Today, our friends at Matchstick Ventures announced their newest fund, Fund III, and we are thrilled to partner with them again. Ryan Broshar and Natty Zola are long-time friends and collaborators with us (you can read about that here), and we couldn’t be happier to share news about their continuing success. They are serial entrepreneurs and Techstars alumni, and we’ve invested alongside them in a number of companies including Stackhawk, Ordermark, and Spekit. 

With this new fund, Matchstick will continue its focus on software-oriented companies based in the Rockies and North regions of the United States at the pre-seed and seed stage. In addition to providing funding, they will roll out a new initiative called Matchstick Strikers, a network of experts to help companies create community, scale efficiently, attract great talent, build diverse and sustainable workplace cultures, and raise additional capital. 

We admire Ryan and Natty for their commitment to walking the talk. Over 30% of the portfolio companies in their last fund are impact companies, which they define as companies that we believe will generate a measurable, beneficial social or environmental impact alongside financial returns. In addition, over half of their portfolio companies are led by at least one underrepresented founder. As members of Pledge 1%, they will donate 1% of Fund III’s returns to local nonprofits. We love to see our partner funds showing such great leadership.

Matchstick is a great example of our network-driven model of investing, and we look forward to continuing our close partnership with them in this new fund. Congratulations, Ryan and Natty! You can read more about their new fund here and here.

People like stuff. Objects hold deep meaning for us, and they provide us with a vehicle for connecting with others and building community. Manifestations of this that quickly come to mind are classic car clubs and vintage guitar forums on the internet. Many objects that capture people’s imaginations have seen their value buoyed by the communities that surround them, so much so that many enthusiasts are no longer able to afford to participate by purchasing them. This is definitely true of sports cards, a nearly $14 billion dollar market worldwide. A 1909 T206 Honus Wagner card sold for over $3 million in 2016, and a Tom Brady rookie card sold for $1.3 million last spring. High price tags, even for the most avid (and wealthy) sport fans. Enter Dibbs.

Dibbs is democratizing access to the world’s most collectible sports cards through tokenized, fractional ownership. Built on blockchain technology, Dibbs creates a non-fungible token (NFT) for each physical card on the platform, and allows users to collect fractional tokens representing partial ownership of the NFT. This allows collectors with virtually any budget to acquire cards previously inaccessible to them. Once a user accumulates 100% ownership of an NFT, they can take possession of the card at any time. Athlete-focused and fan-centric, Dibbs is an accessible and intuitive way for its users to build player collections for their favorite athletes. With easy-to-use mobile and web apps and real-time transaction capabilities, Dibbs is revolutionizing sports card collecting for both legacy collectors and a new generation just getting started.

Evan is a lifelong card enthusiast, and he has spent his career working with a variety of digital assets. After helping launch the WAX blockchain and partnering with iconic collectibles brand, Topps, he saw a tremendous opportunity to reinvent an archaic industry that was unnecessarily cumbersome on the data and cost side. 

We appreciate Dibbs’ scrappy sensibility and how their technology links the physical world to the digital. When our friend, Eric Paley, from our partner fund, Founder Collective, introduced us to the team with an eye toward us leading their Series A round, we were thrilled. Our friends at Courtside Ventures (with whom we are close as well) participated as well; it served as validation for our enthusiasm. And then when we found out that one of our portfolio CEOs, Will Ahmed, in addition to our Mobius colleague, Gary Rieschel, were also investors, we were convinced that our partnership with Dibbs was meant to be. This is a great example of how we like to leverage our extensive network of partner funds (and other friends of Foundry) to find great companies. 

Dibbs’ Series A was rounded out by Tusk Ventures and a syndicate of professional athletes including Chris Paul, DeAndre Hopkins, Kevin Love, Kris Bryant, and Skylar Diggins-Smith. We love to see their commitment to new ways to interact with their fans. You can read more about Dibbs here.

We are pleased to announce our recent Series A investment in Mandolin, made alongside our partner fund High Alpha Capital, and co-led by 645 Ventures, with Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures joining the round as well. Mandolin, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, is revolutionizing the way that musicians connect with their fans by creating unforgettable experiences in a digital format. 

