We are pleased to announce that we have made our initial investment in Yesware. Based in Boston, Yesware is a seed stage company that is developing services that connect salespeople, their email and CRM. We believe that mapping this basic relationship – between the application in which salespeople, executives, and the people who support them spend the majority of their time and the app which is used to perform key business functions – is a critical step in driving organizational efficiency and further spreading both the ubiquity and power of CRM.

Salesforce.com successfully disrupted the CRM industry by shifting CRM from heavyweight, enterprise apps like Siebel (now owned by Oracle) to lightweight, easy to deploy, cloud-based apps. As a result, CRM became a mainstream app, replacing traditional SFA (“sales force automation”) products at the low-end and seeing broad enterprise adoption at the high end.

However, as CRM evolved, tight integration with email was missing. As we observed CRM deployments in many of our investments, along with CRM deployments in much larger companies, we saw two parallel universes emerging for a salesperson. A salesperson would spend their day in their email system – typically Outlook or Gmail – and then spend some time at the end of the day (often an hour or more) updating information in their CRM system. If the sales organization was disciplined, the process, while inefficient, was effective. However, if the sales organization wasn’t disciplined, over time the CRM system was garbage, as it was widely divergent from what was actually happening and well-represented in the email system.

While most CRM applications have paid lip service to email integration over the years, a short conversation with virtually any salesperson or sales leader will quickly validate that there is a functional disconnect between the two. As CRM systems continue to evolve, especially along the enterprise social computing dimension, focus on this integration continues to take a back seat. As a result, we think there is a huge opportunity for an application that once and for all provides the glue between CRM and email.

We are very excited to be working with the founding team of Matthew Bellows, Cashman Andrus and Raj Bhargava. We met Matthew and Cashman through an introduction from Raj, and entrepreneur we’ve worked with many times over the past 17 years. Raj was working on a similar concept and decided to team up with Matthew and Cashman to form Yesware.

We are also psyched to be working with Rich Miner and Google Ventures on another investment. Rich has been a good friend, a great mentor for TechStars, and a superb co-investor in Trada with us.

Yesware’s first product is available now. If you are a Gmail and Chrome user, download it today and try it out. You and your sales team will be glad you did.

Today we’re happy to announce that Federated Media Publishing has acquired Foundry Group portfolio company Lijit Networks. The deal is a great outcome for the company and its investors. As part of the transaction, Foundry Group Partner Seth Levine will join the Federated Media board of directors and Todd Vernon (Lijit’s CEO and founder) and Walter Knapp (Lijit’s COO) will take on senior operating roles at the combined business (both will report directly to Federated’s CEO Deanna Brown).

Lijit has built up an impressive business by focusing on providing web publishers with tools to better engage with, understand, track and ultimately derive revenue from their site visitors. Through Lijit’s search, analytics and insight products, a rapidly growing number of publishers are discovering more about their users and finding new and better ways to engage with them. Federated brings a similar passion for publishers to the combined entity (powering “the best of the independent web”). And together we think the two businesses provide a broad set of tools and monetization capabilities to their combined over 77,000 publishers.

You can read more about the transaction from All Things D, The Lijit Press Release or the Federated Media Press Release. Seth also has a post up on his blog about the combination as does John Battelle and Todd Vernon.

Please join us in congratulating Todd, Walter and the rest of the Lijit team on this significant milestone for the business.

Today, Foundry Group, a venture capital firm investing in seed and early stage US-based technology companies, premiered a documentary film illustrating through complex metaphors and stunning montages the secret lives of venture capitalists which has been rarely seen or understood, until now.  Set amidst a backdrop of a highly competitive investment environment, the film follows four venture capitalists as they explore the intense relationships between themselves and the entrepreneurs in which they invest. While these relationships are critical to the long-term health of the start-up ecosystem, the VCs chose to communicate only through song and interpretative dance.

The film, entitled “I’m a VC”, is an in-depth, hard-hitting, and emotionally charged look into the human struggle of four venture capitalists trying to make the world a better place. Starring Foundry Group Managing Directors Seth Levine, Ryan McIntyre, Brad Feld, and Jason Mendelson, the film gives insight into the difficult issues venture capitalists face every day, making decisions that impact the lives of many, but perhaps most importantly, their own.  The film leaves no stone unturned and delves into topics that few understand, such as determining lunch selections, competing with friends and family for deal flow, and feeling insecure about their choice of college education.

In speaking about the challenges of getting into character, Seth Levine struggled to find his words, “It was particularly hard for me to admit on camera that I had not attended Stanford, Harvard or MIT,” says Levine. “It has always made me feel a bit inadequate as a venture capitalist.  But I’m working through it.  Playing this role and spending three months growing a beard for it really shouts to the world that I can do anything!”

