First Degree Capital

We started First Degree with one belief:
AI isn’t tomorrow. It’s now.

If you’re building something ambitious in productivity, collaboration, or workflow automation — let’s talk. DM us or send your deck to kaan@firstdegree.capital

Founder & General Partner

Graphio.ai

Revenue failures don’t happen overnight. Silent stalls, missed renewals, and broken handoffs start weeks earlier — but most leaders only see them when it’s already too late.

Graphio solves this.
It’s the AI-powered operating layer for modern GTM and ops leaders — what strategy consultants recommend once a year, running continuously.

Backed by 100+ senior exec angels from Mastercard, PwC, Snowflake, Experian, HelloFresh, BambooHR and more, we’re proud to support Dmitry, Andrey, and the Graphio team via firstdegree.capital

Investor (+ Partner)

Limelight

B2B go-to-market has changed. Buyers trust people more than brands, and the creator-led model is exploding — growing 30% year over year. Yet most brands still lack the analytics, attribution, and automation needed to make creator marketing work at scale.

Limelight solves this by giving GTM teams one place to:
Discover the right creators with the right audience
Automate outreach, contracting, and activation
Run creator and employee-led campaigns across LinkedIn, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube, X, and more
Connect the dots between social signals, CRM data, and revenue
It’s SaaS, marketplace, and AI outbound all in one — built for modern GTM leaders who want results without the manual hustle.

Backed by great co-investors and super-angels, we're happy supporting David, and Youngjae and the team via firstdegree.capital

Trampoline AI

Trampoline is building the AI-native workspace for proposals — starting with RFPs. It automates everything from brief ingestion to draft generation and collaboration. The result: service teams close more deals, faster.

We’re proud to partner with Edouard, Gabriel, and their team alongside investors like Salesforce Ventures, betaworks, and True Ventures.

🔗 Learn more https://trampoline.ai
🔗 Or check https://firstdegree.capital/portfolio/trampoline

WINN.AI

Winn.ai is your AI-powered meeting assistant built for revenue teams.

It joins your calls, tracks action items, and automatically syncs notes to your CRM — all without manual input.

No more “Oh, I forgot to ask!”
Set up your playbook — or adapt one of Winn’s with a click.
Winn tracks conversations in real-time, showing you which talking points you’ve covered and what’s still left to say.

It goes beyond transcription. It understands context, tracks pipeline impact, and ensures nothing slips through the cracks.

Backed by top-tier investors (Insight Partners, Sarona Ventures, S Capital VC + multiple prominent operators and angels) and loved by sales teams, we’re proud to support Eldad and Bar + the entire team at Winn.ai via firstdegree.capital.

Topo (YC W24)

Topo.io provides AI SDR agents to execute custom B2B outbound playbooks tailored to each company and industry. 

It identifies, qualifies, and engages high-value leads using real-time data signals. Beyond basic personalization, it delivers strategic, context-driven outreach.

Topo.io (YCW24) is backed by leading VCs and industry experts, happy to supporting Dan, Leonard, Robin and the team at Topo.io via firstdegree.capital

FullEnrich

Enrich anybody on LinkedIn with 1 click. You’re visiting a LinkedIn profile and want the contact info? Boom, you click on "Enrich", and your contact is enriched and saved in a list.

Backed by leading VCs and super-angels, we're happy supporting Benjamin, Grégoire, Jean-Luc and team at FullEnrich via firstdegree.capital

AlphaLens

Who is building something similar? Get razor-sharp intelligence on your market in seconds.

Whether you are a bootstrapped founder looking to map your market, an M&A professional  looking for a deal, or the head of data at a multi-stage firm, have a look at Alphalens and what it can do for you.

Supporting the Leo, Walid and team via First Degree.

Deckmatch uses the power of AI and advanced analytics to revolutionize investment deal flow. Our platform seamlessly integrates your deal flow with external data, offering investors intelligent parsing, precise startup-investor matching, and actionable insights through tailored memos.

With our API, Deckmatch fits effortlessly into your existing workflow and CRM, enhancing your investment strategy with sharp, data-driven insights.

Supporting the team at DeckMatch via First Degree.

WhiteBridge.ai

Whitebridge.ai is an AI-powered digital identity research tool that finds, verifies, and analyzes publicly collected data about someone and structures it into an insightful report. 

