In February I joined Foundry as an Investor to identify and evaluate investment opportunities in our Partner Fund portfolios and continue to grow Foundry’s network of entrepreneurs and investors. I wanted to introduce myself and share what led me here. Curiosity, resourcefulness, and patience.

The pandemic brought on a lot of reflection for me like many others. On July 7, 2020, I began writing about why I wanted to invest. For a few years leading up to this point, I often wondered if my startup experience and eventually my product management experience could be helpful to founders and their teams. I decided I wanted to leverage my unique path and perspective to increase accessibility and be a resource. The more digging I did, I began to learn of other operators who had transitioned into VC. And hearing Lo Toney share his belief that product management was the best path to VC was a confidence boost as well.

I studied biology in college and spent the first decade of my career in life sciences across sales, systems consulting, and tech. The latter half of that time provided so much exposure to career avenues I didn’t know existed. In July 2013, I relocated from Los Angeles (home) to Silicon Valley to be the first “non-technical” hire at a 12-person startup, Comprehend Systems (acquired by Saama Technologies, Inc). In my first week in the garage (our office was in a Palo Alto garage behind a house across the street from the University Ave. Caltrain), the company announced its Series A led by Sequoia. In that moment, I didn’t fully understand the signal or the milestone but over time, as the company continued to be funded during my five-year tenure, I began to wonder how investors made these decisions. At the same time, I was exposed to product management for the first time and decided that function seemed like a great fit for me. To me, product is where business and technology meet.

Five years later to the day, I moved back to LA to join ServiceTitan as a product manager focused on growth through strategic partner integrations. The company was in hypergrowth and raised (at the time) the largest VC round in Southern California in the fall of 2018. My antennas went up again; $165M is not a light decision. The following fall of 2019 I organized and facilitated Startup Weekend South Central with a few fellow Black techies. I knew returning to LA I wanted to get plugged into the tech ecosystem, but I could not have imagined a better way to do it and didn’t anticipate the feelings of fulfillment and reward that came from the weekend. I also met some amazing people in the community and the broader tech ecosystem including some who believed I’d make a great investor.

In a little over 3.5 years at ServiceTitan, I drove and owned API-driven supply chain products partnering with business development and external industry suppliers. Outside of being a PM, I co-founded ServiceTitan’s ERG for Black employees and helped guide and support other newly formed ERGs.

I spent much of my time in the last two years as a Black Venture Institute Fellow, co-hosting virtual brunches for founders, completing VC University, as a BLCK VC Scout Network member, investing in pre-seed and seed-stage companies as part of Bonfire Ventures’ FireStarter program, and as an active member and programming lead for Black Product Managers Network (BPM). I have had so much support and encouragement in forging this path for myself. I’m energized for this next chapter of exploration, learning, and being a resource.

I am grateful and thrilled to be part of a stellar and well-respected team with shared values that likes to have fun and give first. I am based in Los Angeles and will spend lots of time in Boulder (fun fact: my brother is a CU grad!). I look forward to continuing to meet the great humans within the Foundry network. You can reach me at [email protected]. 

Special shoutout to Austin Clements of Slauson & Co. and the Bonfire Venturesteam (both are Foundry partner funds) — thank you!

Standing up and managing full stack software development teams is hard and can be expensive. Founders are faced with a near endless set of decisions when building their technology platforms. 8base is making it easier and faster to write and deploy code with its suite of low-code tools for building data models, custom logic, APIs, connections to external systems, cloud-based hosting, security, authentication, and frontend applications. Many no-code and low-code solutions are great for prototyping but don’t scale for enterprise needs. 8base offers all the benefits of low-code with the tremendous benefit of supporting scaled enterprise solutions too. 

Gartner reports that by 2024, 65% of software applications will be built using low-code tools. 8base’s API- first, three- tier, serverless architecture and compatibility with popular languages make it a great choice for developers looking for a product that will scale effectively as their teams grow.  Backend tools include a visual data schema builder, database configuration aids, and spreadsheet- like data views to give technical staff everything they need to deploy agilely. 8base also facilitates simple frontend development with a powerful drag-and-drop interface that connects to any backend.

We were introduced to 8base by Amos Schwartzfarb, Managing Director for Techstars Austin, after 8base successfully completed the Techstars Austin program. 8base Founder & CEO, Albert Santalo, is a proven entrepreneur. Prior to 8base, Albert was chairman and CEO of CareCloud. He is driven and resourceful, and he has assembled a nimble and scrappy team based in Miami, Florida. We were thrilled to have the opportunity to lead their recent Series A financing alongside Techstars, Firebrand Ventures, and 11 Tribes Ventures.

Most Americans live without an adequate financial safety net. According to a 2021 Bankrate survey, 25% have no emergency savings at all, and it’s estimated that as much as 69% of the population has less than $1,000 in savings. There are many reasons for this. Stagnant wages, increased cost of living, student loan debt, and exploding healthcare costs are all contributing factors. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated the situation. Many people with unexpected bills end up turning to credit cards or high interest, short-term loans to solve their immediate financial problems. FloatMe provides an alternative.

Launched in 2020, FloatMe offers its members interest-free, short-term “Floats” up to $50, along with overdraft protection and other financial literacy tools. For a small monthly fee ($1.99), customers can link their bank accounts to the app to track spending and contribute to savings. Floats are low-dollar amounts by design, to prevent over-borrowing, which creates a vicious cycle in which compounding interest and aggressive repayment schedules require a borrower to take the same loan repeatedly. 

