We are pleased to share Foundry Group’s investment in Kindred Ventures’ new fund, which they just announced this morning. Based in the Bay Area, Kindred is an “earliest-stage” venture capital fund managed by partners Kanyi Maqubela and Steve Jang. They take a hands-on approach and work closely with founders at the earliest stages—from formation to seed, especially adding value in the areas of product development and talent. Kindred’s investment strategy is sector agnostic, but is largely driven by several themes: marketplaces, SaaS, decentralized networks, consumer services, and frontier technologies. 

Steve has been an angel/seed investor since 2009. He formed Kindred Ventures in 2014 to invest his personal capital and has since invested in over 50 startups. He was a founding advisor and investor to Uber, and an early investor to many other major tech companies including Coinbase, Postmates, Poshmark, Zymergen, and Blue Bottle Coffee. He has co-founded, or served on the early founding team of, several tech companies throughout his career, including imeem (acquired by Myspace), SoundTracking (acquired by Rhapsody), and Bitski. Kanyi was previously a partner at Collaborative Fund in New York, where he led early investments in over 30 startups, including Tala, Earnest, Particle, Zendrive, and JUST. Prior to venture capital, Kanyi also spent several years as a co-founder and operator at startups in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

After working closely together on Heartbeat Health (a shared investment that Kanyi also co-founded), Kanyi and Steve found that they were kindred spirits both to each other and the founders they back. They began investing together in 2018 and officially launched the new VC fund with the support and backing of LPs in 2019. 

We initially met Kanyi in 2016 through our network of emerging VCs in New York and our partner fund, USV. Like most who meet him, we were immediately drawn to Kanyi. He has a certain spark and magnetic quality that we love to see in GPs, and is also incredibly thoughtful and a prolific writer on the subject of innovation and democratizing access. We worked closely with Kanyi as he began to think about starting a new type of venture firm and partnering with Steve, who brings over 20 years of experience and relationships in Silicon Valley. We enjoyed getting to know Steve and spending time with the Kindred team in the early days of developing their strategy and fund model. We were even more intrigued by Steve as we called around and heard from founders and investors just how incredibly valuable he is as an investor and advisor, especially when it comes to product and the founder journey. 

We’re thrilled to partner with this team and the deep network of next-generation talent they are tapping as they build Kindred. We look forward to overlapping with them in our Marketplace, Protocol, Glue, and Human Computer Interaction themes.

We are pleased to announce that WHOOP, the human performance company, has closed a $55M Series D round led by Foundry Group with participation from Two Sigma Ventures, Accomplice, Thursday Ventures, Promus Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, and strategic individuals. The capital – a combination of debt and equity – will be used by the company to further scale its customer base as well as to invest in the next generation of Whoop products.

WHOOP collects physiological data that helps individuals optimize the way they train, recover, and sleep. You can find some of the best athletes in the world wearing a WHOOP, including Rory McIlroy, Lebron James, and Tiger Woods.  WHOOP is also a great tool for anyone – from CEOs to weekend warriors – who are interested in increasing their physical performance or simply wish to better understand how exercise, activity, sleep and other factors affect their ability to perform at their jobs and their hobbies.

We were introduced to WHOOP by our friends at Founder Collective. All of the Foundry partners started wearing the WHOOP straps and found the experience to be both unique and impactful. We love the holistic approach WHOOP has taken to ensure a delightful customer experience and believe the data and insights that WHOOP users are able to gain are invaluable. Through a SaaS mindset, the team has created a product with fantastic customer engagement and satisfaction. In fact, the business model for WHOOP is unlike most other wearables – WHOOP provides a free strap for a monthly subscription to their data and insights service.

WHOOP falls into our Human Computer Interaction theme. We are thrilled to partner with them as they bring a new level of data and intelligence to the personal fitness market.

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.