We are pleased to announce Foundry Group’s investment in Matchstick Ventures. Matchstick is a seed stage venture fund managed by Ryan Broshar and Natty Zola. Ryan and Natty are based in the Twin Cities and Boulder, with a focus on startups in the North and the Rockies regions. This is Matchstick’s second fund and the first with Natty on board as a partner. 

While Natty officially joined Matchstick in 2018, he and Ryan have worked together for many years through their roles as Managing Directors at Techstars—Ryan as MD of the Techstars Retail Accelerator w/ Target in Minneapolis and Natty as MD of Techstars Boulder. They share not only a deep friendship, but several co-investments, an ethos around helping founders, and the Techstars #GiveFirst mentality. They also share founder DNA, both having started companies themselves. We first met Natty in his founder days when he took his company, Everlater, through one of the first Techstars classes in Boulder in 2009. 

After exiting their companies, Ryan and Natty both found themselves deeply ingrained in their local startup communities and developing a true love for helping founders. That love led them both to Techstars, where they continue to be involved (Natty as MD of Techstars Boulder and Ryan as a venture partner). This shared experience and culture led to teaming up on Matchstick. The firm was born out of a desire to strengthen startup communities by providing resources to founders and “helping startups strike.”

We’ve become close with Natty and Ryan through their roles at Techstars and as central figures in their local startup communities. We’ve co-invested and served on boards with them and Seth Levine has been an official advisor to Matchstick since inception. As we’ve gotten to know Natty and Ryan, we’ve also seen the ecosystems in which they operate—the North and the Rockies—begin to really thrive and gain momentum. As co-founders and investors in Techstars, we also understand the power of that ecosystem, which today is comprised of 47 active accelerators around the world and a network of over 19,000 founders, investors, mentors, community leaders, and corporate partners. We believe great companies can be built anywhere and are excited about Matchstick’s opportunity to leverage Natty and Ryan’s positions within their respective communities to partner with incredible founders and build their firm.

Matchstick just announced the fund this morning, but have been investing since last year and already have an exciting portfolio of ten companies, two of which we share as co-investments: Ordermark and StackHawk. We’re thrilled to continue our partnership with Ryan and Natty. You can learn more about Matchstick here.

We are pleased to share Foundry Group’s investment in Uncork Capital’s newest funds, which they just announced this morning. Based in the Bay Area, Uncork is a seed-stage VC fund managed by partners Jeff Clavier, Stephanie Palmeri, and Andy McLoughlin. While this is Foundry’s second institutional commitment to Uncork (Foundry also invested in their 2016 funds and the FG partners invested personally in their earlier funds), we’ve been partners and friends for many years. 

Jeff founded Uncork (then called SoftTech) in 2004, long before the VC market was flooded with micro funds. Many think of Jeff as the original “super angel.” He launched Uncork to serve a then unmet need of startup founders: active support and capital for the first 18 months of a company’s life. Jeff is a proud Frenchman (Jeff being short for Jean-Francois) and major oenophile though he claims “Uncork” has nothing to do with wine and is solely about uncorking a company’s potential. 

As much as we love Jeff, we are thrilled to also have Stephanie and Andy as partners. It is great to see them join the management company for this fund. Stephanie joined the firm in 2011 and has since led over 25 investments, focusing on companies that empower individuals, families, businesses, and communities. Prior to joining Uncork, Stephanie spent a decade working in New York City in roles that spanned technology, marketing, and startups. She launched one of New York’s first accelerator programs at venture fund NYC Seed, ran business development and marketing initiatives at Lot18, an online wine retailer, and held roles at Accenture, Estee Lauder, and a startup building enterprise sales and marketing applications.

Andy joined Uncork in 2015 and focuses on startups that help any business operate like the best companies in the world. He loves investing in off the run ideas and discovering stellar teams who perhaps look a little different than the Silicon Valley standard. As a former entrepreneur, Andy empathizes with the founder’s experience and the daily challenges they face. Prior to joining Uncork, he co-founded Huddle, a London-based enterprise collaboration platform, and was also an active angel investor.

