We are pleased to announce our investment in Vendasta’s CAD 20m financing. In connection with the financing, the company will convert a CAD 52.5m debenture to equity and subsequently have no outstanding debt. Vendasta is led by co-founder and CEO Brendan King, a multi-time entrepreneur who started the company 15 years ago.

Vendasta is a scaled B2B SaaS company that sells marketing, sales, and other software solutions to SMB customers (SaaS SMB) via a well-developed reseller channel. The SMB market is a particularly challenging one to sell to, and the venture-backed landscape is littered with companies that have tried to sell point solutions, specialized products, or proprietary solutions directly to SMB customers and have yet to scale successfully. Vendasta’s reseller channel is a key differentiating factor that has allowed it to unlock the SaaS SMB market successfully.

We got to know Vendasta through their acquisition of Yesware, one of our portfolio companies with a SaaS SMB customer base for sales enablement. After that acquisition, we began discussing Broadly, another company in our portfolio with a SaaS SMB customer base. Vendasta acquired Broadly, and soon after, we expressed interest in investing additional capital directly in Vendasta.

Vendasta is a company we think of as a Silent Killer. While not widely known in the broader venture community, Vendasta has built a sizable, unique business that solves a crucial part of the problem of selling SaaS software to SMBs. 

We are excited to be part of helping Vendasta on the next stage of its journey.

This week our friends at Springbank announced their debut fund with $35 million in capital commitments, and we are thrilled to partner with them. Courtney, Elana, and Jen were introduced to us by our partners at Union Square Ventures as they began putting together their new fund. We couldn’t be happier to share the news of their initial fund.

Springbank is an early-stage venture fund building the infrastructure to support women and working families. The companies they are backing are building the tools, products, and services that define the future of inclusive work, the new care economy, and the next wave of financial progress. They started Springbank with a singular belief that the needs of women and working families were under-estimated, under-innovated, and under-invested.  Areas like flexible and remote work, care infrastructure, women’s health, and the financial health and productivity of households have historically been viewed as “women’s issues” and therefore nice – but not need – to have.  Their perspective is that these are in fact “everyone issues” that greatly impact our society, labor markets, and economy at large. Since starting Springbank in 2019 they have partnered with incredible founders actively building for a more equal future, including: Carefull, Copper Banking, Daivergent, Dandi, Great Wrap, Guaranteed, Little Otter, PlantBaby, Season Health, Summer Health, Wellthy.

Springbank is a great example of our network-driven model of investing, and we look forward to continuing our close partnership with them. Congratulations, Courtney, Elana, and Jen! You can read more about their new fund here and here.

We are pleased to announce that we have raised a new fund to continue our network-driven investing. Foundry 2022 is a $500 million fund that invests in early-stage technology companies and early-stage venture funds. We began investing the fund in 2022 and are excited to continue partnering with founders, GPs, and LPs.

We transitioned to our network-driven strategy in 2016 with the first Foundry Next fund. Since then, we’ve had the privilege of building our partner fund portfolio, which includes a fantastic set of established and emerging early-stage investors.

In our 2018 Foundry Next fund, we fully implemented our strategy of investing 75% of our capital directly in early-stage companies and 25% in partner funds. This strategy creates a powerful risk-return model while accruing a structural advantage for direct investing. We patiently invested the 2018 fund over four years, as we had committed to our LPs when we raised it, rather than accelerating our pace and raising multiple funds of two, or even one-year durations. We continue to value time diversification, especially as we’ve seen the market shift over the past 18 months. We’ve lived through several cycles and recognize the opportunity the current environment, combined with time diversity, provides.

Since our inaugural 2007 fund, we’ve focused on several themes to guide our investing. The themes have evolved through our experiences and learning during the past 16 years. Today, our investment strategy combines our thematic lens with a network-driven approach. We are focused on companies in our partner funds’ portfolios and use our themes to identify potential investments where we can be additive partners.

The Foundry network is intentionally expansive. We have long believed that important companies can be built anywhere. With a focus on the U.S. and Canada, our national footprint gives us access to a diverse pool of talent and ideas.

We are committed to our way of practicing venture capital. We operate with a “give first” ethos. We aim to be open, conscientious, and steadfast. We care about the people with whom we work. We build community across our network, taking great pride in seeing the leaders in our portfolio help one another. We also try to have fun. We are serious investors but don’t take ourselves too seriously.

Today, Foundry has six partners: Lindel Eakman, Brad Feld, Jaclyn Hester, Seth Levine, Ryan McIntyre, and Chris Moody. Our partnership is an equal one, with each of us bringing different perspectives and strengths. We are collaborative, having developed deep personal connections that help us work individually and collectively to make the best decisions possible. 

We deeply appreciate the Limited Partners in our new fund. We have long relationships with many of our LPs, which remains a source of professional and personal pride. We are grateful to continue working on their behalf.

Finally, we want to recognize the incredible founders and GPs who have allowed us to invest in their companies and funds. We do not take lightly the great privilege of partnering with extraordinary builders and investors and are thrilled at the opportunity to continue this work.

