Foundry 2022 will be our final Foundry fund. 

While VC firms rarely make decisions like this, it’s precisely what we planned to do when we started Foundry in 2006. From our founding, we intentionally decided not to build a legacy or generational firm —one meant to live beyond the tenure of the founding partners. Instead, we intended to focus on the work of investing, re-evaluating each potential new fund as our fundraising cadence required. For nearly 20 years now, that cadence has been to raise a new fund every three to four years. Each time, we make a deliberate decision to raise a subsequent fund. But not this time.

Choosing not to be a legacy firm is one way we’ve challenged norms in the venture industry and just one of many things we take pride in as we reflect back upon our time building Foundry. As a Colorado-based firm, we were early believers that great companies could be built anywhere and, while we’ve made numerous investments in Silicon Valley, we’ve also invested up and down both coasts and many places in between. We have always believed that venture capital should be inclusive and accessible instead of opaque and one-sided, and we have actively worked to bring transparency to our industry through our writing, speaking, and other media. We are passionate advocates for the power of entrepreneurship, believing in its ability to transform people and communities, and have tried to be supportive of entrepreneurs around the country and the world, even when we weren’t direct investors. We located our firm in Boulder, Colorado, where we helped to co-found Techstars and joined local entrepreneurs, technologists, and educators to catalyze a thriving startup community – one that has served as a model for other startup communities around the country and the world. 

In 2015, with a changing venture landscape, we saw an opportunity to institutionalize a practice of investing in other venture firms, expanding upon the personal investing in venture that we had been doing for years. We launched this fund investment strategy in 2016 and built a portfolio of both established and emerging seed-stage managers who we believe represent some of the best of the newest generation of investors. 

As we’ve built Foundry, we’ve had the privilege of doing this work in partnership with an incredible network of founders, operators, VCs, and Limited Partners, investing in over 200 companies and nearly 50 venture firms. 

With each new fund, an early-stage venture firm extends its life by at least a decade, more realistically, quite a bit longer than that. Over the past year, as we reflected on what we each wanted for our future, we kept the original idea for Foundry front of mind. We’ve had several moments over the last decade where we thought the fund we were raising might be our last. Each of those times, after reflection and discussion, we decided to raise another fund. 

But not this time. Foundry 2022 will be our last fund.

However, our work is not finished. We’re excited to make new investments out of Foundry 2022, from which we will continue to lead Series A and B financings. We are energized to continue supporting our portfolio of companies and funds. And, given the lifespan of venture funds, we expect to continue this work for at least the next decade. Our work continues to energize us, and we are as committed as ever to the mission of Foundry – building a network of entrepreneurs, investors, and LPs that benefits everyone in our ecosystem.  

We greatly appreciate the many people with whom we have had the opportunity to work, especially our LPs, who have supported us along the way. We hope you feel we have been good stewards of your capital. We will continue to work extremely hard to generate returns for you. We feel incredibly lucky to have had the chance to work with so many amazing founders, CEOs, management teams, and co-investors. There’s a lot of work left to do, and we’re excited for it. 

People like stuff. Objects hold deep meaning for us, and they provide us with a vehicle for connecting with others and building community. Manifestations of this that quickly come to mind are classic car clubs and vintage guitar forums on the internet. Many objects that capture people’s imaginations have seen their value buoyed by the communities that surround them, so much so that many enthusiasts are no longer able to afford to participate by purchasing them. This is definitely true of sports cards, a nearly $14 billion dollar market worldwide. A 1909 T206 Honus Wagner card sold for over $3 million in 2016, and a Tom Brady rookie card sold for $1.3 million last spring. High price tags, even for the most avid (and wealthy) sport fans. Enter Dibbs.

Dibbs is democratizing access to the world’s most collectible sports cards through tokenized, fractional ownership. Built on blockchain technology, Dibbs creates a non-fungible token (NFT) for each physical card on the platform, and allows users to collect fractional tokens representing partial ownership of the NFT. This allows collectors with virtually any budget to acquire cards previously inaccessible to them. Once a user accumulates 100% ownership of an NFT, they can take possession of the card at any time. Athlete-focused and fan-centric, Dibbs is an accessible and intuitive way for its users to build player collections for their favorite athletes. With easy-to-use mobile and web apps and real-time transaction capabilities, Dibbs is revolutionizing sports card collecting for both legacy collectors and a new generation just getting started.

