Focal

#1: 2023 tech reality check

#2: Pocket guide of essential YC advice

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👋 - Looking For Pre-Seed Funding?

At focal, we lead pre-seed rounds backing software / platform / infrastructure builders across the 🇺🇸/ 🇨🇦 reinventing how industries operate and business is done.

read it on substack

Featured Resources

June 6, 2023

January 29, 2025

Introducing findfunding.vc 🧨

We're thrilled to announce the launch of our open source VC database - findfunding.vc

company news

April 26, 2023

January 29, 2025

focal is live 👋

We just launched our firm's new name and bold brand: focal

company news

November 6, 2025

Build Your Own FDE Playbook

The Palantir Model Will Kill Your Startup if you try to copy it

pascal's notes

October 30, 2025

Say No Like a Doctor

Founders hate saying no. That can be detrimental. Learn how to approach early customer calls like a doctor would approach diagnosing a patient.

pascal's notes

October 29, 2025

Shrink The Surface Area, Raise The Bar

Here’s how Reducto went from 0 to $108M raised in < 2 years

pascal's notes

July 13, 2023

January 29, 2025

🧱#8: The VC Rebrand Guide

Rebranding and revamping your website is no easy task. We lay out step-by-step how we did it for focal, all the way to launch.

brick by brick

April 12, 2023

January 29, 2025

🧱#7: Navigating Year-End

Now that the busy year-end season is (mostly) behind us, we look back at the operational lessons we've learned in the last six months.

brick by brick

March 20, 2023

January 29, 2025

🧱#6: On Point Offsite

In January, we had a week-long team offsite across Virginia & Miami. While the primary draw was to see each other, reconnect, & align, we also got a ton of work done. Here's what we learned.

brick by brick

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June 11, 2025

5YF Episode #38: Graphite Co-Founder & CEO Merrill Lutsky

The 100X Engineer, Vibe Coding Bottlenecks, Agents As Evaluators, AI Roll-ups w/ Graphite Co-Founder & CEO Merrill Lutsky

5 year frontier

May 14, 2025

June 11, 2025

5YF Episode #37: AIRCO Co-Founder & CEO Greg Constantine

Global Energy Race, Creating With Carbon, CO2 As Fuel, Powering Mars w/ AIRCO Co-Founder & CEO Greg Constantine

5 year frontier

April 30, 2025