Discovery Assist

Get in front of potential customers, faster
We believe the most compelling and contrarian insights come from hundreds of conversations with potential users and buyers. Most early founders don’t have a deep rolodex, but even if you do, lining up the perfect conversations is hard and time consuming. By unlocking your next wave of customer conversations, Discovery Assist gets you there faster. We’ll make the intros, you focus on the conversations.
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The Discovery Experience

For pre and early product founders honing their startup idea, Discovery Assist is the fastest way to move forward with Customer Discovery. By tapping into First Round’s deep network of startup builders and Fortune 1000 operators, we help you skip months of asking for favors, opt-ins, failed intros and “sorry for the delay” replies.

This program includes bespoke customer discovery support as well as exclusive access to First Round experts who will share their playbooks for success on defining the right target personas for your initial outreach, making the most of your early customer connections, and more. Working one-on-one with you and your co-founders, we will build out a discovery pipeline and deliver at least 10 curated conversations over four weeks. If we’ve done our job right, we will help you unearth a new set of insights you can use to test hypotheses, bolster conviction and move your startup into its next phase. It's the customer discovery sprint every founder should do.

The next Discovery Assist cohort begins on February 1st with a four-week sprint. We are now opening up a limited number of spots for founders in the early innings of honing in on a B2B concept. Applicants will be considered on a rolling basis.

Who You Are

The ideal stage is any founder who is actively exploring a B2B idea but still pre-product.
You might still be at your current company or perhaps you recently left a full-time role and are starting to dig into a specific problem by talking to potential customers. Or you might have raised a small pre-seed round, have already begun running your own discovery process over the last couple of months and are hoping to accelerate your hypothesis validation.

The Discovery Network

We make the introductions, you focus on the conversations.
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First Round Experts and Coaches

The program features weekly sessions with world-class experts who will share their best practices on problem discovery, user research, and making the most of your early customer conversations
Emery Rosansky
VP Revenue Growth & Enablement at First Round
Jeanette Mellinger
Former Head of User Research at Uber Eats
Arielle Jackson
Marketer in Residence at First Round

Common Questions

Who should apply?
Any founder or team that is actively exploring an idea but still pre-product.
Does this cost anything?
No. This product is focused entirely on opening up access to our network and helping people land on great ideas. There is no cost or equity agreement required to participate.
What’s the ideal stage?
The ideal stage is any founder who is actively exploring an idea but still pre-product. Maybe you’re still at your current company and have been exploring an idea. Or perhaps you’ve recently left your full-time role and are starting to dig into a specific problem by talking to customers. You might have raised a small pre-seed round or have already been running your own discovery process over the last couple months.  
Can I apply if I don't have a proven concept?
Yes! Even if you do have a solution in mind, the goal of discovery assist is to accelerate your customer conversations and help you develop a higher fidelity vision.
How many founders or teams will be accepted?
Think of us as your Customer Discovery concierge. The number of teams in active sprints will depend on the total capacity of our team. Rolling acceptances will give us the flexibility to admit as many team as we can. This number will grow quickly as we continue to scale.
What's the application timeline?
Applications are considered on a rolling basis. Our next Discovery Assist cohort begins on February 1st.
If accepted, what is the time commitment?
An onboarding session, short weekly check-ins, and a closing recap at the end. Customer conversations will be staggered over several waves of intros.
What structure or support do you provide outside of intros?
We're committed to helping you perfect your pitch, identify questions that will help you pull out insights from your conversations, shadow your discovery conversations to share feedback, and help you zoom out to identify themes. Over the course of a 4-week sprint, we will host weekly office hours with First Round Experts from our community who will share their playbooks for success on problem discovery, user research, and making the most of your discovery conversations.