Since its founding, Uncork has invested in over 200 companies, including Brightroll (Yahoo), Fitbit (FIT), Eventbrite (EB), Sendgrid (SEND/TWLO), Vungle (Blackrock), Postmates, and Poshmark. They target outliers and out-performers who use technology to solve real problems for real people and real businesses. Uncork has several areas of interest: SaaS, Consumer, Marketplaces, Hardware, Infrastructure, and New Frontiers. They partner with companies at the earliest stages and typically write the first large institutional check, leading, co-leading, or following alongside other great seed investors, including many of our other partner funds.

We’ve worked closely with the Uncork team on numerous co-investments over the years and they’ve been influential in our program of investing alongside our partner funds. We’ve teamed up on many investments, including: About.me, Fitbit, Gnip, isocket, Looking Glass, MobileDay, Molekule, Next Big Sound, Nima, Sameroom, SendGrid, Spansive, and VigLink. We look forward to sharing new investments across our Marketplace, Protocol, Glue, Distribution, Adhesive, and Human-Computer-Interaction themes. 

Congratulations to Jeff, Stephanie, and Andy on their new funds. We are excited to partner with you again!

We are pleased to announce Foundry Group’s investment in SingleFile. Based in Seattle, WA, SingleFile simplifies and automates state and local compliance activities for companies and their service providers. The company’s first offering is an enterprise product for law firms to manage registered agent services, including formation, state qualification, and related filings with government agencies. 

There are over 30 million companies in the U.S. and 1.1 million of them do business in three or more states. Each quarter, over 75,000 new companies are formed. They all have one thing in common: a registered agent and a compliance headache. Any given company, especially those that do business in several states, might have over 100 filings to deal with each year, all with different government agencies. Today, this is an extremely manual, time-consuming, and confusing process. And there can be serious consequences for getting it wrong. Law firms like the one at www.sambrotman.com often take on the burden of managing this compliance and the registered agent relationships, but would much prefer to have paralegals and junior attorneys spending time on substantive tasks for their clients. Many can’t or won’t bill clients for this work.

State and local filings present a $7 billion market ($2 billion in registered agent services alone plus another $5 billion in other state and local compliance filings). The dominant providers in the registered agent market are archaic yet very profitable. They offer little to no technology, are inefficient and disorganized, and are constantly making mistakes both with the filings themselves and in billing services and transaction fees to clients. While other compliance is supported by professional service providers, there are no good technology options. Speak with any corporate lawyer and they’ll shake their head when you bring up this topic. 

SingleFile is building an innovative, tech-first solution to enable companies and their service providers to streamline and manage compliance filings. Customers will be able to automate filings, organize all of their compliance data in one place, and stay on top of filing deadlines to avoid expensive penalties. SingleFile provides not only the registered agent services but also a user-friendly, intuitive software layer to help service providers and their clients easily manage their compliance activities.

SingleFile fits in our Glue theme, automating processes, data management, and communication with multiple, disparate parties through software.

We met SingleFile through our friends at Pioneer Square Labs (PSL) in Seattle, where we’re an investor in both the PSL Studio and the PSL Venture fund. SingleFile was formed in the PSL Studio in collaboration with co-founders Sean Flynn (CEO) and Matt Woodward (CTO). As investors (and, a few of us, as lawyers), we’ve felt the registration and compliance pain points first hand. We were excited by the huge opportunity to bring the first technology solution to a real problem faced by every single company in the U.S. We love companies that disrupt old, archaic industries and are excited to partner with SingleFile and PSL as they bring tech to the world of registered agents and compliance services.

You can read more about SingleFile and the financing here.

We are pleased to announce Foundry Group’s investment in Backbone. Based in Boulder, CO, Backbone is a next generation workflow solution that helps consumer goods companies manage the complex design and product development process from anywhere, on any device.

