Our Investment in Pilot

We are pleased to announce that Foundry Group Next, L.P. has completed its initial investment in Pilot Fiber, Inc. (“Pilot”) as part of a $17M financing.  Pilot, based in New York, NY is building a new model internet service provider by offering reliable fiber-optic internet with transparent pricing, no annual contracts, and speeds over 1,000Mbps.

Despite providing a critical piece of infrastructure for companies of all types, business ISPs  have been slow to evolve and adapt to modern business practices.  Companies looking for service  have traditionally faced a lack of transparency, bundled packages, inconsistent connectivity, and inferior customer service. Pilot takes away these pain points, replacing them with an internet service experience that works with business customers, not against them.

Pilot leverages a pre-existing, untapped and extensive fiber infrastructure in the enterprise market – something we at Foundry know well. Years ago we invested in and worked with (and in some cases, worked for) many of the companies that originally laid down this fiber. Across most larger cities in the US, in-building and under-street fiber sits unused and in many cases, unmapped and unaccounted for. Pilot is building an extensive geospatial database of this unused fiber and leveraging existing infrastructure to quickly build out its fiber network in a cost effective manner. The company currently operates in NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC with plans to expand its footprint quickly to additional markets.

Pilot was founded in late 2014 by Joseph Fasone who was the Director of Information Technology at WeWork from 2010-2014 where he built out a global network that serviced tens of thousands of daily internet users. Pilot was also a participant in the 2015 Techstars NYC program. We are extremely excited to partner with Joseph and the Pilot team to bring blazing fast fiber to a city near you.