Evan is a lifelong card enthusiast, and he has spent his career working with a variety of digital assets. After helping launch the WAX blockchain and partnering with iconic collectibles brand, Topps, he saw a tremendous opportunity to reinvent an archaic industry that was unnecessarily cumbersome on the data and cost side. 

We appreciate Dibbs’ scrappy sensibility and how their technology links the physical world to the digital. When our friend, Eric Paley, from our partner fund, Founder Collective, introduced us to the team with an eye toward us leading their Series A round, we were thrilled. Our friends at Courtside Ventures (with whom we are close as well) participated as well; it served as validation for our enthusiasm. And then when we found out that one of our portfolio CEOs, Will Ahmed, in addition to our Mobius colleague, Gary Rieschel, were also investors, we were convinced that our partnership with Dibbs was meant to be. This is a great example of how we like to leverage our extensive network of partner funds (and other friends of Foundry) to find great companies. 

Dibbs’ Series A was rounded out by Tusk Ventures and a syndicate of professional athletes including Chris Paul, DeAndre Hopkins, Kevin Love, Kris Bryant, and Skylar Diggins-Smith. We love to see their commitment to new ways to interact with their fans. You can read more about Dibbs here.

We are pleased to announce our recent investment in Recount Media’s Series B financing. We led the round with our partner funds, Union Square Ventures and True Ventures, also participating. Founded in 2019 by journalist John Heilemann and media veteran John Battelle, Recount Media is a leading media platform that produces high-quality content across a suite of digital, social, audio, and experiential products at the intersection of politics, business, and culture.

Recount is disrupting the way that news is produced and distributed. They combine the power of a podcast network with streaming content, short form pieces for social media, and a traditional newsletter to meet users where they are with targeted news that they can trust. Their goal is to redefine the business of news and journalism with an understanding of the impact that it has on our society. Although the company was only formed two years ago, their flagship title, The Recount, is already outperforming many legacy digital news brands in terms of engagement and views. 

We have known John Battelle for many years and began working closely with him when he took over as Chairman at Sovrn, another Foundry portfolio company, back in 2014. He and John Heilemann have gathered together a team of industry leaders with deep background in new media. We’ve been excited with the traction that they are getting in the market and enthusiastic about their opportunities for further growth.

Recount falls into our Distribution theme. We are thrilled to partner with them as they work to fix what’s broken in the news business.

It’s no surprise that early-stage boards aren’t as diverse as they could be, but we were surprised to see that today, only ⅓ of companies have independent directors. Today, 85% of directors on Foundry direct portfolio company boards are White, and 57% of our companies currently have open board seats. As such, there is a real opportunity to build a more diverse pipeline of independent director candidates for our founders and CEOs.

We believe that increasing diversity at the most senior levels is a critical business objective, and this starts with measuring where you stand today. That’s why Foundry partnered with Bolster in this important research and as a talent partner, and had over 50 Foundry portfolio company CEOs and 10 partner funds participate in this study.

Today, the Foundry Network spans 38 VC firms (our ‘Partner Funds’) and 1500+ companies (this doesn’t include the 2,000+ companies that have graduated from a Techstars Accelerator Program). Think about it: If half of those companies also have open board roles, that means our firm has direct or indirect influence into more than 750 open board seats.

We know our network is vast and that’s why we need to do our part to promote positive change on a bigger scale. To help us do this, our partnership with Bolster will diversify our networks as a whole and allow us to share meaningful data and insights across our entire network. This means knowing when and where the opportunities are for each board, in real-time, and then connecting these vacancies to vetted talent each and every time.

That is why we encourage you to fill out a member profile on Bolster at this link. Similarly, if you are an executive interested in independent board roles or know someone who would make a fantastic independent board member, please direct them to the Bolster platform and have them participate.