Supporting the team at Whitebridge via First Degree.

lablab.ai

Supporting Pawel, Simon and the team at LabLab via First Degree.

Investor

Cooking up something new. Stay tuned!🧑🏼‍🍳🪄

10x Founder → Early Stage Investor. 
General Partner @ First Degree Capital.

We’re backers of brave beginnings:

Dmitry & Andrew — graphio.ai (Sep ‘25)
David & Youngjae — limelighthq.com (Aug ’25)
Gabriel & Edouard — trampoline.ai (Jul ’25)
Eldad & Bar — winn.ai (Jun ’25)
Dan, Robin & Leonard — topo.io (May ’25)
Benjamin, Jean-Luc & Grégoire — fullenrich.com (Jan ’25)
Leopold & Walid — alphalens.com (Sep ’24)
Paulius, Tomas, Irmantas & Justin — whitebridge.ai (Sep ’24)
Simon & Pawel — lablab.ai (May ’24)

We co-invest alongside great angels and co-investors such as Y Combinator, Insight Partners, Kima Ventures, Flex Capital, Alliance VC, AltaIR, Luminar, Skyfall, and more.

We 💜 AI-driven companies “changing the way we work” and take out the 🫏 work. 

If you’re building something ambitious in productivity, collaboration, or workflow automation — let’s talk.

DM us or send your deck to kaan@firstdegree.capital

Kaan Anit

Guillermo’s post on Harry Stebbings hit me harder than most content does.

Not because of Harry’s success (we love people to succeed), but because it exposed the one thing we haven’t built yet.

Harry has mastered something we haven’t:

A disciplined, systematic approach to closing capital.

✅ Weekly LP conversations.
✅ Quarterly updates.
❌ Hundreds of relationships nurtured long before he ever raises a fund.
❌ Relentless follow-through.
❌ Velocity that compounds.

It’s the opposite of how most funds raise.

And it’s the exact opposite of what we’ve been focused on.

We’re very good at building the engine — sourcing, evaluating, connecting people, and creating systems that actually work.

We’re good at moving fast, building trust, giving founders access, and turning zero into something.

But we’re not good at one thing: closing capital. 

And without that, nothing scales. 

We haven’t build a network of investors way before we started…

So we’re making a shift.

We’re looking for someone exceptional to join us — someone who lives and breathes capital raising.

Someone who treats LP relationships the way we treat founders.

Someone who can take our system, our network, our engine, and turn it into momentum on the capital side.

We’re a small team — Anouk and myself, supported by great people around us — and we’ve built everything from scratch over the last 18 months.

Now we’re ready for the person who completes the circle.

If you want to read the whole thing subscribe to Guillermo Flor his newsletter (link in comments) 🔗

But more importantly for us 😉
you know someone who should be doing this with us, we’d love an introduction.

Please share and repost this so we’ll get hold of this person we really need. 

And if this sounds like you, reach out.
DM me. 💜

Kaan Anit 🫧

No alternative text description for this image

We first met David. 💜
Clear. Fast. Obsessive about the problem.
A founder who sees exactly where GTM is heading — and is already building for that world.

Then we met Youngjae.💜
Technical, calm, incredibly sharp.
The kind of builder who gives you immediate confidence the product will keep improving every single week.

And together with Demir, Blas, and Janine, they form a small, fantastic team… focused, product-first, and relentless.

That’s when we said:
“We’re in.”

The problem they’re solving?

Everyone sees the shift:

• creators = distribution
• employees = media
• buyers follow people, not slide decks

But until now, nobody could measure it.
Everyone knew influence drives revenue nobody could prove it.

Limelight fixes this.

Their platform shows exactly how content turns into pipeline, with real attribution and real buyer intent.
And their new AI agent:

→ learns your company
→ defines your ICP
→ maps competitors
→ listens to social
→ surfaces intent
→ turns it into pipeline

Exactly the kind of AI-native product we back.

The proof?

A world-class group of investors joined + respected operators from across the ecosystem.

And of course they won the Global Pitch Competition at SaaStock, taking home €1,000,000.
Hard proof. Real momentum. 🙌🏼

That’s why we invested.

Great people.
A real problem.
A product that already delivers.

Proud to be in the round with this team.

#Limelight
#FirstDegreeCapital
#BackersOfBraveBeginnings

Founder & CEO @ Limelight | B2B Creator Marketplace | 3x Founder | MBA Mentor

Today I’m announcing our $2,100,000 funding round 🎉💰
And a HUGE NEW PRODUCT LAUNCH!! ...

