Hubert Thieblot
Hubert Thieblot is a French entrepreneur and investor, born December 8, 1984 in Paris.3 He is General Partner at Founders, Inc., the San Francisco-based venture fund and campus at Fort Mason, where he has led investments since April 2022.215 Before f.inc, Thieblot founded Curse, Inc. in 2006 — a gaming media company that grew from a hobbyist World of Warcraft fan site into a network of 65+ gaming properties reaching 30 million monthly visitors — and served as its CEO until Twitch (owned by Amazon) acquired it in August 2016.13 He then held two VP roles at Twitch before transitioning into venture investing.8
Curse, Inc. (2006–2016)
Thieblot dropped out of a Swiss IT program to build Curse full-time.3 The company's name came from his World of Warcraft guild, which was one of the strongest in Europe at the time.3 He started by hosting add-ons and modifications for World of Warcraft, originally launching CurseBeta in 2006.4 Traffic grew quickly, and Thieblot hired his brother as the first employee, then a third developer while still living in Germany.3 In 2008, with over two-thirds of Curse's traffic coming from the United States, he relocated the company to San Francisco.3
Curse expanded from mod hosting into community sites, news, forums, databases, and original video content covering games including World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Minecraft, and RuneScape.4 The company developed the Curse Client for add-on management and, in 2012, launched Gamepedia, a wiki hosting platform dedicated to video games that eventually grew to host over 2,195 wikis with 6.2 million articles and 1.3 million contributors.4 Curse also operated the CurseForge mod-hosting platform, the Curse Network of community websites (including MMO-Champion, Minecraft Forum, and Hearthpwn), and Union for Gamers, a multichannel network for YouTube creators.46
Growth and funding
In 2011, Inc. 500 ranked Curse as the 405th fastest-growing company in the United States, and the San Francisco Business Times ranked it 22nd among the top 100 fastest-growing companies in the Bay Area.4 In April 2012, Ernst & Young named Thieblot a semifinalist in its Entrepreneur of the Year program for Northern California.3 By June 2012, Curse had surpassed 21 million monthly unique visitors.3
In July 2014, Curse raised a $16 million Series B led by GGV Capital, along with a separate $6 million venture debt round from Multiplier Capital earmarked for acquisitions.5 At the time, the company had 1 billion monthly page views, 28 million monthly unique visitors, 110 employees, and was profitable through advertising.5 Thieblot told TechCrunch that he chose venture debt for the acquisition fund rather than equity to avoid diluting existing shareholders.5
In May 2014, Curse launched Curse Voice, a VoIP application for in-game communication that attracted one million users in its first week of open beta.4 In July 2015, SEC filings revealed that Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends, had invested $30 million in Curse, bringing total funding to $52 million.4 Curse later raised a final round bringing total capital raised to approximately $58 million.1
Acquisition by Twitch
On August 16, 2016, Twitch announced it would acquire Curse for an undisclosed amount.1 At the time of the deal, Curse operated more than 65 gaming sites and employed more than 140 people across offices in Huntsville (Alabama), San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Brighton, and Berlin.64 Twitch CEO Emmett Shear called Curse "an innovator in the games industry."1 Thieblot said he was "really excited to see how we can bring Curse services into the Twitch network."6
After the acquisition, Curse's assets were gradually separated. In March 2017, the Curse desktop app was rebranded as the Twitch Desktop App.4 In December 2018, Twitch sold Curse Media — including Gamepedia, D&D Beyond, and several community websites — to Fandom (formerly Wikia).13 In June 2020, Twitch sold CurseForge to Overwolf.4
Twitch (2018–2020)
Thieblot stayed at Twitch after the Curse acquisition and transitioned into executive roles.7 From 2018 to 2019 he served as VP of Creator Product, leading tools for content creators.8 From July 2019 to November 2020 he served as VP of Emerging Markets and Mobile-First Product.83
Founders, Inc. (2022–present)
Thieblot joined Founders, Inc. as General Partner in April 2022, working alongside co-founder Furqan Rydhan.215 At f.inc, Thieblot is the core investment decision-maker and shapes the firm's program portfolio.12 The fund operates out of a 42,000-square-foot campus at Fort Mason in San Francisco, where founders work side by side and present working products rather than pitch decks.14 Thieblot has described the philosophy directly: "We absolutely hate pitch decks. We never like making them as founders because building a company is about doing, not making a polished presentation."10
Programs
Under Thieblot's tenure, f.inc expanded from incubating two to three companies per year with individual investments up to $50,000 to running cohort programs for hundreds of founders with $100,000–$250,000 first checks.914
The first program to draw significant outside attention was the Vision Pro Residency in February–March 2024, when 20 developers built Apple Vision Pro applications over four weeks at Fort Mason.9 Thieblot described the residency as producing "the first wave of apps" for the device and compared the technology to "peeking into the future."9
F.inc then formalized its cohort model through a series of programs: Ship It (February–March 2025, 60+ teams), Off Season (summer 2025, 48 teams), Blueprint (fall 2025, 50 hardware builders), and Artifact (January–February 2026, 200 founders).10 Each program ends with a Demo Day where founders present working products to investors and the community.11
In spring 2026, f.inc consolidated these formats into Canopy, a single five-week program running four times per year, with 100 in-person teams and 400 online teams in its inaugural cohort.10 Thieblot outlined a four-program annual calendar — Artifact in January, Canopy in spring, Off Season in summer, and Blueprint in fall — plus a rolling Wild Card residency track.10
Scale
By early 2026, Thieblot reported that f.inc had funded 55 startups in the preceding year, produced its first unicorn (a portfolio company reaching a $1 billion valuation), doubled its campus footprint to 45,000 square feet across three San Francisco locations, quadrupled deployed capital, and brought over 1,000 founders to San Francisco through its programs.10 Half of the 2025 investments were in hardware companies.10 Thieblot has described his work at f.inc as a personal mission: "I've made it my life mission to help the next generation of founders find their path and their people."11