Rob Hayes

Background

Rob Hayes is a Board Partner at First Round Capital, a venture capital firm focused on seed-stage investing ¹. He joined First Round as a Partner in 2006, opening the firm’s San Francisco office, and transitioned to the Board Partner role in 2018 after 12 years as a full Partner ¹².

Hayes earned a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MBA from Columbia Business School ¹.

Before joining First Round, Hayes was the first venture investor at Omidyar Network, the investment firm founded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar ¹². At Omidyar Network, he led most of the firm’s initial venture capital deals and later built and ran the technology investing group ¹. Prior to Omidyar Network, Hayes worked at Palm, where he was a product manager for Palm OS during the era of the Palm III, Palm V, and Handspring Treo ¹². He also started Palm’s corporate venture fund and managed the strategic spinoff of PalmSource ¹.

During his tenure at First Round, Hayes led several of the firm’s most notable investments, including Uber, Square, Mint.com, eero, Planet Labs, and Gnip ¹². He also led the firm’s seed investment in Bowery Farming ³ and was closely involved with TaskRabbit ⁴. His $510,000 seed investment in Uber in 2010 generated an approximately 5,000x return, with First Round’s 37.7 million shares valued at roughly $1.4 billion at the time of Uber’s 2019 IPO ⁵. The Philadelphia Inquirer described this as “the most valuable outreach email” in First Round’s history ⁵.

Hayes is an investor and board member at Barndoor AI, which raised $13.6M in seed funding in 2025 ⁶.

Stated Thesis

Hayes publicly describes his investment focus as spanning financial technology, the sharing economy, robotics, agriculture, and consumer hardware ¹. He has developed particular expertise in advising marketplaces and community-based startups through his work with companies like Uber and TaskRabbit ¹.

On what he looks for in founders, Hayes has stated: “Building something from nothing requires a founder who can go from telling you a compelling story about her market at 50,000 feet to asking whether a radio component in the hardware should be moved 3 microns to the right. The best CEOs have this ability to run up and down the stack” ¹.

Hayes has emphasized distribution as a critical factor in his evaluation: “Distribution is absolutely the hardest part of creating an internet company” ⁷. He considers it a red flag: “It is a red flag for me if the founders have 20 slides in their deck on their product and are not getting into issues like distribution, team or other parts of the business” ⁷.

On his approach to sourcing deals, Hayes described finding Uber through a tweet from Garrett Camp, who had founded StumbleUpon (a First Round portfolio company). He emailed Camp about UberCab; the Philadelphia Inquirer called it a “six-word email” ⁵, while Hayes himself recalled it as “four words” in a podcast interview: “I sent him an email. It had four words in it. It said, ‘All bite. What’s Uber cab?’” ⁸. He emphasized his focus on discovering founders before they become widely known: “My job is to find those people that people haven’t met before or heard of or worked with” ⁸.

Inferred Thesis

Based on 12 verified investments personally attributed to Hayes in the portfolio table below, the following patterns emerge. The sample is small and should be treated as directional only.

Sector Allocation (computed from 12 verified Hayes-attributed investments)

• Marketplaces / Sharing Economy: 2 companies (17%) – Uber, TaskRabbit
• Fintech / Financial Services: 2 companies (17%) – Square, Mint.com
• Consumer Hardware / IoT: 2 companies (17%) – eero, Planet Labs
• Social / Consumer: 2 companies (17%) – StumbleUpon, Path
• Social Data / API: 1 company (8%) – Gnip
• Agriculture: 1 company (8%) – Bowery Farming
• Education: 1 company (8%) – Remind
• AI: 1 company (8%) – Barndoor AI

Note: With only 12 verified investments, the actual portfolio distribution may differ significantly. Hayes likely has many more investments that are not publicly attributed to him individually.

Stage Distribution

Overwhelmingly seed-stage, consistent with First Round Capital’s positioning. The Uber seed investment of $510,000 in 2010 ⁵ and eero’s $5M seed round in 2014 ⁹ illustrate the check size range.

Geographic Concentration

Hayes is based in San Francisco and opened First Round’s SF office in 2006 ¹. His portfolio shows heavy Bay Area concentration (Uber, Square, eero, Planet Labs, TaskRabbit, Path all based in San Francisco). Bowery Farming is a notable exception, based in New York. Gnip was based in Boulder, Colorado.

Founder Profile Patterns

Hayes shows a strong affinity for founders who are building in markets they have deep personal knowledge of. He has demonstrated willingness to back first-time or non-traditional founders – he invested in Ryan Graves at Uber despite Graves being “untested” and lacking the typical Silicon Valley pedigree ⁸. He values operational capability and the ability to “run up and down the stack” from strategy to details ¹.

Co-investor Patterns

As a First Round partner, Hayes frequently co-invested with the firm’s network. On eero, co-investors included Stanford University, Menlo Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, Homebrew, and individual investors including Alexis Ohanian ⁹. On Bowery Farming, co-investors included Box Group, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, and General Catalyst in later rounds ³¹⁰.

Notable Gaps

Hayes’ stated interest in robotics does not appear prominently in the verified portfolio, though Planet Labs (satellite imaging) has hardware/robotics elements. His stated interest in agriculture is validated by the Bowery Farming investment. The transition to Board Partner in 2018 suggests reduced deal-leading activity in recent years.

Portfolio

Note: Many investment dates are approximate. Years marked “~YYYY” use the best available estimate based on company founding dates and public reporting. Hayes likely has many more investments not publicly attributed to him individually.

In Their Own Words

On distribution as the hardest problem:

“Distribution is absolutely the hardest part of creating an internet company.” ⁷

On evaluating founders’ breadth:

“Building something from nothing requires a founder who can go from telling you a compelling story about her market at 50,000 feet to asking whether a radio component in the hardware should be moved 3 microns to the right. The best CEOs have this ability to run up and down the stack.” ¹

On discovering Uber:

“I sent him an email. It had four words in it. It said, ‘All bite. What’s Uber cab?’” ⁸

On backing non-obvious founders:

“My job is to find those people that people haven’t met before or heard of or worked with, know make decisions as to whether I think that person can be someone that can have a real impact. In Ryan’s case, it turned out to be true.” ⁸

On adding value as an investor:

“For me, the biggest joy I get is walking out of a meeting with a founder that I’m working with or a CEO that I’m working with and feel like I was able to add some value and help them along their journey to build a successful company.” ⁸

On why he invested in Bowery Farming:

“In agriculture, everyone agrees that maybe not right away but say in 15 years water will be expensive, healthy soil will be scarce and it will be more expensive to farm outdoor than inside. Why wait to work on that problem until it’s a crisis?” ³

On hiring as a CEO’s top priority:

“If you’re not spending at least 50% of your time hiring — and that’s the minimum — you’re already on the road to failure.” ⁴

On VC as a competitive product:

“I think our money is just as green as everybody else’s.” ⁸

On trust and leadership:

“You can’t be a leader without having people around you who you trust to do the right thing. And that means they’re not always going to do it the same way you would. It’s not your job to micromanage them.” ⁷

On Uber’s initial scope:

“I saw it as bigger than the black car market, but I absolutely did not see it as the amazingly global and massive company that it is today.” ⁸

What Founders Say

Irving Fain, founder and CEO of Bowery Farming:

“Rob from First Round, who sits on our board, has been invaluably influential and an extraordinary partner from the very early days.” ¹¹

No independently sourced founder testimonials were found beyond the above. First Round Capital’s website does not feature individual testimonials attributed to Hayes specifically. Further founder quotes may emerge from additional podcast transcript research.

Sources