Like all events these days, Denver Startup Week is going virtual and Foundry is excited to participate this year in a variety of ways.
For our 4th year in a row, we are proud to co-host the Pledge 1% Colorado Nonprofit Pitch Contest celebrating Impact + Innovation in our community on September 16 at 3pm MT. This event was created to shine the Startup Week spotlight on Nonprofits in the front range and to get them plugged in and connected to the Boulder/Denver Startup Community. The event has facilitated $100k+ in grants to nonprofits over the past three years and generated awareness in the startup community about the great work they are doing. Thanks to the Knight Foundation and Anchor Point Foundation for supporting this event from year one!
You can learn more and RSVP to attend and see the nonprofits pitch here. If you or your company are interested in contributing to the nonprofit prize pool this year, please reach out to [email protected].
Some of our partners are involved in a few other events below:
According to the DSW site, “Denver Startup Week is a celebration of everything entrepreneurial in Denver and the largest free event of its kind. In 2018, the seventh annual event brought over 16,000 people together at 417 programs and events to celebrate Denver’s thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem and build the center city’s culture of innovation.”.
With Denver Startup Week 2020 being 100% virtual, attendees from all over will be able to attend all sessions from the comfort of their homes and hope you’ll consider joining. You can view the full schedule here.
Foundry Group Network and Community
Building a strong network and community has been core to the ethos of Foundry Group since its inception in 2007. Our partner Brad literally wrote the book on Startup Communities in 2012 and has a sequel, The Startup Community Way, coming out next month.
Our portfolio community (now 75+ active companies and 32 Partner Funds) has grown organically over the past decade with engagement largely driven by the partners at Foundry.
Over the past few years, we have been investing more time and resources into building and growing our Foundry family and community. We’ve made incremental improvements here and there, tried some things that have worked well, things that have failed, and others in between. We’ve landed on the pillars below that we are focused on going forward:
In-person Events
Virtual Community
Data & Resources
Access to the greater Foundry Ecosystem
We are now supercharging these initiatives into what we’re branding The Foundry Network. The Foundry Network brings together founders, CEOs, executives, GPs, and LPs, and other members of our ecosystem like Pledge1% and the B Corp community to connect, share, and learn from each other. We know that together we can help create more successful businesses.
While the pillars above are really the “what” of the Foundry Network, there is an intangible value and ethos to the Foundry Network that is hard to put into words, but I’ll try. It’s not just what we do but a feeling of community that goes far beyond the capital invested.
We are a mesh network where leaders in our portfolio can reach out to each other en masse or individually as well as get together in-person for official or small ad-hoc events and meetups.
We look to and listen to our community to gauge where we are focusing our time and take the approach of “community led growth” to heart.
We seek to open source resources to our community and the general public whenever possible.
We are amplifiers that seek to extend the reach and collaborate on initiatives with our network to have a larger impact than we could have alone.
We commit ourselves to continual improvement and strive to always be thinking of where we can have impact with our voice and resources and that of our network.
As part of this, I’ve transitioned to lead our network full time as the Network and Community Catalyst.
While I’ve met many peers running “Platform/Network/Community/Engagement” at other VC firms over the years, I always love hearing new ideas and connecting (or reconnecting) to other community builders and organizations. Feel free to reach out at @micahmador on twitter or email me at micah(at)foundrygroup.com.
Black Lives Matter
At Foundry Group, we condemn racism. The systemic racism and oppression that has been deeply seated in the fabric of our society for centuries must end. Black lives matter and we are appalled by racially-driven violence, police brutality, and murder.
As a firm, we acknowledge that we have a poor track record of racial diversity, both within our organization and in our investments.
We commit to contributing to positive change now: to educate ourselves and listen so that we may become strong allies and advocates; to invest in Black entrepreneurs and investors and help recruit Black employees to our portfolio; to work with and support Black entrepreneurial leaders and organizations.
We recognize that a statement of support is insufficient and that actions speak louder than words. We commit to action on our part and send love to those in pain.
