Liz Wessel

Partner

First Round Capital · San Francisco, California, United States

Present

I'm a generalist investor, investing at the Seed and Pre-Seed stages across all industries and verticals. I take a founder-first approach to investing. When I was building WayUp, I lived and breathed my company for seven years. I now want to work with founders who bring that same level of intensity — the individuals who will run through walls to overcome challenges, and the ones who understand the problem they’re solving in a way that 99.9% of the population doesn’t. To the founders who decide to partner with me: I will work harder than any other investor on your cap table. That’s a guarantee. Whether it’s reviewing every sales call recording together to fine-tune your customer pitch, interviewing candidates for your earliest hires, doing fundraising pitch practices on weekends for your Series A, or anything else — I’ll be there for every moment, big or small. Because I want every founder I work with to have the deeply fulfilling entrepreneurial experience that I was so fortunate to ha…

Angel Investor

Invested in 45+ startups, incl: ScaleAI, Ramp, Ro, Artera (fka WELL Health), FreeWill, Snackpass, and more (larger list is at lizwessel.com)

Visiting Group Partner

Y Combinator · San Francisco, California, United States

Visiting Partner for S22 and W23 batches. On maternity leave May - Aug 2023.

Advisor

WayUp

Co-Founder & Ceo

WayUp · New York, United States

WayUp is the go-to platform for companies to recruit and hire early career employees. I was Co-Founder and CEO of WayUp for over 7 years (from inception to exit), during which time we had thousands of customers and over 6M users. Over the course of the company, we raised over $40M in venture capital (from funds like General Catalyst, BoxGroup, Index Ventures, and more), and in 2021, we exited through a merger with Yello. As CEO of WayUp, I spent most of my 7+ years (when not with my own employees) focused on the customer side of the business -- focused on sales and customer success, with >90% of our revenue coming from enterprises (ranging from Lockheed Martin to to Cisco, Unilever, EY, Apex, and so many more). After our exit in 2021, I stayed at the merged company for 8 months to oversee a smooth transition for our employees, users and customers, then transitioned to an Advisory role when I left to join YC (one of our early investors) as a Visiting Partner.

Product Marketing Manager

Google · India

Associate Product Marketing Manager (Apmm)

Google · Mountain View, CA

Co-Founder and Ceo (While in School)

PennEats

This was the first business I ever started. We sold loyalty cards to students on college campuses (first at Penn) that would get them discounts around campus. You can read more here: http://goo.gl/Up1ksk PennEats was the UPenn branch, and then I franchised the business to other campuses around the country, changing the name to UniEats.

Marketing and Strategy Intern

Google · Mountain View, California, United States

Private Equity Summer Analyst

Blackstone · Tokyo, Japan

Private Equity Summer Analyst in Tokyo

Campaign Intern (2007-2008)

Hillary for America