We’re excited to announce our investment in MacroFab’s Series C financing alongside Edison Partners and BMW Ventures. MacroFab was introduced to us by our partner firm, Techstars, who participated in its seed round in 2015 and we’ve been following the company’s impressive progress ever since. MacroFab is a cloud-enabled electronics manufacturing platform built to automate and optimize the manufacturing process. The company’s platform has a modern, easy to use interface to take information directly from the customer to the manufacturing floor, enabling clients to reduce the up-front cost and complexity of getting manufacturing jobs running. This is especially relevant in today’s market as companies are looking for manufacturing solutions in the face of supply chain issues. Founded in Houston, Texas in 2013 by current Chief Product Officer, Chris Church, and Lead Electrical Designer, Parker Dillmann, MacroFab simplifies manufacturing with a software-driven approach to building electronics at scale.

We have been interested in this space for some time. The digital manufacturing market is growing, fueled by the need for redundancy and resilience from off-shore manufacturing. Macrofab addresses those challenges facing engineers, purchasers, and supply chains by bringing together the best factories in North America and production expertise thus providing seamless and transparent manufacturing from prototype to fulfillment. MacroFab’s cloud platform enables next generation manufacturing with factory elasticity, supply chain resilience, inventory management, along with better cost control and time to market. With hundreds of production lines, transparent communication, and real-time manufacturing data, MacroFab is leading the emerging digital manufacturing market. 

MacroFab’s strong executive team is led by Misha Govshteyn, who previously co-founded and built Alert Logic into one of the fastest growing companies in the security industry with over 4,000 customers, $140M+ in revenue. After serving on MarcoFab’s board, Misha joined co-founders, Chris and Parker, as the company’s CEO and has built a powerhouse team of operations, product, and marketing leaders. Their customer list includes Tesla, Amazon, Stanley Black & Decker, and Dow among many others. We are thrilled to partner with MacroFab as they build innovative solutions for electronics manufacturing and fulfillment.

I am delighted to be introducing myself as the newest member of the Foundry team. As an Investor, I will be assisting the investment team in nurturing the Foundry network of CEOs, partner funds, and investors, identifying and evaluating investment opportunities, and helping with anything else that needs to get done behind the scenes.

My first exposure to the startup world is when my dad started his own business after decades as a large-company employee. He saw a problem in the market, knew he could do things differently, make his service better than competitors, and the rest, as they say, is history. He bootstrapped the business and realized tremendous growth through hard work, long days, and unparalleled determination. Having a front-row seat to his entrepreneurial journey changed me, without me honestly realizing it at the time. I never thought of him as a founder until later in life when I could truly appreciate what that meant, but I am grateful that his entrepreneurial spirit and work ethic are rooted in my DNA.

I graduated from college with a degree in finance just in time for the financial crisis to set in. The closest thing to the banking job I was seeking at the time was in the accounting office at a Chicago auction house. Having never been to Chicago, or the Midwest for that matter, and with few other job options in such tumultuous times, I packed my car and drove west. Chicago turned out to be a great city to live in. The auction house was run very much like a scrappy startup and turned out to be a great first job for me. I was forced to think on my own, come up with creative solutions to problems, and mentally (and sometimes physically) run on all cylinders to get things done.

The next chapter led me to the University of Chicago Investment Office, managers of a $12 billion endowment and ultimately stewards of the University’s financial health. I will forever be grateful to my boss there, Loryn, who took a chance on me despite my complete lack of experience and helped guide me as my career grew over my 11 years there. A few years into my tenure at the endowment I was accepted to the part-time evening MBA program at Booth. Aside from a great education, Booth gave me a start at network building and dynamic thinking which I have been able to apply to all aspects of my life. The endowment culture rewarded my natural curiosity and creative thinking; a simple, “why do we do things this way?” resulted in collaboration, innovation, and efficiency. I credit my nature to help others and give first (shameless theft of Foundry’s motto) to my success at the University, to why I have built so many lasting relationships there, and to why I was given so many opportunities.

I helped launch the Startup Investment Program, an initiative created by the University President aimed at providing supportive capital to University-affiliated founders. My involvement in launching and running the program gave me the opportunity to meet many of the University’s countless entrepreneurs as they pitched their ideas, raised capital, and transformed and scaled their ideas into full-fledged businesses. It introduced me to the nuances of venture investing and quickly became a large part and most rewarding aspect of my job.

The latest chapter in my life was a move to the sunshine state – and obviously I mean Colorado and not Florida (fun fact: I was in Aspen when the pandemic hit and just never left!). My partner and I always say that we were some of the luckiest pandemic participants because all aspects of life converged for us in March 2020. Our relationship, jobs, friends & family, health, and housing (not a small feat in our town) just worked out. Although not without its challenges, small-town living and mountain air have done wonders for my mental and physical health. Once I started flexing my Booth-built networking muscles again, I found a huge range of really interesting people in our little mountain town who were interested in talking about literally everything. Folks I met while hiking, biking, and in the gondola line have since become good friends, professional resources, and mentors (many of whom encouraged the search that led me to Foundry). One such relationship started with a chance encounter on a bike ride and has since led to a non-profit board seat and a close friendship.

Actually, the real latest chapter is with Foundry. Foundry itself was an obvious fit given my first in-person meeting involved hiking, a dog, and an honest conversation about a mission rooted in innovation, network, and a give-first mentality. Foundry has built an impressive platform and I’m looking forward to contributing to the team with my strategic, technical, and organizational expertise. I am equally parts grateful and excited to be part of the Foundry team. I am based in Aspen and will be spending lots of time in Boulder and look forward to continuing to meet all the great humans in the Foundry network. You can reach me at meredith@foundry.vc.

Special shoutout to my UChicago endowment family for introducing me to Jaclyn and being so supportive in my transition – thank you!