First Access to Exceptional Startups
Before Traditional VCs See Them

Paul brings the institutional investor mindset to the partnership. As the founder of Know.Capital, he has spent years designing investment vehicles that align financial returns with social and ecosystem impact. His background spans venture building, philanthropy, university-linked funds, nonprofit investment structures, and value-aligned capital initiatives that support both founders and community infrastructure.

Paul has deep experience evaluating and structuring investments tied to accelerators, universities, public-good innovation ecosystems, and mission-driven venture vehicles. He has previously helped organizations like Drexel University and TechSoup design funds that channel capital into vetted founders and underrepresented innovation communities — giving him a rare understanding of how venture-backed startups grow in alternative, high-talent ecosystems.

Paul brings strong financial acumen, investment discipline, and governance strength, providing the fund with institutional-grade rigor. He complements Jillian's network leadership and Steve's operational founder judgment with a structured investment philosophy grounded in impact, asymmetric upside, and long-term sustainability.

Jillian is recognized globally as one of the most trusted conveners of early-stage venture leaders. As CEO of the Global Venture Network, she oversees a community spanning 50+ countries, comprising the world's leading startup accelerators, venture studios, innovation hubs, corporate innovation teams, and early-stage investors. Her career centers on enabling the people and institutions who build the future — and she has unparalleled visibility into the highest-quality founders emerging from structured venture-building programs.

She has personally supported thousands of founders through the networks she leads and has deep relationships with program managers, EIRs, ecosystem leads, corporate innovation executives, and investor partners. Her vantage point sits at the intersection of three critical ingredients of alpha generation: elite founder development, curated deal flow, and strong ecosystem pattern-matching.

Her leadership experience extends from corporate strategy to global ecosystem-building, and her brand is synonymous with trust, founder advocacy, and operational excellence. Jillian brings a rare combination of venture fluency, community intelligence, and relationship-driven sourcing, enabling the fund to capture lower-beta, higher-conviction opportunities across the GVN ecosystem.

Steve is one of the most respected operators in the accelerator and venture-building world. As GVN's Chief Experience Officer, he architected the network's founder development frameworks, accelerator methodologies, and global programming — widely adopted playbooks used by venture organizations across North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

He has coached hundreds of founders and venture leaders, designed programs that have supported companies through millions in follow-on capital, and shaped how innovation organizations measure success. His work bridges behavioral science, venture modeling, and operational rigor — making him exceptionally skilled at evaluating founder readiness, startup resilience, and early inflection points.

Steve's gift is spotting teams with coachability, grit, and execution capacity long before traditional investors can. As LPs at First Round often say, "early is a phase, not a stage," and Steve has spent the last decade working in that exact phase. His pattern recognition, diligence capability, and people-first investment lens provide the fund with a sharp, evidence-backed advantage in sourcing and underwriting early-stage opportunities from structured programs.