We all know diverse companies perform better, and through our collective efforts, we can do our part to influence the way board rooms ​will ​look in 2021 and beyond.

You can read Bolster’s full report here. 

About Bolster: Bolster is an on-demand executive talent marketplace that helps accelerate companies’ growth by connecting them with experienced executives for interim, fractional, advisory, project-based, or independent board roles. Their network today includes 3,500 executives and 700 CEO clients and includes nearly 50 membership partners that refer talented professionals from diverse backgrounds to the platform. Bolster also provides on-demand executives with software and services to help them manage their careers as independent consultants and provides startup and scaleup CEOs with software and content to help them assess, benchmark and diversify their leadership teams and boards. For more information, visit bolster.com.

We are pleased to share Foundry Group’s investment in Starting Line. Founded in 2018 by Ezra Galston, and headquartered in Chicago, Starting Line leads seed-stage rounds for consumer startups building products and services for the 99% economy – companies that leverage technology to be cheaper and better, open up access, and, ultimately, expand markets.

We’ve been a fan of Ezra’s for years, dating back to before he left Chicago Ventures. Seth was a formal advisor to his first fund and will continue in that capacity – working closely with Ezra and this expanding (and fantastic) team at Starting Line. This has given us a unique perspective on the fund as we’ve watched them grow from an experiment to a uniquely positioned, early-stage venture fund. We’re particularly proud of what the team is building and the niche they’re carving out for themselves in Chicago.

Ezra is joined at Starting Line by Partner Haley Kwait Zollo, an early Trunk Club employee, and two Venture Partners, Formstack founder Ade Olonoh and Scott Holloway, who led many of Instacart’s growth initiatives as their tenth employee and whom collectively bring deep Chicago startup experience to the team. Their first fund includes early winners such as Cameo, Made In, Soona, and Unchained Capital, all of whom count Starting Line amongst their earliest backers and board members.

Knowing that technology had the potential to deliver access to information across a wide range of demographics, Starting Line developed a platform to invest in products and services available to a broad range of Americans, what they refer to as the “99% American”. These investments include Airvet, Chowbus, Flyhomes, Hitch, Hungryroot, and Schoolhouse, and overlap with Foundry’s Marketplace theme. Starting Line shares Foundry Group’s values and we are thrilled to begin our formal partnership with them as they support founders who bring value to everyday Americans.

We are pleased to announce our investment in Spekit’s Series A financing alongside our partner funds, Bonfire Ventures and Matchstick Ventures, as well as Renegade Partners, Operator Collective, and others. Spekit is a digital adoption and enablement platform for in-app employee training. Founded in Denver, Colorado, in 2018 by Melanie Fellay and Zari Zahra, Spekit streamlines employee training and onboarding by delivering contextualized and personalized in-app learning experiences to its users.

Spekit addresses two major challenges for the SaaS-driven distributed workplace: driving adoption in a rapidly evolving technological landscape and delivering employees the knowledge they need, when they need it. The need to quickly adapt and thrive using new software is a growing challenge for any business in today’s market, accelerated by an increasingly remote and distributed workforce. Spekit combines the power of a digital adoption platform, an LMS and an enablement solution, solving knowledge and productivity challenges by surfacing real-time, contextual training, processes and guidance directly within the applications that employees use every day.

Melanie and Zari met while working at RealtyShares, where they experienced firsthand the acute pain point of adoption and enablement. They left to launch Spekit and have built a platform beloved by customers that is brilliantly designed to mirror how individuals actually learn, absorb, and retain knowledge. As the only Salesforce-certified vendor in this space, Spekit offers a unique value proposition to large enterprises that require seamless integration at scale. Delighted customers include Southwest Airlines, Outreach.io, JLL, Uber Freight, Databricks and more. 

We love investing with our partner funds, especially in companies in our own backyard. Spekit falls into our Glue theme, alongside Pantheon, Mapbox, Code Climate, and StackHawk. We are thrilled to partner with Spekit to build innovative solutions for employee empowerment and the future of work. You can read more about Spekit and the financing here.

We are thrilled to share the news that Foundry Group has hired its new Head of Network: Rena Ramirez. 

