Liz Wessel

Wessel graduated from the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania, commonly called Penn, is a private research university and Ivy League member in Philadelphia. It traces its origins to a 1740 charity-school project; Benjamin Franklin proposed his academy in 1749, classes began in 1751, and a 1791 merger established the institution under its present name. Penn has 12 schools, with undergraduate education concentrated in arts and sciences, engineering, nursing and Wharton. Enrollment totaled 29,384 in fall 2025, and the fiscal 2025 endowment was $24.81 billion. As of October 2026, J. Larry Jameson was president, with his term scheduled to end on June 30, 2027.Open the full entry with a bachelor’s degree in political science, mathematics and Japanese.⁠[1]

While studying at Penn, she launched several businesses and side projects.⁠[2]

In college she was a campus representative for Anheuser-Busch, which gave her the idea of helping companies recruit student brand representatives. She found her future co-founder J.J. Fliegelman through the sign-up records of a Penn hackathon, and the two ran a side project called Campus Reps while in school.⁠[3]

After graduating she joined GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry’s APMM program in product marketing, and spent a year in India building the company’s brand and product awareness in areas that were just gaining access to technology.⁠[2]

In 2014, at 23, Wessel left her position as a product marketing manager at Google and co-founded WayUp, a recruiting platform for college students and recent graduates, with J.J. Fliegelman, serving as its CEO.⁠[4][2]

She recalled returning from India on July 1, quitting Google on July 15 and, by July 31, having raised about $1 million; BoxGroup led the seed round with participation from Female Founders FundFounders FundFounders Fund is a venture capital firm founded in San Francisco in 2005 by Peter Thiel and his former PayPal colleagues Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Run by partners who were entrepreneurs themselves, it argues that founders should keep more control and is known for betting on difficult technology projects in areas such as space, defense, and artificial intelligence. It was Palantir’s first institutional investor, has invested in SpaceX many times since 2008, and its other notable investments include Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, and Anduril; as of March 2026 it had raised nine early-stage funds and four growth funds.Open the full entry, and a round first planned at about $200,000 grew to $1 million.⁠[3]

The company was founded in July 2014 and its site launched in September 2014.⁠[5]

Wessel and Fliegelman went through Y Combinator’s 2015 batch.⁠[4]

In May 2015 Wessel, then 24, was CEO of Campus Jobs, a site helping students find part-time work, internships and entry-level jobs, which had just launched entry-level listings for seniors; the week before, the company had announced a new $7.8 million round. She said it had raised more than $9 million in total.⁠[3]

Wessel has been an angel investor since 2016, building a personal portfolio while running WayUp; her early-stage investments include Ramp, Scale AI, Ro, Artera (formerly Well), Snackpass and FreeWill.⁠[1][2]

She said that while running her company she enjoyed choosing and backing startups but had little time to help them: “I loved picking and investing in companies, but I had zero time to help the companies, because I was full-time working on my own company.”⁠[4]

On March 23, 2017, New York-based WayUp announced an $18.5 million Series B led by Trinity Ventures, with participation from existing investors including General CatalystGeneral CatalystGeneral Catalyst (GC) is an investment firm founded in 2000 and headquartered in San Francisco, United States, created by Joel Cutler, David Fialkow and Bill Fitzgerald, that backs companies from the seed stage through growth.Open the full entry, BoxGroup, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Index VenturesIndex VenturesIndex Ventures is a venture capital firm founded in Geneva in 1996. It invests from seed through growth and operates across London, San Francisco and New York, supporting technology companies through a transatlantic network.Open the full entry, SV AngelSV AngelSV Angel is a San Francisco venture capital firm cofounded in 2009 by angel investor Ron Conway and former Google executive David Lee. It typically writes small follow-on checks in seed rounds and has invested in companies such as Airbnb, Pinterest, and Dropbox; in 2018 it said it would no longer raise new funds from outside investors, and from 2022 it set up growth funds.Open the full entry, Female Founders Fund, Axel SpringerAxel SpringerAxel Springer SE is a Berlin-based media company founded in Hamburg in 1946 by the publisher Axel Springer; it owns a number of news media brands in Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom, as well as commerce-related businesses.Open the full entry, CAA Ventures and OurCrowd, bringing its total funding since its July 2014 founding to $27.5 million. Wessel was CEO and Fliegelman CTO.⁠[5]

Originally an internship and job board for college students, WayUp had by then extended its focus to recent graduates looking for a second or third full-time job; the announcement put its user base at more than 3.5 million.⁠[5]

Discussing competitors, Wessel said, “LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry is built for a much older generation.” Asked about future plans, she said she “would love to go public one day, but it’s a little early to be planning.”⁠[6]

In July 2021 campus recruiting software company Yello announced a merger with WayUp. The combined company operates under the Yello name with both brands retained; WayUp’s candidate database, covering more than 6 million candidates from over 7,000 campuses, became the sourcing arm of Yello’s campus recruiting platform. Wessel and Fliegelman continued to play a major role in the combined company.⁠[7]

Wessel said the shift toward hybrid in-person and virtual recruiting as the pandemic ended was a major factor in the decision: “And that company is Yello, which made merging a no-brainer for us.”⁠[7]

Wessel ran WayUp for about seven years, raising more than $40 million in venture capital; the platform served more than 7 million candidates and thousands of companies. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.⁠[1][4]

After WayUp’s exit, Wessel joined Y Combinator as a Visiting Group Partner for several batches; besides interviewing and selecting companies, she coached founders on enterprise sales, B2B marketing, storytelling and fundraising, working with more than 110 early-stage startups.⁠[1][2]

She said Y Combinator managing director Michael SeibelMichael SeibelMichael Seibel is an American entrepreneur and investor and a co-founder of Justin.tv (which became Twitch) and Socialcam. He led the Y Combinator startup accelerator from 2016 to 2024 and became a Partner Emeritus in March 2025. He has been a director of Reddit since June 2020 and a director of Dropbox since the same year.Open the full entry advised her directly on her decision to move into full-time venture investing.⁠[4]

On September 26, 2023, First Round Capital announced that Wessel had joined the firm as a partner, based in its San Francisco office.⁠[2][1]

Explaining the move, she said, “I realized that I loved the picking and investing piece while angel investing, and I loved the helping piece while at YC,” adding that combining the two was “literally venture capital.”⁠[4]

On her investment criteria she said, “90% of the reason I’m going to be doing investments is the team and 10% is going to be the idea or space that they’re working on.”⁠[4]

At First Round she focuses on companies reimagining old-school industries or made possible by new or breakthrough technologies; companies listed on her profile as investments include ReductoReductoReducto is a U.S. document AI software company whose products cover document parsing, structured extraction, workflow configuration and file editing.Open the full entry, Gumloop, David AI, Blaxel, Solidroad and Scotch.⁠[1]

First Round Capital: Official website: https://www.firstround.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

X: Public account: https://x.com/lizwessel (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

LinkedIn: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethwessel/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]