We shared some of the backstory on our investment in Founder Collective and want to continue the conversation about our fund investing by highlighting Resolute Ventures. We are largely driven by people and relationships. It’s important that we build a real, personal connection with our partners and that we want to be in business with them for the next decade. That is most certainly the case with our investment in Raanan and Mike at Resolute.  

Resolute’s brand is being “for founders, by founders” and we certainly heard that when we made reference calls to their portfolio companies. I’m not sure it was planned that way, but we did happen to catch a bunch of the company CEOs during and directly following a large, full portfolio off-site at Mike’s house. There was definitely a high level of praise and effusiveness. It’s clear that founders feel a real kinship and high level of support from their relationship with Raanan and Mike.   

Resolute seeks to create a real community among its portfolio of founders. The availability and value of founder-to-founder advice is often correlated to the relationships between and among the portfolio companies. We certainly see this in our portfolio companies, referring to each other as “cousins” and providing incredible support to each other.  It was clear that Resolute shared this sense of family/community with their portfolio. They recently brought on Caroline to organize and enhance their network.

We’ve known Mike since his early days at Polaris, saw him make a commitment to early stage companies at Dogpatch Labs, and followed his founding of Resolute in 2011.  We invested together in TrackR in the Fall of 2015. These interactions raised our perceptions of his effectiveness. We knew Mike had lots of experience, an incredible network of relationships, and that he was a good judge of founders. We saw that Mike had the experience to know when to bet on a team and an idea.  We really felt like we knew Mike personally and reputationally.  However, we thought he needed a partner that balanced him.  Enter Raanan.

Mike and Raanan partnered up in 2014, about halfway through the second Resolute fund.  Meeting and getting to know Raanan has been a real pleasure. We were impressed with him as an individual talent. In fact, one of our other favorite firms indicated that they would have grabbed Raanan as a partner if Mike hadn’t snatched him up first.

Raanan’s background, character, and demeanor resonated as additive to Mike’s experience.  More importantly, we felt he was the perfect balance to Mike’s personality. Partnership dynamics are a big part of our due diligence. We look at partners individually, but it’s the partnership dynamic that’s more important. How do personalities fit, balance, and affect the decision-making within the firm? Seeing these two separately and together gave us great confidence in their partnership. We gained comfort by listening carefully and engaging with Raanan and Mike as they talked openly and transparently about everything from past investment mistakes to GP economics and even the potential for adding a partner. This was a good indicator that these two would be able to focus on making the best investments together.  It also gave us comfort that we could partner with them in more than a traditional LP relationship.

Our first call with Mike for the Resolute III fundraise stood out from other seed funds we’d spoken to at that point. I can remember pacing in my hot Texas carport (I was still in Austin) and getting excited about what I was hearing. Resolute invests, at the earliest stage, in people and ideas. Then they coach, cajole, and enable those teams through personal relationships rather than Board formality. Through these interactions, Resolute has managed to build larger ownership positions in its best companies by being really strategic with their follow-on investing.

We were an early commit to Resolute III speaking for more than 10% of the fund before many other institutions engaged. We were happy to see a number of our favorite LPs join us in this fund. The first advisory board meeting felt like a gathering of friends with whom we’ve made some great investments over the last decade plus. We think this supportive LP group really sets up Resolute Ventures for long term success.

We’re excited to formally partner with Mike and Raanan in their fund and look forward to finding more great entrepreneurs to back alongside them.

This last week marked a year since we publicly announced Foundry Group Next. The timing also happens to mark the second anniversary of our starting to work together on the portfolio. I wake up every morning thankful for the group of people that we get to work with every day. One of the secrets to Foundry Group and the broader Foundry family is that we’ve been lucky to surround ourselves with quality people across our portfolio companies and our partner funds.

When we were forming the strategy for our FG Next fund we struggled with the right wording for that portion of the portfolio that included limited partner commitments to other managers. We don’t think of this as a traditional LP-GP relationship and struggled with the fund of funds nomenclature. While, financially, we do make limited partner commitments and do not seek special economics or terms, we’ve been very clear that we’re also investing emotionally in the success of these partners in their own business. We want to see them grow and develop as investors with the presumption that we all benefit together in their success, bad credit personal loans is a great option when you are looking for money to invest.