When we first posted the job description, we were extremely upfront about the fact that it was “hard to put into words exactly what we’re looking for because the right person for this role could come from many different professional backgrounds.” It was also hard because the role itself is so broad – touching so many different aspects of our work at Foundry. Many very qualified candidates accepted the challenge (and it was a challenge – we put together a gauntlet for candidate interviews so we could get to know these amazing candidates and their skill sets in-depth). Rena stood out as exceptional in many different areas. Her drive, passion for the work, experience, and unique background encompassing both marketing, network, and PR, made her the right choice.

Rena brings over a decade of public relations and marketing experience to Foundry’s deep and evolving network. Known for being a “take no prisoners” publicist who delivers consistent client results, she founded her own agency, Provocateur Media, spearheading national media campaigns for heritage consumer lifestyle brands and personalities, as well as consumer tech startups. After nine years, Double Forte acquired Provocateur Media, an independent creative communications agency. She oversaw day-to-day public relations and marketing efforts for many accounts while managing the agency’s business development and recruitment.

At Foundry, Rena is responsible for connecting the dots between our growing portfolio of over 80 companies and 40 partner funds through valuable programming, content, data, talent, and other resources. This includes Foundry’s network of founders, CEOs, executives, partner fund managers, limited partners, and other members of the Foundry Group ecosystem. Empowering this portfolio of companies and VC funds to connect, share, and learn from each other is the goal. Rena is excited to provide our network with her experience and resources to generate maximum output and value for each member.

Rena’s additional strength lies in her ability to see the larger, strategic vision and own the network’s trajectory. In her decade of PR work, industry experts regularly called upon her to help fill a need, whether that be a contact for a news story, a talent for hire, or a connection to a larger partnership for value-add. Through her network and unique PR perspective, Rena brings valuable relationship marketing experience, outside of the VC world insights, and an infectious personality to drive the next chapter of our expansive  network.

Let’s welcome Rena to her new role!

Fun Facts:

• Astrological Sign: Aquarius/Pisces
• Hidden Talents: Singing & Dancing
• Other Interests: Parenting Hacks, DE&I, Pop Culture

Our healthcare system stands at a critical juncture. Skyrocketing costs, widespread physician burnout, and overwhelming administrative complexities lead to limited access to quality care and, ultimately, compromised patient outcomes. Health systems are acutely aware of these issues and urgently seeking a better way forward. The promise of technology, particularly AI, offers the potential for transformation toward a more efficient and effective healthcare system.

If data is the fuel of AI, our healthcare system is sitting on an untapped oil field of epic proportions. Healthcare produces 30% of the world’s data volume: more than 2 zettabytes (that’s 2 trillion gigabytes!) annually. By 2025, healthcare data volume is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 36%. 

This mountain of data, however, has not yet translated to better healthcare outcomes because most of it sits dormant. According to the World Economic Forum, 97% of the data produced by hospitals each year goes unused. This is rapidly changing, however, with an estimated $83 billion invested in FDA-cleared healthcare AI models, not to mention the volume of models in the FDA-clearance process. 

With this growing supply and arguably existential demand, one would expect significant adoption in this market. But…healthcare. Stringent patient data regulations, antiquated IT infrastructure, and persistent budget constraints create a massive bottleneck to the deployment of technology in healthcare. As for AI, adoption by health systems has been slow, currently estimated at just 5% of approved use cases.

Ferrum Health is building the platform to solve the adoption problem for AI deployment. Think “Plaid for healthcare AI” or, in Foundry parlance, “glue” for healthcare AI. 

Ferrum’s platform offers validation, orchestration, security, and management capabilities to enable health systems to securely and scalably deploy AI. The platform is vendor-neutral and privately deployed. It empowers clinicians to validate the performance of AI on local datasets and deploy AI more broadly into their existing workflows, all without protected health information (PHI) leaving the health system firewall. Ferrum is starting with imaging AI, serving specialties including radiology, oncology, neurology, musculoskeletal, women’s health, and cardiology.

