Afore Capital

Meet @IgorBlinkk , 17 years young, who came from a village in Kazakhstan with less than 2,000 people. Despite having internet speeds of ~3 Mb/s, he built multiple apps including a game that grew to 12M+ users. When our investor found him, he traveled 2 hrs to the nearest cafe for the wifi to take the call. He is the first person in his family to leave Kazakhstan, now in SF building a generational computer use agent data company. This is what the FIR U cohort at Afore Capital looks like.

We just wrapped the first week of FIR S26. Rather than sum it up ourselves, we'll let a couple of the founders do it: "I've had an amazing first week at FIR. Being surrounded by ambitious founders and having great conversations with them has been invigorating. Keen to build and excited for what's to come." - Joseph Dowdall "It's great to be in the Afore offices with so many brilliant founders, investors, and advisors. The first couple weeks have been full of ideas, best practices, and hearing from people who have been in our exact situation before." - Victor Wu They’re not just building: sushi & soccer dinner at our office, a workout class, and a farm-to-founder dinner at Plow to close out the week. 21 founders, 12 teams, one summer just getting started. More to come, and if you want to be part of the next cohort, applications are open. Link in comments.

@realdrewcarson 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Lots of fun building alongside other @AforeVC FIR founders last week in SF We'll be back soon!

FIR founders don't take the normal route. Take the team behind Verso. Jonathan Bernal came to the US, taught himself the language, trained as an engineer, and worked on AI at one of the biggest companies in tech. Drew Carson studied computer science, dropped out to chase startups, and built and sold a consumer company before he was done. Two very different paths that ended up in the same place. Now they're building together in the FIR cohort. Two founders who've done hard things before, doing it again. That's what FIR looks like. If you're the kind of person who takes the hard road to build something that matters, the next batch is open. Link is in the comments.

Today we’re giving you the first real choice in where to run your .xlsx files. We’re also announcing our pre-seed funding, led by Afore and joined by many prominent AI founders who share that conviction. Excel is one of the greatest tools I’ve ever used. I grew up on it. I was forged by it. It is one of the great inventions of humankind. But for forty years, the world’s most important file has had only one trusted way to run it: Microsoft Excel. Today, there are two. Introducing Nobie. It will soon reach 100% feature parity with Excel. We’re building it for the 1 billion humans using Excel today and the 10 billion agents that will work with spreadsheets tomorrow. Nobie is now in beta, available as a native Mac app and as a CLI on macOS and Linux. It’s free, and everything you can do in Excel will always be free in Nobie. Nobie isn’t done. But the product you’re looking at today is a glimpse into the near future: what you and your friends are going to reach for when working with spreadsheets. We are dedicated to a singular purpose: delete every reason you still need Excel. Before long, it will seem absurd that Excel was ever all we had. Claude Code and Codex are built right into Nobie. Or bring your favorite agent, like Antigravity or Pi. Robots of all kinds are welcome. So if you’re a human on a Mac or an agent on Linux, try it out and let us know what you think. We think you’ll soon make Nobie the default app for .xlsx. Enjoy!

High school friends from Milan and LA, now building Krypton AI together in San Francisco. That's Ludovico Cordara & Ray Cabrera, two of the student founders who joined FIR U this summer. What they say about the program says it best: being surrounded by talented student founders working into the early morning pushes you to keep going. And while we're proud to be their mentors and investors, the best part is that every conversation feels like one between equals! If you're a student founder with that kind of drive, we want to meet you. Applications for the next FIR U cohort are open. Link in comments.

FIR U founders are building things most people think are still decades away. Take Subvocal - Arnav & Aarush. They're building a wearable that reads your inner voice, the words you say in your head before you ever speak them. They've already hit 45% accuracy on any word in the English language, trained on less than two hours of data. Two hours. And it's getting sharper every week. This is what the FIR U cohort looks like. The next batch is open. If you want to build something this ambitious, link is in the comments. Apply now!

