Focal

#1: 2023 tech reality check

#2: Pocket guide of essential YC advice

-------

👋 - 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

September 17, 2025

How to reset a broken culture

When mediocrity creeps in, a hard reset is needed. Do it in a day with decisive cuts to restore the owner mindsets and urgency. Here’s how.

pascal's notes

September 10, 2025

Sell wedges, not empires

The art of pitching an initial wedge so small it hurts (and why it works).

pascal's notes

September 7, 2025

Objections are your friend

Getting ghosted is worse than hearing "no." Why surfacing objections early creates trust and saves weeks of wasted follow-up.

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

No items found.

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