With Ferrum, health systems are deploying AI to augment providers. This powerful combination of humans and technology can lead to earlier and more accurate detection, better health outcomes, and reduced cost of care. One early health system partner saw a 77% higher rate of early lung cancer detection using AI models delivered through Ferrum. The company powers these outcomes in a cost effective way, delivering a 75% reduction in internal IT staffing and compute costs and a 98% reduction in AI implementation timelines, from an average of six weeks to less than a day. 

Ferrum was co-founded by Pelu Tran (CEO) and Kenneth Ko (CTO) in 2018. Prior to Ferrum, Pelu was co-founder of Augmedix, also bringing technology to the clinical setting. Pelu was inspired to start Ferrum after a missed diagnosis resulted in the death of a loved one. The company’s mission is simple and deeply aligned with their health system customers: to achieve better patient outcomes.

At Foundry, we believe in the power of technology to unlock and augment human potential in critical industries and use cases. We’ve seen this first hand in healthcare through our investments in Meru Health (improving provider capacity and patient outcomes through a digitally native mental healthcare solution) and Regard (closing the clinical insights gap through an AI-powered physician co-pilot focused on documentation and diagnostics). 

To accelerate the company’s growth and to address these market needs, we recently led Ferrum’s $16M Series A, alongside Catalyst by Wellstar, Headwater Ventures, UnitedHealthcare Accelerator, and our friends at Urban Innovation Fund, who were seed investors and helped introduce us to the company. You can learn more about Ferrum and the financing here.

We’re thrilled to partner with this mission-driven team in unlocking the power of AI to transform our healthcare system.

Earlier this year, we announced that our current fund, Foundry 2022, will be the final Foundry fund. We are excited to complete the initial work of building the Foundry 2022 portfolio over the next 18 months. As stewards of capital to our LPs and engaged partners to our portfolio companies, we are all in on every investment we make and committed to the decade plus of post-investment work ahead.

As we think about crafting the composition of our Foundry 2022 portfolio, we look forward to continuing to partner with world class founders building disruptive, delightful products that empower their users and unlock new capabilities. As Colorado residents and proponents of our startup community, we know that Colorado is a special and powerful place to build a business. We would love to count a few more Colorado founders among our engaged community of portfolio founders and operators who consistently support and learn from one another. 

If you’re a Colorado-based startup that has already raised a seed round or are bootstrapping your way to a Series A, we’d love to hear from you. In addition, starting in September, we’ll be holding monthly office hours (by appointment) at our office in downtown Boulder.

A few things to note re office hours:

• Each month, we’ll open three scheduled meeting slots – 9am, 10am, 11am, followed by a group lunch with all founders visiting that day and members of our team. We’ll provide space for you to work/hang out between your meeting and lunch.

• If you are interested in participating, please provide information about your company here and we’ll circle back to schedule. We are focused on meeting companies that are a potential fit so as to not waste your time or ours.

• We like to meet companies well ahead of a fundraise. We are focused on Series A as an entry point but will occasionally invest slightly earlier or later. While the round names are not always instructive, we’re looking for companies with a product built, live customers, and indications of product-market-fit.

• We can’t invest in every company, but love meeting and supporting local founders. If nothing else, we’re committed to give first and be helpful even where we can’t invest.

While we are generalists, we have several current areas of interest:

• the evolution of work with products that empower end-users and unlock new ways of working 

• B2B solutions for technologically underserved industries

• online marketplaces with large shadow markets and characteristics that unlock supply/demand and drive liquidity

• the new consumer — demographic shifts amongst consumer buyers: millennials as the sandwich generation, working families, addressing the needs of an aging population

• leveraging technology to foster and enhance human experiences

We look forward to hearing from you!

From intimate dinners at local bistros to conferences, celebrations, and vacations at luxury hotels to Taylor Swift arena shows, the hospitality industry is at the core of our social fabric. It’s where memories are made, relationships are nurtured, and communities are built. 

Frontline workers are the backbone of the hospitality industry and make these beloved experiences possible. Hospitality businesses like restaurants, hotels, and venues need a reliable and adaptable workforce to maintain high service standards amidst constantly fluctuating needs. Service jobs are hard work and require the right mix of competence, communication skills, and grit. Shifts are long and can be physically and mentally taxing. These factors make staffing both crucial and challenging. 