The film is incredibly timely, as it provides a transparent look into how early-stage VCs are dealing with increasing valuations and intense competition that comes with investing in new startups. McIntyre noted “Seeing my seven year old son pitch his company at a $20 million pre-money valuation to me was tough to take.  I thought I would at least get a family discount.”  Ultimately, Foundry Group lost the deal to a west coast-based VC firm who offered a much higher price and allowed McIntyre’s son to take some money off the table in the financing, enabling him to purchase the entire Lego Star Wars product line and a 64GB 3G iPad 2.

The film was sponsored by the new book “Venture Deals:  Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist” written by Feld and Mendelson.

“I am honored to have our book associated with such an important piece of American film making,” said Feld. “I was thrilled that I could find time to play this role between all my other speaking engagements and marathons. And don’t forget to buy my other book – Do More Faster.”

When Mendelson (who wrote and directed the film) was asked why the video was produced, he initially refused to comment, citing attorney / client privilege, but then had a change of heart and offered the following:   “It’s been a decade since the balance of power shifted permanently from VCs to entrepreneurs and few people noticed.  This film is a wake up call to the start-up ecosystem.  VCs have real problems.  We have feelings, too.”

The film was shot on location over a two day period in downtown Boulder in June of 2011.  The vision came together after months of writing, composing, and choreography in Mendelson’s home studio, but remarkably with no rehearsals whatsoever.  The cast was just that talented.

***** No entrepreneurs were harmed in the making of this film.*****

We are pleased to announce that we have completed our initial investment in Sympoz,.  Sympoz, located in Denver, CO, creates enthusiast communities at the intersection of education, publishing, social and commerce, which inspire and educate enthusiasts while enabling experts to grow and monetize their followings.

Our distribution theme, including our investments in Zynga and Cheezburger, has shown us that delivering engaging content on a vast distribution network can make for a compelling company.  One of the secrets of these companies’ success is spending relatively small amounts on content, over many different verticals and subject matters, and not relying on a “hits driven” content business.

We’ve been continuing to look for companies that fit this mold.  The idea of owning content, across many major subject matters, on a large network, where content creation costs are relatively low is appealing to us.  As part of this model, it is important to invest in management teams that understand the analytics driving the business extremely well. We feel strongly that these types of companies are best served by management teams that are led by business people with strong operating backgrounds.

Sympoz is creating the type of company described above around the enthusiasts and experts market.  Enthusiasts have an insatiable desire to connect with experts and fellow enthusiasts to learn, inspire, buy, sell and trade against their areas of passion.  The subject matter can be anything from wine tasting to knitting to music to health and wellness and beyond.

In these areas of passion there are many experts.  These experts struggle to monetize their expertise because they are not adept at digital content production, technology development or marketing and lack a platform with which to leverage their expertise.

In short, there is a large disconnect in the market which represents billions of dollars in lost opportunity. Sympoz’s highly differentiated and interactive platform uses video, chat, forums, social media, and gamification techniques to create and market these marketplaces.  They create highly targeted and specific content for enthusiasts, while giving a web presence to experts who otherwise would not have a digital content outlet.

We have known the founding team for a few years and have been really impressed with their success and vision to date and are excited to begin to work with them more closely.

Oh yeah – they are hiring too.  Please check out their hiring page. And no, they aren’t all engineering jobs, either.

We are excited to announce that we’ve led a $10 million financing in MakerBot Industries, a Brooklyn, NY-based company that has developed the first low cost commercial 3D printer.

While 3D printing technology has been around for a while, to date it has been limited to high-end industrial printers costing between $10,000 and $500,000. While the applications of 3D printing are very broad and extremely compelling, the cost and complexity of the products and process has limited the application of 3D printing.

Over the past decade, the DIY (or “do it yourself”) phenomenon has resulted in an increasing number of people using 3D printing technology. Until recently, if you wanted to print a 3D object, you borrowed a high-end machine or sent a design to an outsourcing firm that did 3D printing on demand. Several years ago, three hackers – Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer, and Zach Smith – teamed up and created the first open source 3D printer, known as the MakerBot Cupcake. While the Cupcake needed to be assembled by hand, it was a unique product that enabled anyone to own a 3D printer for around $1,000.

The Cupcake generated a wave of excitement among DIY hackers and the analogy was made between early personal computers such as the MITS Altair 8800 or the Healthkit H8 and the Apple II – namely that the Cupcake resembled the H8, and in a few years a 3D printer analogous to the Apple II would be created.

A similar analogy is at play in the laser printer market. The laser printer was invented by Xerox in 1969 but didn’t gain mass-market adoption until 1984 when HP created the Laserjet. As with the Apple II, the HP Laserjet marked the beginning of the creation of an enormous market for a new technology.

Last year, MakerBot came out with their second generation product, the Thing-O-Matic. At the same time, they’ve created an incredible community of 3D designs called Thingiverse. And they are hard at work on their third generation printer.

We believe MakerBot has the potential to be the Apple or HP of the 3D printing market and are honored that we get to be part of the effort.