First Round Capital makes its biggest investment to date

First Round Capital just made its biggest investment ever.
The venture capital firm, headquartered in University City with offices in San Francisco and New York, invested $4 million in health insurance startup Clover Health’s $100 million round. First Round led the round.
Clover Health, which has offices in San Francisco and Jersey City, aims to use data to improve healthcare for seniors. They’re taking on insurance giants like Aetna and Humana who serve Medicare patients.
First Round’s average investment is roughly $500,000.
Aside from deal size, First Round’s investment in Clover Health represents another kind of aberration from First Round’s norm: it’s not a seed-stage deal.
“After meeting Clover’s founders, Vivek [Garipalli] and Kris [Gale], through other extraordinary members of the First Round Community—namely Flatiron CEO Nat Turner, who is joining me on Clover’s board—and hearing their story, we knew we wanted to be a part of it, even if it meant a one-time departure from our seed stage roots,” First Round managing partner Josh Kopelman wrote on Medium.
Read the full post
(Another Philly connection: Flatiron’s Turner cofounded Invite Media while he was at Penn, which later sold to Google for $81 million. First Round was a backer.)
Clover Health’s data and engineering team is based in San Francisco, while its operations team is in Jersey City. It currently offers coverage throughout New Jersey.
Philly venture firm MentorTech Ventures also made its biggest investment to date ($8 million total) in a tech company based in New Jersey: Amazon competitor Jet.