Foundry Group Next

We are excited to announce that Lindel Eakman is joining Foundry Group to lead a new initiative we are creating called Foundry Group Next.

Over the years at Foundry Group we’ve built an extensive network of companies. While we’ve invested in some of these directly, this actually represents the smallest set of companies that we are involved with. We have also invested indirectly in many others through our investment in Techstars. Yet another, and much larger set of companies, come from our investments in other venture funds.

In 2013, we started thinking hard about the future of Foundry Group. As we discussed the confluence of our fund investing strategy, our current late stage investing which we do through our Foundry Group Select fund, and our interest in acting on our unique later stage deal flow, we realized that there was an opportunity to wrap these three ideas together into a single entity that would encompass not just what we had previously called our Select strategy but would also institutionalize our fund investment strategy as well as leverage those and other relationships to invest in other later stage opportunities in our broader network.

The critical ingredient for bringing this all together was finding the person to help us execute our GP fund strategy. Fortunately we knew exactly who we wanted to work on this project.

For the past 13 years, Lindel Eakman has been the head of UTIMCO’s private equity group. He’s created an incredible portfolio of investments in venture capital funds, including Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, True Ventures, IA Ventures, Techstars Ventures, and Foundry Group. In April 2007, Lindel committed to be our largest investor in our first fund, taking 20% of the fund. This was a bold move, as we only had one commitment at the time.

Lindel – through UTIMCO – has continued to be our largest investor. He has been on our advisory board and for the past eight years has been a key advisor to us. Over the years he also has become a close friend.

Lindel joins us to help execute our Foundry Group Next strategy. Our Next strategy not only allows us to continue making direct investments in high-potential startups, but would also scale-up our ability to support venture firms and funds whose vision and values align with ours. Through this activity, we hope to spread the Foundry Group values and DNA further into the overall venture and startup ecosystem.

Welcome Lindel to the gang.

P.S. To make the the lawyers in our lives happy, we need to say that in no way is this announcement an offer to sell securities or an advertisement of us raising a new fund. We have yet to announce anything regarding any new funds that we may raise in the future.