This week we chat with Liz Wessel!

Liz Wessel is a Partner at First Round Capital, a pre-seed and seed venture fund, based in San Francisco. Prior to joining First Round, she was a Visiting Group Partner at Y Combinator, where she worked directly with over 110 early-stage startups. Liz has also been investing as an angel since 2016, backing over 60 startups, including Ramp, ScaleAI, Ro, Artera (fka WELL Health), FreeWill, Snackpass and others.

Before becoming a full-time investor, Liz was the co-founder and CEO of WayUp, an early-career recruitment platform used by over 7 million candidates and thousands of companies. She launched WayUp in 2014 and ran it for seven years — during which time she raised over $40 million in venture and was with the company as CEO through its M&A exit in 2021.

Prior to WayUp, Liz worked at Google as a product marketing manager. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor’s in Political Science, Mathematics and Japanese. 

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Liz Wessel: @lizwessel

First Round Capital: @firstround

Erica Wenger: @erica_wenger

Dear Twentysomething: @deartwentysomething