@p_naix afore.vc/residence

@AforeVC link please

Our summer FIR cohort is officially underway. 21 founders, 12 teams, building out of our South Park office at the -1 to 0 stage. What they're building: - Tools for microdramas. - A family-friendly music app. - Causal AI for flight systems. And more we can't talk about yet. Fall applications close September 1. If you have a side project you can't stop thinking about, don't wait until it feels ready. Link in the comments.

Think you should be in the next cohort? afore.vc/residence

never forget your first believer when @AforeVC invested in me, @hyperspell didn’t exist i was in the middle of a cofounder breakup in my last company and starting over from scratch i hadn’t met my cofounder @maebert yet there wasn’t even a company to invest in they weren’t betting on traction they were betting on a person today we’re serving fortune 100 customers through every stage, @AforeVC has been so much more than an investor and has never stopped believing in us they’ve helped us win customers, hire great people, and become real friends and mentors along the way i’ll never forget that first bet

Founders love to say they're "cooking." So we put it to the test with a California cooking class. Safe to say, they're cooking!

@IgorBlinkk Think you should be in the next cohort? afore.vc/students

Meet @IgorBlinkk , 17 years young, who came from a village in Kazakhstan with less than 2,000 people. Despite having internet speeds of ~3 Mb/s, he built multiple apps including a game that grew to 12M+ users. When our investor found him, he traveled 2 hrs to the nearest cafe for the wifi to take the call. He is the first person in his family to leave Kazakhstan, now in SF building a generational computer use agent data company. This is what the FIR U cohort at Afore Capital looks like.

Congratulations to Hightouch for landing on Redpoint's InfraRed 100, alongside Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, and Lovable. @kashgupta_ , @tejasmanohar , and Josh Curl, well deserved. Proud to have believed in you from day zero 🤝 See the full list and report here: redpoint.com/infrared/100/

@TalhaKhan_TK_ @Seda_AI_ Congrats! 🚀

Today we’re introducing @Seda_AI_ - The world’s first end to end Synthetic UX Testing Agent 🤖

@laurayd @rronak_ @MichaelElabd @QuantumArjun Congratulations!

Congratulations @rronak_ @MichaelElabd @QuantumArjun and team Trajectory on launch!! I'm frequently asked “With vibe coding, do founders even need a technical advantage anymore?" Today with Trajectory s launch, you can see for yourself the answer! the team has it all: - technical - commercial - talent triple threat Could not imagine better people to work alongside, so proud to be a tiny investor and Congratulations on launch, team!!!!! @AforeVC Let's f go! this is just the beginning 📈

@laurayd Zack's frameworks are next level

we switched up the format last week and I loved hosting this intimate single-circle fireside chat w/ 20 founders and Zack Peng (@AforeVC founder of Seel) on "finding & founding" a $100M ARR business! 🎙️ want to join the next one? @AforeVC Founders in Residence summer cohort apps just opened - in 8 weeks, go from idea to first 5 customers! learn more: afore.vc/residence and curious what Zack shared on his founder journey? 💡 Do you still need a unique insight: Zack had one - working as an engineer at an insurance company, he found it crazy that insurance was still being modeled off 30-year-old tabular data (e.g. how many times has this geo flooded in the last 30 years, vs. what is the weather like recently?). that belief - something better must be possible - is what got him started! 🔨 brute forcin' it...: flew to denver, spent hours in ubers pitching uber driver income risk (as a self-proclaimed introvert!! spoiler: no PMF) 🙋🏾‍♂️ Listening to first customer: "your risk analytics seems fine, but if you're really that good, I'll pay you $18 for every $20 you save me in returns...!" once you find that vocal, trusted customer, go build! 🏆 PMF is real. when you have it, you feel it. til then - change the product or change the ICP, don't get emotionally attached, and try to pivot fast! but ofc, easier said than done 🥲 if you want some help along the journey, join us for Founders-in-Residence summer cohort: afore.vc/residence