Emily Stanford

Hi, I'm Emily.

The internet doesn't have a content problem. It has a story problem.

I've spent my career finding the story buried beneath how people build, and creating the systems to bring it to scale. The work always starts with the same question: what does this person know that nobody's written down yet?

At First Round Capital, that meant penning over 80 long-form essays across a wide range of subjects — a CEO who tracked every 15-minute increment of his first five years building, the surprising micro-habits of high-impact managers, the emotional gauntlet of the founder leap.

Over time, that instinct for finding the untold angle crystallized into editorial franchises. Working with Partner Todd Jackson, I launched Paths to Product-Market Fit — the gritty 0-to-1 stories of founders like Linear's Karri Saarinen, Clay's Kareem Amin, and Vercel's Guillermo Rauch — and with Partner Meka Asonye, 0–$5M, a series on standing up go-to-market from nothing.

That same instinct carried over to audio and video. I led the In Depth podcast, and when it expanded into video, I picked up a camera, taught myself a three-camera setup, and grew First Round's YouTube audience 65% year over year.

Today, I lead content strategy at Notable Capital, including ghostwriting for partners, producing the firm's podcast, and creative-directing a founder video that reached a million views. The throughline across all of it is the same: get close enough to the work to tell it honestly, then figure out whether it needs 5,000 words or a scroll-stopping clip, and build the infrastructure that makes great storytelling repeatable.

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Résumé

Notable Capital
San Francisco, CA
Content Marketing Manager Jun 2025 – Present
  • Leads content strategy and the editorial program for a venture capital firm, including ghostwriting thought leadership and investment announcements for managing partners and investors.
  • Relaunched the firm's podcast end-to-end: guest curation, episode editing, and social promotion strategy across LinkedIn and X.
  • Creative directed the launch video for Wispr Flow that reached 1M views, 4K likes, and 900 reposts — produced in partnership with the founder's own channels.
  • Directed a founder video series for the firm's AGM, working with portfolio companies to shape and tell their stories for an LP audience.
  • Led a full website redesign: managed the freelance designer, rewrote all copy, and shepherded stakeholder approvals from brief to launch.
  • Owns the content calendar and runs recurring ideation sessions with investors and the platform team to surface and develop story ideas.
First Round Capital
San Francisco, CA
Senior Writer Jan 2023 – May 2025
  • Built and launched Paths to Product-Market Fit, an editorial franchise interviewing founders like Vanta's Christina Cacioppo and Replit's Amjad Masad on the behind-the-scenes story of finding PMF. Published 24 pieces; became a tentpole content stream for the firm.
  • Built and launched 0–$5M, a series covering go-to-market fundamentals for founders on the path to their first few million in ARR.
  • Expanded the In Depth podcast into video — building a 3-camera production setup from scratch, editing clips for social with Opus, and owning promotion across LinkedIn, X, and YouTube Shorts. Grew First Round's YouTube audience 65% YoY.
  • Managed a junior writer: ran 1:1s, coached on craft, and edited all longform output.
Writer Mar 2020 – Dec 2022
  • One half of the team behind the First Round Review, a weekly longform publication for founders and operators averaging 10K+ pageviews per piece (with individual articles reaching 100K+).
  • Owned content production end-to-end: ideation, interviewing, writing, editing, publishing, and distribution across a 200K+ subscriber newsletter and social channels.
  • Producer of the In Depth podcast hosted by First Round Partner Brett Berson — managing guest outreach, interview guides, and audio editing in Descript. Guests included HubSpot's Dharmesh Shah, Stripe's Claire Hughes Johnson, and Rippling's Matt MacInnis.
Google
San Francisco, CA
Content Marketing Manager, Hire by Google May 2019 – Jan 2020
  • Owned content strategy, the editorial calendar, and social channels for Hire by Google, maintaining a 2x weekly publishing cadence and 36 weekly social posts.
  • Partnered with product marketing on go-to-market narrative, thought leadership, and customer case studies.
Partner Content Marketing Manager (via The Sage Group) May 2018 – May 2019
  • Project managed Google's presence at SaaStr Annual 2019 — including booth, messaging, keynote session, and lead follow-up.
Salesforce
San Francisco, CA
Content Marketing Manager Feb 2017 – Apr 2018
  • Managed and edited the Salesforce Blog at scale: 35–40 posts per week across sales, product marketing, PR, and executive stakeholders.
  • Ghostwrote for senior executives as part of a company-wide thought leadership program.
  • Led a year-long blog redesign in partnership with development, UX, and creative teams.
Associate Manager, Content Marketing May 2015 – Jan 2017
  • Helped grow the Salesforce Blog to 400K+ monthly visits, with 81% YoY growth.
  • Launched the company's first content hub, managing vendor relations, design, and promotion strategy.
San Diego State University
San Diego, CA
B.A., Journalism · Minor, Political Science