Our brand new AI agent for Social Listening is live.

It can:

→ Research your company
→ Precisely define your ICP
→ Identify all of your competitors

Then automatically surface buyer intent from social content and turn it into sales pipeline. 

Early users are raving about it already!!

And just a few weeks ago,
We won the Global Pitch Competition!
On stage at SaaStock (€1M prize money)

THIS. IS. WHAT. MOMENTUM. LOOKS. LIKE.

Here’s why investors are loving Limelight

👇🏼👇🏼

Everyone is talking about personality-led marketing.

- Niche B2B creators are stealing trust.
- Employees are becoming mini media brands.
- Buyers follow PEOPLE, not 40-page whitepapers.

But the problem - up until now?

Everyone KNOWS influence drives revenue.

Yet nobody can measure it.

So budgets have stayed trapped in paid ads & cold outbound.

Limelight SOLVES this problem.

We’re showing brands - how CONTENT drives REVENUE.

We are making influence marketing performance-based.

So brands can track:

🔎 Which post led to $142,000 in pipeline
🔎 Which creator drove 237 product signups
🔎 Which campaign closed $1.9M new business.

(All REAL Limelight case studies! 📈)

We’re turning B2B influence from a “nice-to-have branding play” into a scalable revenue engine.

Big SHOUT out to our new investors for believing in us

Amit at SNR (led the round!) 
Eran at Savyon Ventures 
Kenneth at BackFuture
Kaan at First Degree 
Josh at OpenSky 
Kirby at Ascend

And many others like Ran Makavy, Gert Lanckriet, Suhit Gupta, Amir Ashkenazi, Mike Head, Eli Schwartz, Tom Waddington, Dan Murray🧠, Garrett Scott, Michel Lieben 🧠 & Alex Vacca 🧠🛠️.

A group of incredible operators/investors who know personality-led growth will define the next decade of GTM.

What’s next?

Goal remains the same:
→ Hit $10M ARR with a team of 10.

This funding round lets us:

⚡ Build even faster
⚡ Hire a few elite engineers + AMs
⚡ Push deeper into creator-based attribution
⚡ Power influencer programs for every GTM org

Huge gratitude to my tiny but might team Youngjae JI, Demir Capan, Blas C. and Janine Bulao. 

And most importantly...

The creators and brands (HubSpot, Webflow, Clay + 100s more) who are building this category WITH us 💪🏼

THIS IS JUST THE START.

PS. if you sign up as a new customer in the next 48 hours you get your 2nd month free! (DM me and I will do it for you)

How we bootstrapped First Degree Capital in 2025.

We tried a lot of tools this year — many AI-native, many custom-centric.
Here’s my Top 15 that helped me run the whole operation for < $250/month.


COMMUNICATION & OUTREACH

1. Wispr – People have spoken to my people for years because I can’t type.
Now I use voice. https://wisprflow.ai

2. Superhuman – Email, speed, focus. Beats Gmail. And definitely Microsoft.
https://superhuman.com

3. TryKondo – LinkedIn is part of my stack, but for messaging I use Superhuman for LinkedIn.
https://app.trykondo.com

4. Folk CRM – My digital Rolodex. Works seamlessly with LinkedIn and Superhuman.
https://folk.app

MEETING PREP & INTEL

5. WhiteBridge.ai – For meeting prep and personal intel.
https://whitebridge.ai

6. Alphalens – Company, competitor & product intel in seconds.
https://alphalens.com

7. FullEnrich – I don’t look for numbers or email addresses anymore.
https://fullenrich.com

RESEARCH & THINKING

8. Perplexity – Research, answers, clarity.
https://perplexity.ai

9. ChatGPT – My colleague. After two years, (s)he knows me by now.
https://chat.openai.com

PLANNING & ORGANISATION

10. Google Workspace – Docs, Sheets, Drive, and Gemini for meeting notes — all in one place.
https://lnkd.in/eCFawhbV

11. Google Drive – Still undefeated for storing and sharing.
https://drive.google.com

12. Happenstance – Natural-language search on my network. Outperforms LinkedIn Recruiter Seat or Sales Navigator by far.
https://happenstance.ai

RUNNING THE DAY

13. Calendly – Keeps my calendar under control.
https://calendly.com

14. Comet – My daily command centre.
https://comet.com

15. Gamma – Turns any content into clean, sharp slides.
https://gamma.app

THE HARDWARE BEHIND IT ALL
My iPhone and MacBook Pro – The foundations everything runs on.

