A Selfless Partner
I first met Chris Fralic in 1996 at a conference — and I remember being super impressed with him and the strength of his network. Chris seemed to know everyone. When I set out to build Half.com, I knew there would be a ton of business development needed — and Chris was my first call.
I took him to lunch and pitched the idea to him. Like a natural salesman, Chris followed up with his own pitch deck for me. Looking back, this isn’t too surprising. Chris is a born salesperson. He got his start selling computers and would go on to sell all kinds of software in the early days of the internet. Although I didn’t need a pitch deck to convince me to hire him, I’m sure glad he joined Half.com.


Chris joined the Half.com team in 1999, and we’ve worked closely together for almost 20 years. And my partnership with Chris has been one of the most important collaborations of my life. So when Howard Morgan and I initially started to think about growing our team in the early days of First Round, Chris was one of our first calls.
After dedicating the last 12 years of his life to First Round, Chris will be now changing his role, transitioning to become a Board Partner. In this new position, Chris will continue to support the companies he’s backed, just as he’s done for more than a decade. While he will no longer lead new investments, he will remain an important part of the First Round community — which is entirely fitting, as Chris helped set the foundation for what we are today. And with Hayley Barna running our New York city office (alongside our two new associates), Chris is leaving an amazing team to continue our New York investing activities.


Chris has had almost every role you can think of here at First Round. In the early days, he took charge of our CEO Summit and Ad Tech Treks. He opened, ran and grew our NYC office into what it is today. And of course, he’s helped us partner with a number of special companies ranging from ROBLOX to Ring to DoubleVerify and more. Chris is always ready to go to bat for his companies, as evidenced by his exchange with Steve Jobs back in 2010 when Flurry wasn’t exactly Apple’s favorite company.

Chris also brought a ton of energy to leading our team and supporting our community, drawing on his unique ability to connect with others. His approach was captured in the First Round Review article, How to Become Insanely Well-Connected, which was the most widely shared Review article over the past year.
While reflecting on this transition, I stumbled across this Michael Eisner quote that really encapsulates Chris and his invaluable contributions to First Round: “It is rare to find a business partner who is selfless. If you are lucky, it happens once in a lifetime.”
I can say with certainty that I am indeed lucky to have spent nearly my entire career working alongside Chris — and I think I can speak for everyone else at First Round by saying that we’ve benefited immensely from his selflessness.