Our Investment in Meru Health
We are pleased to announce our investment in Meru Health. We led the Series A financing alongside our partner fund, Freestyle, who led the company’s previous financing. We were joined by Bold Capital Partners and Slack Fund, and existing investor, Y Combinator, among others. Based in Helsinki, Finland, and San Mateo, California, Meru offers a complete and clinically proven treatment program for depression, anxiety, and burnout with long-lasting outcomes.
We’re excited to welcome Meru to the Foundry family, not only as a portfolio company but also as a resource. In addition to investing, we are providing the Meru program for free to Foundry’s portfolio company CEOs, similar to what Freestyle did for their portfolio CEOs in January.
In the U.S. alone, it is estimated that over 25 million people suffer from anxiety and/or depression. Globally, over 500 million people suffer from these disorders. This global mental health crisis has been exacerbated by the current COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on the world’s healthcare system and economy, with less than half of those suffering receiving the care they need. Healthcare payers are finally starting to pay attention, especially in light of increased scrutiny and litigation over insufficient coverage for mental healthcare.
Meru is revolutionizing mental healthcare with the goal of bringing accessible, effective, outcome-driven treatment to the masses. They’ve partnered with insurance companies and self-insured employers such as Aurora Public Schools, John Muir Medical Corporation, and Douglas County in Colorado to offer the Meru program to their customers and employees.
The company was co-founded by Kristian Ranta (CEO), Albert Nazander (CTO), and Riku Lindholm (COO). Having lost friends and family members to depression, the founding team launched Meru to fight mental illness by creating an effective and scalable solution. Their mission is to empower 10 million people suffering from mental health challenges by 2027.
Meru is building an easily-accessible online solution that provides patients with remote therapists and psychiatrists, anonymous peer-groups, biofeedback wearable, and a 12-week digital therapeutic treatment program. Meru’s program consists of continuous remote clinician support, at-home therapeutic lessons and practices (e.g. cognitive behavioral therapy, biofeedback, and mindfulness), as well as sleep medicine and nutritional psychiatry for a complete solution to healing depression and anxiety. They’ve recently published groundbreaking peer-reviewed clinical results with Harvard Medical School and Rutgers University researchers, showing symptom reduction rates that are 2-3x stronger than what is typically seen with the current standard of care. Meru is currently seeing about a 90% treatment completion rate and average weekly engagement of five days/week, which is far ahead of typical behavioral health treatments.
We met the Meru team through our partners at Freestyle and the company fits in our Distribution theme. We care deeply about mental health and believe Meru is well-positioned to take on the huge opportunity and responsibility of combating mental health worldwide.
Our Investment In Code Climate
We are pleased to announce our investment in Code Climate. We led the Series B financing alongside our partner fund, USV, who led the company’s previous financing. We were joined by existing investors NextView Ventures, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, and Trinity Ventures. Code Climate provides software engineering organizations with data-driven insights to improve their processes, teams, and code. Founded in 2011 and based in New York City, their products are trusted by over 1,000 companies ranging from startups to enterprises.
Two years ago, Code Climate launched Velocity, their Engineering Intelligence solution for software organizations. Managers can troubleshoot and action process improvements with their teams, while executives can make better strategic decisions with high-level insights into how the department is progressing. Teams from companies like Gusto, BBC, and Condé Nast have used Velocity to ship software 20% faster. Thanks to this early momentum, Velocity revenue has grown over 300% in the past year.
The success of the Velocity product and the continued commitment and enthusiasm of our partners at USV drew us to Code Climate. Our further engagement with the Code Climate team solidified our interest and excitement around what they’re building. The team plans on using the funding to accelerate adoption and expand the predictive, AI-powered insights powering Velocity. Code Climate will also be further investing in its open, extensible Engineering Data Platform to connect information across DevOps systems.
The CEO, Bryan Helmkamp, and his team will be a great fit in our Foundry family and we are excited to welcome them. Bryan and his co-founder, Noah Davis, built the business after experiencing their own need as software engineering leads. Code Climate fits in our Glue theme and sits nicely alongside developer and ops oriented infrastructure companies in our portfolio like Pantheon, Sensu, Fritz.AI, and Mapbox.
Learn more about Code Climate by visiting https://codeclimate.com/ or better yet, go sign up for Velocity NOW. To make engineering analytics accessible to all newly distributed teams, Code Climate just released a free version of Velocity for qualified teams.