If one of these saves you even 30 minutes a day, use it.
And if you’re building tools that change the way we work — I want to meet you.

Another great post from Mr. Stockholm aka Oliver Molander. 

Great insights for anyone thinking enterprise and AI. 

Especially point 6, "Change the way we work." As in get work done. 👀⤵️

I don't think people truly understand how early we're in enterprise adoption of AI agents.

McKinsey just released their 2025 AI report. 

Some nuggets:

1️⃣ 90% of companies “use AI,” but 67% are still stuck in pilot mode. Corporate AI theater is alive and well.

2️⃣ 62% of orgs are experimenting with AI agents, 23% are scaling AI agents. Most are in tech and healthcare.

3️⃣ The impact gap is massive. 64% say AI helps innovation, but only 39% see real EBIT gains. 

4️⃣ The high performers (top 6%) think bigger. They rebuild workflows, set growth goals, and invest real budgets not just PoCs.

5️⃣ Leaders who own AI personally are 3x more likely to scale it. Makes sense.

6️⃣ The winners use AI to transform how work gets done, not just speed it up.

7️⃣ The average company measures efficiency. The best ones measure how fast their agents can act.

8️⃣ Risk management is catching up with 51% have already seen AI backfire, mostly from inaccuracy.

9️⃣ The workforce impact is foggy. 32% expect cuts, 13% expect growth, everyone else is guessing.

Agentic AI looks magical in demos, but scaling it across teams and systems (especially in enterprise settings) is where it still breaks. You can do basic single-step automation reliably right now (tool calling).

As Andrej Karpathy recently noted on LLM agents:

"My critique of the industry is more in overshooting the tooling w.r.t. present capability."

Bottom line: we're still super early, this transformation will go on for another decade.

I'm bullish, but this will take a bit longer than we think, having fully autonomous agents. Just like autonomous driving took a bit longer than we thought, but here we are.

E.g. one of the biggest challenges in building AI agents today is agents' long-term memory.

#artificialintelligence

AI isn’t taking jobs — it’s taking tasks.

I just read Deel’s new AI & Workforce Policy Report (a fantastic report!!) and one thing stood out:

What AI means for people, employers, and founders is no longer theoretical.

It’s happening. Right now. 
Here are my key takeaways: 

👩🏻‍💻 For people:
Entry-level roles: the classic way in — are being automated out.

But new jobs are emerging just as fast: 
AI Librarians, Trainers, Tutors. The shift isn’t from human to machine… 

It’s from execution to judgment.

🏢 For employers:
AI is no longer an experiment.

70% of companies have moved beyond pilots. Yet compliance, trust, and talent are now the real constraints.

The question isn’t “if we use AI,” but “how responsibly we do it.”

🚀 For founders:
Every industry is hiring AI talent.

And the biggest opportunity isn’t building the next model, but it’s helping people and companies use AI safely, productively, and in ways that make work better.

Read the full report here 👉 https://lnkd.in/eZ8CgSaj

#AI #FutureOfWork #Productivity #Founders #VentureCapital

If I had the skills — and lived in LA — I’d apply myself.

David, Youngjae, and the team at Limelight are building something truly special.

They’ve cracked what every creator, brand, and marketer dreams of: real, data-driven influencer partnerships that actually convert.

They’re growing fast.
They move like true founders.
They treat customers like partners.
And they’re now looking for a Customer Success Manager who can help them scale that magic.

If you’ve ever wanted to join a rocket ship at just the right time — this is it.
An opportunity you don’t want to miss.

Trust me, you’ll want to keep an eye on this team.

#BackersOfBraveBeginnings
#LimelightHQ
#FirstDegreeCapital

I’m HIRING a Customer Success Manager!! 🎉 👀 Want to join a tech startup DOMINATING the creator economy space?!

Keep reading 👇

I don’t care about your fancy degree.
Or what brands are on your CV.
Or how old you are.

If you're awesome at what you do...

WE WANT YOU!!!