Built for the direct-to-consumer (DTC) economy, Backbone addresses the need for efficient and modernized product development. Prior to Backbone, product development teams had two options: manually manage the process using a bunch of separate apps not built for product development or use a clunky, out-dated, legacy incumbent. These options often led to problems like human error, redesigns, sending incorrect data to manufacturers, inventory miscalculations, missed deadlines, and ultimately loss of revenue. With the rise of eCommerce and DTC brands, consumer goods companies needed a better way to get products to market, faster. Understanding that speed to market is defining competitive supply chains, Backbone is building next generation product development tools to suit today’s fast-paced brands. 

Backbone provides an intuitive and modern user interface that puts everything in one place, centralizing data and communication between internal and external teams. The platform enables customers to design, annotate, iterate, and push to production faster than ever before, with some customers reporting a 10x increase in speed to market. With Backbone, users can do things like manage the milestone calendar, create tech packs, iterate on designs, track factory communications, sample phases, and purchase orders, all through to the end product. 

We’ve seen first hand from investing in DTC brands the inefficiencies and difficulties in getting great products to market. With Backbone’s modern and seamless platform experience, we believe it is the only real solution for brands to work in a fully digital workspace. 

Backbone fits in our glue theme, enabling process automation and seamless collaboration through software. 

Backbone is already serving some of the most exciting consumer brands out there including Warby Parker, Away, Parachute, Outdoor Voices, allbirds, Movado, and Betabrand, a Foundry Group portfolio company. Having Betabrand as a (very happy) customer wasn’t our only connection to Backbone. Our partner fund, Spider Capital, was one of Backbone’s earliest investors. Spider’s managing director, Michael Neril, introduced us to Backbone’s CEO, Matthew Klein, several years ago and has been keeping us updated with the company’s progress along the way. We’re excited to have Matthew and the team indirectly and, now, directly in the “Foundry family.”

Backbone was founded by fashion and consumer goods industry veterans (and brothers), Matthew and Andrew Klein. Having felt the pain point themselves for many years, they decided it was time to build a better solution for developing next generation products.

You can find Backbone’s announcement of the financing here and tell your DTC friends to check out Backbone!

We are pleased to announce our investment in Ordermark. Foundry Group Next 2018 led the $18M Series B financing the company is announcing today.​

The restaurant industry is in the midst of significant disruption. 59% of restaurant orders from millennials are for takeout or delivery, and 60% of all US consumers order takeout or delivery once a week. Since 2014, online ordering and delivery have grown 300% faster than dine-in traffic, and over 200 online ordering services have been created to capitalize on this tremendous opportunity. Restaurateurs want to meet their customers where they are, but the complexity of collating, queueing, and fulfilling orders from numerous platforms bogs down kitchens and service staff, impeding their ability to maintain timeliness and a high quality product. Ordermark was created to address this problem.

Ordermark helps restaurants maximize profits by consolidating orders from multiple online ordering services to a single dashboard and printer located in the kitchen — the heart of a restaurant’s operations. They integrate their service with existing restaurant technologies, including Point of Sale (POS) systems, kitchen display systems, accounting tools, and last mile delivery companies. Restaurants are seeing increases in incremental revenue of 30% or more from using Ordermark’s technology. Ordermark works with small operations as well as many of the world’s top chains including Buffalo Wild Wings, Little Caesars, Papa Johns, and Sonic. The company is based in Los Angeles, California, with an office in Denver, Colorado.

We originally met Ordermark during the Techstars Boulder screening committee process, in which Seth and Jason are involved. We mentored them through the Techstars Boulder program and were excited when three of our partner funds – Matchstick, TenOneTen, and Techstars – invested in the Series A round.  

We’ve continued to help, and the more we got to know CEO Alex Canter and his leadership team, the more we realized what an incredible platform they’re building. Alex is a fourth-generation owner of the world-famous Canter’s Deli. The product works in part because he and his team understand, from experience, the needs of the restaurant industry.

Ordermark falls into our Glue theme, connecting third-party ordering solutions and point-of-sale systems to help restaurants understand, consolidate, and grow their delivery businesses.  We are excited to have Ordermark join the Foundry portfolio family.