Sometimes we come across a company that we know is going to change the world. They’ve got something magic in the tank that’s simply inevitable. It’s like they’re travelling back in time and building something that that in the future will be considered obvious. That’s Mozaik.
Brad will join the board with this Series B financing and we couldn’t be more excited to work alongside Mara and James as they reshape the financial ecosystem. Mozaik fits squarely into our Glue theme as they are building technology that scrapes and vets the entire digital world of finance and stitches the pieces back together in a more rational way. Just as Twitter has reshaped social movements, Mozaik will transform our ongoing battle against corruption and fraud. Who knows, maybe one day it can automatically produce financial reports so that we don’t need to use accountants or auditors anymore.
At Foundry Group, we love backing young first time entrepreneurs. We’re thrilled to see where Mara and James take Mozaik. You can find out more about them here, and even more here.
Finally, Mara runs almost as much as Brad does so hopefully a marathon is in order soon.
FG Angels Invests in Uvize
We’re excited to announce our latest FG Angels investment: Uvize.
Uvize provides schools with an innovative software platform that their helps military veterans succeed in college. They partner with universities to deliver an online extension to their veterans center. The community site is a essentially a network that connects students with the right veteran classmate, mentor, or advisor when they need it.
Uvize also delivers incoming veterans academic orientation and preparation classes in an amazing online environment. Building skills and community before school starts increases the success rate of veterans. Uvize is founded by military veterans and a college educator.
An estimated 85% of military veterans currently fail to graduate college. This represents billions in lost revenues to schools, but also a huge social cost as well. Uvize aims to change that statistic.
CEO David Cass and Jason have know each other for years through a mutual friend. CTO David Parker was a former student in Jason’s class that he teaches at the University of Colorado Law School. Jason was a mentor to Uvize during their participation in the Techstars Kaplan program last year.
Welcome Davids!
FG Angels Invests in RABBL
We’re excited to announce our latest FG Angels investment. We continue to review a large number of opportunities, and our FG Angels Syndicate recently closed a $339,631 seed investment in RABBL.
RABBL is a social booking platform, which enables bands and fans to market and pre-sell tickets to potential shows, and, once critical mass is achieved, broker an agreement with a venue to host the show.
On the front end of the product — the “social” part — fans and artists use RABBL to prove demand for potential shows. This lets artists find opening acts, helps artists get into festivals and new venues, and lets a fan invite and convince an artist to come play the fan’s town by proving demand.
On the back end of the product, artists use RABBL to book shows with RABBL partner venues and elsewhere. That’s easy to do, since at that point the venue or festival has dramatically less risk.
RABBL is taking the risk out of the live music business, with a mission to make more music happen, more profitably and more efficiently. The New York Times provided some nice coverage of RABBL last September.
We’re looking forward to working with RABBL to change the way fans, artists, and venues book shows!
We’ve just invested in Drync – FG Angels
We are excited to announce our fourth FG Angels investment in Drync – who have raised $434K from our FG Angels syndicate.
Drync builds a smartphone application that bridge the gap between experiencing wine and being able to catalogue and purchase it. The company likes to call this “impulse commerce for wine.” With their application, one can scan any wine bottle, immediately have the wine identified and priced for instant purchase or review. Currently Drync has a database of over two million wines.
As wine nerds, we’ve spent too much time taking pictures of great wines and never having the time or the ability to truly follow up on our passions. If you are a wine lover, you will love this app. With the funds raised, they are going to add a lot of great new features. Enjoy!
FG Press and Our First Book – Uncommon Stock
Last week we formally launched a new publishing company, FG Press.
Our first book – Uncommon Stock: Version 1.0 by Eliot Peper was released yesterday. It’s in a new genre we are helping pioneer called “startup fiction.” We believe that life often imitates fiction (or is it the other way around) and one can learn as much from a great novel as they can from a dry, boring business book.
By that point we’d realized that writing about entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation was something we cared a lot about. Brad started a new series called Startup Revolution and now has four books in the series.
At some point, we realized we’d had enough of working with a traditional publisher. Our friends at Wiley were good to us but there are so many things that can be improved in the relationship with author, reader, and publisher. So, we decided to create our own publishing company.
We’ve got a steady stream of projects in the works. They’ll all be about entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation. They’ll be non-fiction, fiction, science fiction, and professional development. Our goal is to publish great books and help authors and readers develop a significant, long-lasting relationship.
Oh – and have some fun in the process while helping shake up an industry that badly needs shaking.
