Meka Asonye, Partner at First Round Capital — Taking a Founder First Approach to Investing

In today’s episode, Anirudh Singh sits down with Meka Asonye, Partner at First Round Capital.

They discuss:

Meka’s Early Career:
Meka has a slightly more winding path towards fintech than many of our guests — early on in his career, he worked in the front office of the Cleveland Indians. Meka identifies some parallels between working with the Indians and his current career in venture capital. He found that contrarian thinking, standing up for players/companies you believe in, and embracing diverse backgrounds in teams are necessary skills for both careers. After the Cleveland Indians, Meka went on to get his MBA from Harvard Business School and subsequently work for Bain & Company, prior to joining Stripe.

Building Stripe’s Startups/SMB Business:
Meka joined Stripe when the company had ~200 employees. Meka initially joined Stripe because he expected the online payments market to grow significantly and because he was blown away by every team member he met during the interview process. Still, Meka admits that even he underestimated how valuable Stripe would eventually become, and worried that he had joined the company too late in their growth. Based on his experience at Stripe, he advises other fintech startups to make sure they keep the experience for their exact end-user in mind. Instead of replicating a competitor's sales or go-to-market strategy, he recommends going directly to customers first to better understand their pain points and better understand opportunities for improvement.

Angel and VC Investing:
While working for Stripe, Meka partook in First Round Capital’s Angel Track program, an 8-week bootcamp program to get up to speed on angel investing. Meka learned from partners at First Round Capital, and honed his skills with a cohort of future angel investors. At the end of the program, Meka had the confidence to make his own angel investments and to transition his career from being an operator to an investor. Now at First Round Capital, Meka takes a very founder-first approach to investing and firmly believes that founders “write the future”.

Rapid Fire Round:

• Pick one: product, market, or team?
• What is a fun fact about you that most people don’t know?
• What was your favorite sport to play growing up?
• Favorite vacation spot?
• Best startup pitch you ever heard?
• Pet peeve when listening to pitches?

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Meka Asonye

Meka Asonye is a Partner at First Round Capital based in San Francisco. Before moving into venture, Meka was an active angel investor backing companies such as Coda, Common Room, Rimeto (acq. by Slack), Snackpass and Stytch.

Previously, he served as the VP of Sales & Services at Mixpanel, where he ran the more than 100-person global revenue team and owned the customer lifecycle from first website visit to renewal.

Before Mixpanel, Meka spent four years at Stripe as it scaled from 250 to 2000 people and matured its sales org. When he first joined in 2016, Meka served as one of the payments company’s early account executives, leading their first attempts to go upmarket and land enterprise logos. For the next three years, he headed up Stripe’s Startup/SMB business, which involved launching outbound sales, optimizing self-serve, building a customer success function, opening new offices, and finding creative ways to holistically support startup customers.

Prior to joining Stripe, Meka served as Case Team Leader at Bain in San Francisco, partnering with the C-Suites of Fortune 50 companies across different verticals. Meka started his career working in Player Development & Baseball Operations for the Cleveland Indians, where managed operations of the Minor League system and advised the General Manager on Major League roster and payroll allocation through advanced statistical analysis.

Meka earned a Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude in Economics and Finance from Princeton and his MBA from Harvard Business School. He’s an instrument rated private pilot and diehard Chicago Bears fan.

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About the Author
Anirudh Singh is a second-year MBA Candidate at The Wharton School, where he is part of the Wharton FinTech Podcast team. He has a passion for economic development, venture capital, financial services, and all things FinTech. Don’t hesitate to reach out with questions, comments, feedback, and opportunities at singhan@wharton.upenn.edu.