Prior to COVID-19, live concert performances were a $2 trillion market, and that revenue evaporated overnight as the pandemic shut down live music. Artists, promoters, and venues scrambled to find new ways of reaching their audiences, and Mandolin’s Livestreaming platform enabled artists to continue to bring live performances to their fan bases virtually during the height of the pandemic.

Mandolin provides a reliable, high- quality, turnkey solution for artists looking to produce fully virtual or hybrid live/virtual events. The pandemic accelerated adoption of livestreaming by artists and venues, and we believe fans now expect all concerts to be digitally simulcast. 

Importantly, livestreaming of concerts presents additional monetization opportunities to artists and venues. To date, Mandolin has hosted more than 1500 shows for over 300,000 fans, and has partnered with some amazing institutions like The Ryman Auditorium, Tibet House US, and City Winery.

Mandolin CEO Mary Kay Huse’s prior roles as a senior executive at Salesforce and ExactTarget means she fundamentally understands the value data and analytics can bring to fan engagement, and Mandolin’s platform can offer unprecedented data and insights about their fans to artists, venues, and their management.

We look forward to working with Mandolin CEO Mary Kay Huse, 645 Ventures, and our partner fund High Alpha to help Mandolin transform how live music is experienced and consumed.

Further coverage appears at TechCrunch and Billboard.

We are pleased to announce our recent Series A investment in Deduce, made alongside our partner fund, True Ventures. Deduce is a fraud prevention tool that helps its customers prevent user account takeover and new registration fraud. Most fraud prevention products rely on data solely from an individual customer’s web site. This approach is fine for massive enterprises with sprawling web presences, but there isn’t enough data in most small- and mid- size companies’ web sites to be meaningful. Deduce’s unique Identity Network uses data sensors on over 150,000 web sites serving hundreds of millions of daily users to create a massive, real-time authenticated user network, discerning real users from dangerous actors attempting to take over user accounts. 

Identity fraud is a $30 billion per year problem, and the costs associated with managing account takeover alone are expected to triple over the next four years. Deduce’s products protect user accounts by identifying risk at account creation, authenticating users, and detecting fraudulent account changes, ultimately preventing the key source of purchase fraud and chargebacks. Their Alerts product prompts users to confirm that they initiated transactions associated with their accounts. Their new Insights product increases digital identity telemetry to provide an advance warning of fraudulent behavior before it affects a company’s customers. Deduce delivers this powerful capability utilizing its massive data network, which will only grow as they onboard new customers.

CEO, Ari Jacoby, aptly describes himself as having “a heritage in identity and cybersecurity,” and we couldn’t agree more. He and his CTO, Jeff Weisberg, worked together at VoiceStar (acquired by Marchex), Solve Media (acquired by Adiant), and Circulate (acquired by LiveRamp). They are joined by Robert Panasiuk, VP of Product, who is an alumnus of NuData Security and Mastercard. Together, this team has the API- and cybersecurity experience to deliver an exceptionally effective product to their customers.

Deduce falls into our Glue theme. We were introduced to them by Adam D’Augelli at True Ventures. We are thrilled to again partner with our good friends at True Ventures to back Ari and his team as they build enterprise- grade cybersecurity for businesses of all sizes.

You can read more about Deduce’s round and their new Insights product here.

We are pleased to announce our recent investment in Recount Media’s Series B financing. We led the round with our partner funds, Union Square Ventures and True Ventures, also participating. Founded in 2019 by journalist John Heilemann and media veteran John Battelle, Recount Media is a leading media platform that produces high-quality content across a suite of digital, social, audio, and experiential products at the intersection of politics, business, and culture.

Recount is disrupting the way that news is produced and distributed. They combine the power of a podcast network with streaming content, short form pieces for social media, and a traditional newsletter to meet users where they are with targeted news that they can trust. Their goal is to redefine the business of news and journalism with an understanding of the impact that it has on our society. Although the company was only formed two years ago, their flagship title, The Recount, is already outperforming many legacy digital news brands in terms of engagement and views. 

We have known John Battelle for many years and began working closely with him when he took over as Chairman at Sovrn, another Foundry portfolio company, back in 2014. He and John Heilemann have gathered together a team of industry leaders with deep background in new media. We’ve been excited with the traction that they are getting in the market and enthusiastic about their opportunities for further growth.

Recount falls into our Distribution theme. We are thrilled to partner with them as they work to fix what’s broken in the news business.