FirstMark Capital was founded in 2008 by Rick Heitzmann and Amish Jani as a spinoff from Pequot Capital Management, built on a conviction that looked genuinely contrarian at the time: that New York, not just Silicon Valley, would become a dominant hub for technology startups. Both founders had operator or growth-investing credibility before founding the firm - Heitzmann built and sold First Advantage, while Jani came from Pequot Ventures - and they've since built one of venture capital's most developed platform and community stacks, including Data Driven NYC, a community with more than 20,000 members, and the widely-cited annual MAD (Machine Learning, AI, and Data) Landscape report, now in its 11th year. That combination of early conviction and founder support produced Pinterest, where Heitzmann wrote the seed check, and Shopify, where Jani personally led the Series A investment through IPO, alongside DraftKings, Airbnb, Riot Games, and StubHub. The firm has raised 10 funds totaling $3.5 billion in committed capital.
Pinterest's 2019 NYSE IPO - Co-Founder Rick Heitzmann personally wrote the company's seed check, years before it went public