FirstMark Capital is a venture capital firm founded in 2008 and based in New York City.

The firm focuses on a wide range of industries, including consumer internet, enterprise software, and artificial intelligence. 

Portfolio

FirstMark has invested in over 100 companies and its portfolio includes the likes of Airbnb, Pinterest, Shopify, Discord, UpWork, Carta, Riot Games, InVision, DraftKings, and numerous others.

Returns

Its first fund generated a net IRR of over 36% according to Preqin, putting it among the world’s top-performing funds. 

Funds

Building on its earlier successes, FirstMark raised an additional $1.1 billion in 2022 to invest across two additional funds. 

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‍Content Spotlight

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‍Website

FirstMark has one of the sexiest and pleasing websites of any venture firm we’ve looked at, reminiscent of its most notable investments. Its website attracts a respectable 23,000 visits a month according to SimilarWeb, which excludes traffic to its podcast, YouTube and Medium profiles. 

‍Podcast

FirstMark partner Matt Turck interviews founders on all things Machine learning, AI, and Data on the firm’s podcast, MAD. Get it? Check out those clean, crisp thumbnails too!

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Articles and Insights

FirstMark publishes insights on both its website as well as its Medium page, where it boasts almost 4,000 followers. I recommend partner Adam Nelson’s piece on the 2023 VC landscape here. 

Turck also boasts a personal blog that draws 56,000 visits a month according to Similarweb. Its here that you'll find his 2023 MAD landscape report in which he distills hundreds of hours of research, writing, and operating.

‍Twitter

Speaking of Matt Turck, or as Chamath Palihapitiya called him an episode of All In, "a guy called Matt Turck", he has been capturing the attention of VC Twitter with his unique brand of self-deprecating one liners, memes, VC humor, and the occasional legitimate insights on tech. He now boasts over 80,000 Twitter followers. 

FirstMark also boasts a healthy 19,000 followers on the platform, where it shares insights from its various events as well as spotlights and shares the successes of its portfolio companies. 

‍Events

Where FirstMark really shines and comes into its own is in live events. It runs 100 events a year and has built a community of over 50,000 members. It runs a series of Driven events (Data Driven NYC - now 10 years strong, and Design Driven) that represent some of the best and most active communities related to big data/AI and design/UX respectively. 

Its annual invite-only conference Cloud NY attracts more than 200 CEOs from breakout SaaS and cloud companies.

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‍Video

Fortunately, for those not in New York City, FirstMark has published over 400 videos from its events to its YouTube channel which boasts over 6,000 subscribers, with its more popular videos attracting over 20,000 views. 

‍Market Maps

Finally, FirstMark makes good use of market maps to generate attention and discussion. One of its more recent market maps focused on negative CAC companies, those that are effectively being paid to acquire customers, below.

 Final Thoughts

With thousands of venture firms active across the globe, and firms increasingly investing across borders, FirstMark is an example of a firm that is diligently using content to demonstrate its expertise, educate its audience, and stand out from the pack.