the broader startup community, and give it away for free. That’s why we’ve also published our framework, so every builder can use this resource, even if they don’t do the program (it’s linked in the next post).

Check out the links below for more details. Can’t wait to read applications!

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

@ssokol94 @TownAI Brock is nice and short, and I like to imagine that Brock Purdy (my favorite NFL QB) is my humble assistant

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

.@TownAI is for people who don’t want to figure out AI, they want AI to figure out them.

I think that's a very large TAM.

People who don’t want to learn skills files or scheduling or dynamic workflows or markdown or buy a Mac mini to run agents. I used to do a lot of these shenanigans and now Brock just does it.

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

@taro_f @TownAI 🙌

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

@nbushak @drewregitsky @boxesdotdev Product quality looks really good 👏

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

@CharleyMa @jgreze @TownAI @firstround @tonydevincenzi @brettberson That’s L3 PMF at least

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

Back in February, I got early access to @TownAI. Now 93% of @firstround is using it. There was never a top-down mandate — it went viral inside First Round the way great products do.

Today, Town announced its $55M Series A. Huge congrats to @jgreze, @tonydevincenzi and the whole team!

It’s hard to imagine getting my work done without my Townie “Brock” helping me. Here’s how Town took off at First Round:

1) Most AI assistants want you to come to them. Town comes to you. It learns how you work and then starts working. After connecting email, calendar and Slack, Town gives you a briefing — who you work with most, what’s high priority, your communication style and patterns. Everyone gets a custom version of this. Connect Town to more tools (Granola, Notion, Google Drive, etc.) and it starts drafting perfect emails and nailing investment snapshots. Customization even extends to “Townies,” the names, avatars, and personalities people assign their Town assistants.

2) First Rounders create routines in Town to solve real problems…then share them. Chiefs of staff were nodal users. Town is a glass of water in the desert for them. So much of their work is processing email, filling out updates, checking spreadsheets and gathering context. Town does this natively. Roy Rosin, one of First Round’s board partners, automatically tracks all his follow-ups (“commitments I made to founders”) at the end of each day. We share new routines in a # town-square Slack channel so it’s easy for other people to use the same routines the chiefs or Roy created.

3) Town works for every function — even people who’d never set up Mac minis to get the benefits of using agents. Our finance team saves hours on repetitive work it can now automate. Our marketing team tells me it “essentially replaced Claude and ChatGPT” for them. Without skills or markdown files but with persistent memory, the more you use it, the better Town gets over time.

A few specific routines we’re using across First Round 👇

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

@jgreze @CharleyMa @TownAI @firstround @tonydevincenzi @brettberson To be fair, Brett didn't get a human assistant either for like 10 years. He's a bit particular, you know

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

@kayvz @jgreze @TownAI @tonydevincenzi 😉

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

It’s rare to find a former CTO who’s both technically world-class and a commercial savant. @jgreze is one of the few I’ve worked with who’s both. He’s putting that combo to work building @TownAI with @tonydevincenzi, an insanely talented product thinker and designer.

I've known these guys for over a decade, since we all worked together at Dropbox.

I met them both my first week. I remember being introduced by @adityaag to a room full of eng directors, including JDG, who immediately asked what made me qualified to be the VP of Product and interrogated my ideas for the product roadmap. From that very first exchange, I could tell he was hyper-intelligent, competitive, and gave zero fucks about offending anyone (founder DNA!!). I liked him immediately.

Tony was running the design team at the time, after Dropbox had acquired his startup. Not only was he much better dressed than Jean-Denis, but every product Tony touched across the company was incredibly elegant — combining a designer’s taste with a product-builder’s practicality.

Jean-Denis went on to spend seven years as Plaid's CTO. We kept in touch and he eventually joined @firstround's 2024 PMF Method cohort. Meanwhile I'd admire Tony's work from afar — watching him found a product studio that Google acquired and later as he took the stage for the main Google I/O keynote in 2024.

Backing them from the very beginning and getting to be an early user of Town has been such a fun, full-circle moment for me. Huge, huge congrats to Jean-Denis, Tony and the whole team on their $55M Series A and more importantly on building a product I now can’t imagine living without.

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

@FortuneMagazine Business Insider too (no paywall on this one):
https://t.co/zZ97a8TgBz

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

And today's @FortuneMagazine story announcing the round: https://t.co/x6PHdZ8NuQ

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

@kirstenagreen @TownAI @firstround @jgreze @tonydevincenzi 🙌

[Brett Berson @brettberson]

Being both investors and power users is the best. What @jgreze, @tonydevincenzi, and the @TownAI team have built in such a short time is remarkable.

Excited for everyone to have their own Townie.

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

@zhangelaz @firstround @TownAI 🙌

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

@MikeLyngaas @TownAI @firstround @jgreze @tonydevincenzi Brock!

[Arielle Jackson @hiiamArielle]

1/ I've worked in tech 20+ years and I'm still somewhat of a laggard. Everyone at @firstround uses Superhuman; I'm on Gmail. I still rock an iPhone XR!! I try a LOT of new products, but most just don't stick.

So it means something when one like @TownAI actually does.

[Josh Kopelman @joshk]

In just a few months @TownAI has transformed how I (and most of @firstrouhd) get work done.

Congrats to the entire Town team on their $55M Series A!

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

To learn more about Town and try it out, go to https://t.co/oQ76z8CdLo.

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

What’s happening within First Round is just a tiny sample of what’s happening across all kinds of teams using Town, from talent agencies to small e-commerce businesses — someone tries it out and is wowed, tells a couple other nodal users, and it spreads organically from there with different functions using their Townies for different reasons.