The “Partner Fund” designation seems to better reflect the way we feel about our relationship with this part of our family. We think of each group and individual GP as a partner who we’d like to support in this version of an extended firm. We will undoubtedly have investment success and failure together. We will certainly disagree over specifics and style differences. When I think through the collection of individuals and firms, however, it is a group of people with whom we’re proud to be associated and thankful to call partners.

We’ve been delinquent in talking more about these partners and this portfolio. We’ve publicly announced 15 Partner Funds to date. We’re very proud of these relationships and each one is worth calling out individually. We do that with our company investments and will begin doing so with our funds. We’re only 14 funds behind so there is writing to do!

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.

We are pleased to announce that Foundry Venture Capital 2016, L.P. has completed its initial investment in Boundless as part of a $3.5 million financing. Based in Seattle, Boundless helps families navigate the legal immigration system with confidence.

Boundless was spun-out from Pioneer Square Labs in April. Boundless was co-founded by CEO Xiao Wang, a Chinese immigrant who previously held strategic roles at Amazon and the New York City Department of Education; President Doug Rand, a serial entrepreneur and former Assistant Director for Entrepreneurship in the Obama White House; and CTO Serdar Sutay, a Turkish immigrant who led engineering teams at Microsoft and Chef.

The company’s first product dramatically simplifies the application process for a marriage-based green card, which provides a legal path to employment, travel, and ultimately U.S. citizenship. Boundless’ web-based application translates forms and instructions into easily understood questions, helping couples complete their green card application in under two hours and for $500, including a comprehensive review by an independent immigration attorney and a ready-to-submit package arranged according to the government’s precise preferences. Boundless then supports the couple with interview preparation, follow-on forms, online guides, and tracking of every important deadline along the way.

We have been long-time supporters of legal immigration, going back to 2009 and our efforts around the Startup Visa. Our philanthropic activities, including Global EIR, have helped numerous immigrants navigate the complex US immigration system. When we first heard about the idea for Boundless from Pioneer Square Labs, we quickly introduced Doug Rand, who we’d worked closely with when he was at the Obama administration, to the team.

It’s a delight to continue to invest in Seattle-based companies, especially with our friends at Pioneer Square Labs. And, we are excited to be part of the team with Xiao, Doug, and Serdar.

We are pleased to announce that Foundry Venture Capital 2016, L.P. has completed its initial investment in The Pro’s Closet (“TPC”) as part of a $9M financing. TPC, based in Boulder, CO, is the world’s largest seller of pre-owned bicycles and bicycle parts.

The cycling market is large and expanding rapidly. But as bicycles become more sophisticated and expensive, a gap has opened up in the market for used bicycles. TPC’s platform solves the pain points that sellers and buyers of used bikes experience. For sellers TPC offers the quickest and easiest way to turn their used bike into cash – often to be used to purchase a new (or newer) bike. TPC also works with bicycle shops and manufacturers helping to reduce the sticker shock of new bikes by offering a trade in program for a customer’s old bike. TPC also works with bike manufacturers to help them manage and resell their demo inventories.

For buyers, TPC offers a safe and guaranteed buying experience. Their team of professional mechanics inspect, clean, and recondition each bike they sell, guaranteeing buyers that the bike they are buying is safe, free of defects, and ready to ride. Bicycles have gone the way of the car, and are now made from high-end composites, full of electronics, and have increasingly complex and proprietary parts. TPC’s unique ability to inspect and service every kind of bike from every major manufacturer provides the level of security that buyers now demand. By streamlining the procurement, warehousing, quality assurance, photographing, and listing process, TPC has become a market leader in pre-owned bikes.

TPC was founded in 2006 by Nick Martin while he was a professional mountain-bike racer for Trek. Over the last decade, Nick has brought together a team of industry experts covering cycling, sales, ops, technology, and e-commerce. We are extremely excited to partner with Nick and the TPC team to help them on their journey to be the global leader and most trusted destination worldwide to buy and sell pre-owned bikes to consumers and industry partners. You can sign up for the TPC mailing list here.

And if you’re in Boulder and want to check out some amazing cycling history, stop by their warehouse to check out their museum which has in its collection some of the coolest bikes ever made and raced.