The global pandemic exacerbated the hospitality industry’s workforce challenges, shifting them from acute to existential. Many workers left the industry in search of safer and more stable employment. While society has returned to seeking out restaurants, hotels, and event centers for rich real-world experiences, the labor market has not kept up with the resurgence of demand. As the hospitality industry adapts and evolves, gig workers play an essential role in the path forward.

The rise of gig work started long before COVID, but the pandemic gave it tailwinds. The way we work and live has materially shifted. Workers desire flexibility and control over their schedules, which is more possible today than ever. Platforms like Uber, Lyft, Doordash, and Instacart have popularized and democratized access to the gig economy for transportation and delivery. Foundry’s newest portfolio company, Gigpro, is at the forefront of bringing the power of the gig economy to the hospitality industry.

Launched in 2021, Gigpro is an on-demand labor marketplace for hospitality. With Gigpro, businesses in 28 cities nationwide can post shifts for a variety of hospitality roles and receive applications from qualified, vetted professionals within minutes. On the talent side of the marketplace, Gigpro empowers hospitality workers (“Pros”) to take more ownership over their professional lives. The marketplace enables Pros to select shifts and establishments that work best for them. Pros on the platform can gain skills, exposure, and credibility in their local markets while maintaining flexibility. 

We recently led Gigpro’s Series A financing, alongside Stage 1 Ventures, Stage 2 Capital, who introduced us to the company, and Detroit Venture Partners. Gigpro is based in Charleston, South Carolina and led by Sam Mylrea, a seasoned entrepreneur and fellow marketplace nerd. Sam and the team are mission driven and as service-oriented as their customers. Gigpro customers rave about the company’s customer service and, in many cases, credit the platform for playing a fundamental role in surviving the pandemic. One customer even told us: “I would have left the industry altogether if not for Gigpro.” 

In addition to an exceptional team and demonstrated product-market-fit, we’re excited about the many vectors of overlap between Gigpro and Foundry. The company fits squarely in our marketplace theme alongside portfolio companies like Rover and Xometry, which create liquidity and optimization for fragmented markets with large shadow demand. We’ve gained experience building technology for the hospitality industry via investments in companies like Wholesail and Arryved. We’ve closely followed the emergence of the gig economy via The New Builders (co-authored by our partner Seth Levine) and our investment in gig economy payments company, Gig Wage. Lastly, we’ve long believed that great companies can be built anywhere and are thrilled to add Gigpro, the fastest-growing company in South Carolina, to the mix. We now count both Carolinas among the homes of Foundry portfolio companies–AvidXchange (AVDX) is based in North Carolina.

You can read more about Gigpro and the Series A financing here. And if you’re in the industry, post a gig or apply for one!

We are pleased to announce our investment in Vendasta’s CAD 20m financing. In connection with the financing, the company will convert a CAD 52.5m debenture to equity and subsequently have no outstanding debt. Vendasta is led by co-founder and CEO Brendan King, a multi-time entrepreneur who started the company 15 years ago.

Vendasta is a scaled B2B SaaS company that sells marketing, sales, and other software solutions to SMB customers (SaaS SMB) via a well-developed reseller channel. The SMB market is a particularly challenging one to sell to, and the venture-backed landscape is littered with companies that have tried to sell point solutions, specialized products, or proprietary solutions directly to SMB customers and have yet to scale successfully. Vendasta’s reseller channel is a key differentiating factor that has allowed it to unlock the SaaS SMB market successfully.

We got to know Vendasta through their acquisition of Yesware, one of our portfolio companies with a SaaS SMB customer base for sales enablement. After that acquisition, we began discussing Broadly, another company in our portfolio with a SaaS SMB customer base. Vendasta acquired Broadly, and soon after, we expressed interest in investing additional capital directly in Vendasta.

Vendasta is a company we think of as a Silent Killer. While not widely known in the broader venture community, Vendasta has built a sizable, unique business that solves a crucial part of the problem of selling SaaS software to SMBs. 

We are excited to be part of helping Vendasta on the next stage of its journey.