Simple as that 👏👏

The ideal candidate:

🔥 Has startup experience (and can work fast)
🔥 Can build relationships with enterprise customers
🔥 Understands B2B influence/creator partnerships
🔥 Has the grit and accountability to own outcomes

You'll get:

→ Ability to work from anywhere
→ Skin in the game + bonuses
→ Responsibility from day one
→ Total creative freedom

This is a rare opportunity for someone to join our early team and go on a MAJOR growth journey with us.

A bit about Limelight:

- Just won SaaStock Europe’s global pitch
- Growing fast with $3.6M in proposals sent
- Working with brands like HubSpot, Clay, Xero
- Building the future of B2B influencer marketing
- Used by thousands of world-class content creators

We made our last hire in under 10 days.

And we’re looking for someone incredible again.

Ready for the challenge?

Apply here: https://lnkd.in/d6bnJyJP

Know someone who is?

Tag ‘em!

“Europe is fine to start.
But once you want real numbers, you need to go where people buy fast.”

A fantastic post and must read for any European founder. 👀⤵️

All credits to Jérémy

CEO @The Mobile-First Company 📱Fixing broken desktop software with AI mobile apps 🌍 Angel Investor in +40 startups

Sell only in France if you want a small company.

Patrick Collison, the cofounder of Stripe, shared a chart this week that speaks for itself.  

If you build software and you don’t sell in the US, you miss the biggest part of the opportunity.

The US revenue curve goes up fast.
Even without AI companies in the mix, the US still grows faster than Europe.

The US is one big market with buyers who move fast.
Europe is split, slow, and full of small rules that block you the moment you try to scale.

Look at Pigment, PhotoRoom, Hyperline.
French teams growing fast because they sell in the US.

Europe is fine to start.
But once you want real numbers, you need to go where people buy fast.

If you want a big company, you go to the US.
If you want a small one, stay in France.

“the best hires aren't always the ones with the perfect resume.”

💜

CEO at Wispr Flow | IOI Medalist | Forbes 30 under 30 | Stanford CS + AI

We just hired a 20-year-old engineer with no experience. It sounds insane, but it was one of the best decisions we made.

We get a lot of inbound from senior engineers. Staff engineers from Uber. Principal scientists from Meta. They have ten, twenty years of experience.

Then this kid DM'd me on Twitter. Said he loved Wispr Flow and wanted to work with us.

It was 10 AM on a Saturday. I was in the office. I replied: "Come by in two hours."

He showed up.

We talked for 45 minutes. Smart kid, but no fancy resume. I told him about a project we needed done - normally it would take a day and a half of work. I asked if he wanted to start Monday.

He said, "I'll start now."

By Sunday morning, he texted me: "Tanay, I just pulled an all-nighter. It's done."

Thousands of lines of code. Fully functioning feature. It felt like magic.

Now he's one of our highest-performing engineers. The whole team respects him.

He showed me that hustle and drive beat credentials every time.

A lot of founders optimize for credentials - where someone went to school, where they worked before. I get it. It's an easy filter.

But the best hires aren't always the ones with the perfect resume. They're the ones who do more than what's asked of them.

— Written with Wispr Flow

Etohum

Etohum is a leading accelerator and seed investor organization in Turkey that helps entrepreneurs bring their innovative ideas to life. Each year, 40 startups are carefully selected from thousands of applicants, and provided with training, mentorship, and seed investment to help them grow and succeed. The organization has invested in over 100 startups in a variety of industries, including ecommerce, mobile, game, and software. In addition to its accelerator program, Etohum also hosts the annual "Startup Turkey" event, bringing together top internet companies and investors in the country to support and celebrate the success of Turkish startups.

Founder

Vestelnet

Head of Ecommerce

Interbank

Corporate Banking

Founder of Startup Istanbul

Burak Büyükdemir is a well-known investor, startup ecosystem builder, author, and founder. He is the founder of Etohum, a leading accelerator and seed investor organization in Turkey, as well as the founder of Startup Istanbul and Startup Turkey. Through these programs, he has supported and invested in over 100 startups, providing training, mentorship, and seed investment to help them grow and develop. He is known for his work supporting the global startup ecosystem and has a strong global network of contacts in the startup world. In addition to his work with startups, Burak has also written a book about the founding stories of internet startups in Turkey and has served as a part-time lecturer at Istanbul Technical University and Bahcesehir University.

Burak Buyukdemir

90% of Founders Fail Here — Steve Blank Explains Why

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