Co-founder and CEO, Josh Sanchez, is deeply committed to helping people cultivate smart financial habits that build security and ultimately wealth. His personal experience with taking a bad loan that resulted in overdraft fees informs his passion for what FloatMe is building. Unlike many companies operating in the payday advance space, FloatMe’s mission is to move its members away from needing short-term loans on an ongoing basis and expand their capabilities in managing their money.

Financial wellness is a growing industry, and tech-enabled financial wellness even more so. Both individual consumers and employers are seeing the need for tools that make managing personal finances intuitive and accessible. The market for these services is expected to surpass $800M by 2024. Platforms like FloatMe that empower consumers are well-positioned to capture a meaningful share of that.

Josh has shown tremendous resourcefulness and grit in getting FloatMe off the ground. He participated in two incubators, ran an Indiegogo campaign, and was awarded a grant by Venture for America in 2019. Our recent Series A investment, made alongside ManchesterStory, Active Capital, Michal Cieplinski (Chief Business Officer, Pipe), Jordan Wright (Co-founder & CEO, Atomic), and John Henry Matos (CEO, LOOP, a Foundry portfolio company) will allow Josh to scale the team and continue to build products and services for the FloatMe community. We couldn’t be happier to partner with him as he works to make FloatMe the “Best Financial Friend” for more and more Americans in need of financial wellness.

We are passionate supporters of entrepreneurship in all its forms, and we know that we are but one option for founders looking to build their companies. In Moody’s YouTube channel, Venture Kills, and Seth’s book, The New Builders, they talk in depth about this and the huge promise that small business owners hold for the future of the American economy. So when High Alpha Studio company, Castiron, launched in October of this year, we couldn’t wait to get involved.

Castiron is enabling artisanal food creators to build their businesses with a platform that helps them create a web presence, manage sales, track inventory, and reach customers. Their blog is a crash course in how to start a culinary business, with helpful tips on pricing, SEO, and influencer marketing. Users can get started for free, with no credit card required. Castiron is tailor made for its target audience: folks who are scrappy makers, people who want to focus on their passion, and those who are new to direct-to-consumer business.

We learned about Castiron through our relationship with co-founder and CEO, Mark Josephson. Moody has known Mark for a long time through board work they did together on a non-profit consortium. We introduced Mark to our partner, High Alpha Studio, and they recruited him to co-found the company earlier this year. When we learned that they were raising a round led by another partner, Bowery Capital, we quickly engaged, despite the fact that the stage of Castiron is a little earlier than we typically invest in.

Castiron is a SaaS-enabled Marketplace investment, an area in which we have a lot of expertise. Mark is deeply devoted to the entrepreneurs he is supporting, and we could not be happier to partner with him in that effort. Small business owners have so much to offer our communities and the broader American economy, and we look forward to working with Castiron as they make the cottage food industry more accessible to makers of all kinds.

At Foundry, we’re building what we describe as a “network-first” strategy. The vast majority of our new investments come from a network of over 40 early-stage VC funds in which we are LPs. Through these investments, we are indirect investors in several thousand companies. We co-founded Techstars, which, as a worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs accelerate their businesses, has over 2,000 active portfolio companies and is making over 500 new investments each year around the world. A decade ago, I coined the term “startup community” and wrote the original book about the topic, Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City, based on the premise that building startup communities in every city in the world are an essential part of the global democratizing of entrepreneurship. Today, we have invested in Bolster, another company built fundamentally around a network premise in entrepreneurship.

Bolster is a marketplace for on-demand executive talent, which helps startup CEOs scale themselves, their leadership teams, and their boards. The Bolster marketplace matches startups with executives for interim, fractional, and advisory roles, along with board appointments and full-time jobs. Bolster also offers robust mentorship and advisory services. In addition, its unique mix of software and programming, along with its diversity partnerships, are helping investors grow their hiring networks. Since its launch in September 2020, almost 7,000 curated senior executives have joined Bolster as members, and over 1,000 founders and CEOs have joined Bolster as clients, a testament to the growing workforce trend of on-demand and flexible work opportunities that exploded with the pandemic and the mainstreaming of remote work in 2020 and 2021.

Matt Blumberg co-founded Bolster with key people from his leadership team at Return Path, High Alpha, and Silicon Valley Bank. Union Square Ventures led the early financing with participation from Costanoa Ventures. As a result, we had a front-row seat to witness Bolster’s early development as indirect investors through three partner funds (Union Square Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, and High Alpha). We have also been an active early Bolster portfolio partner, with our portfolio companies using Bolster for over 30 executive or board placements last year.

The relationships that led to the financing reinforce the premise behind Bolster’s view of a network model for talent. Return Path (Matt’s previous company) and Exact Target (the previous company of the founders of High Alpha) had a strategic relationship. Foundry, Union Square Ventures, and Costanoa were investors in Return Path. Foundry is an LP in Union Square Ventures, Costanoa, and High Alpha. SVB has been a long-time partner with Foundry and has a strategic relationship with High Alpha and Techstars. And, this is the second time around together for Matt and his co-founders, who were part of the Return Path leadership team.

We are excited to add another high-growth entrepreneurial network to the broader Foundry  network. And it’s a joy to get to work with Matt and his team again.