What Does Foundry Group Invest In?

Of all the questions that we get, this one is the most common: “What do you guys like to invest in?”

Unlike many venture capital firms that invest in certain geographic regions or specific technologies and sectors, Foundry Group’s investing activity is largely driven by a thematic approach. The themes we pursue tend to be horizontal in nature and are often driven by underlying technology protocols and standards or emerging market trends and customer needs. Rather than looking for short-term hits, we focus on themes that have the ability to drive a cycle of innovation (and hence provide multiple investment opportunities) over a period of five to ten years or more. We invest across North America in a multitude of sectors tied to our thematic approach.

Examples of the investment themes we are currently pursuing include Human Computer Interaction, Implicit Web, Email, Glue, and Digital Life. As one might expect, we are always in the process of evaluating our current themes and investigating new ones, but you can always get our latest and greatest thinking from checking out our themes link. One thing that you’ll notice is that our themes revolve around software and information technology.

You can get a sense of how our thematic approach translates into specific investments through our Portfolio Companies blog category and our list of current portfolio investments.

All of this being said, we don’t strictly limit our investment criteria to our themes—great entrepreneurs with great ideas still count for a lot in our book. In fact, our thinking about these themes can be born from and evolve as a result of our investment in an entrepreneur at the leading edge.

If you are thinking of sending us information regarding your venture, please know that we like to stick to investments that can leverage our core expertise in software, Internet and information technology. As a result, investment opportunities that don’t play to these strengths, such as pharmaceuticals, medical devices, semiconductors, real estate, retail and biotech aren’t good candidates for us.