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.

It’s no surprise that early-stage boards aren’t as diverse as they could be, but we were surprised to see that today, only ⅓ of companies have independent directors. Today, 85% of directors on Foundry direct portfolio company boards are White, and 57% of our companies currently have open board seats. As such, there is a real opportunity to build a more diverse pipeline of independent director candidates for our founders and CEOs.

We believe that increasing diversity at the most senior levels is a critical business objective, and this starts with measuring where you stand today. That’s why Foundry partnered with Bolster in this important research and as a talent partner, and had over 50 Foundry portfolio company CEOs and 10 partner funds participate in this study.

Today, the Foundry Network spans 38 VC firms (our ‘Partner Funds’) and 1500+ companies (this doesn’t include the 2,000+ companies that have graduated from a Techstars Accelerator Program). Think about it: If half of those companies also have open board roles, that means our firm has direct or indirect influence into more than 750 open board seats.

We know our network is vast and that’s why we need to do our part to promote positive change on a bigger scale. To help us do this, our partnership with Bolster will diversify our networks as a whole and allow us to share meaningful data and insights across our entire network. This means knowing when and where the opportunities are for each board, in real-time, and then connecting these vacancies to vetted talent each and every time.

That is why we encourage you to fill out a member profile on Bolster at this link. Similarly, if you are an executive interested in independent board roles or know someone who would make a fantastic independent board member, please direct them to the Bolster platform and have them participate.

We all know diverse companies perform better, and through our collective efforts, we can do our part to influence the way board rooms ​will ​look in 2021 and beyond.

You can read Bolster’s full report here. 

About Bolster: Bolster is an on-demand executive talent marketplace that helps accelerate companies’ growth by connecting them with experienced executives for interim, fractional, advisory, project-based, or independent board roles. Their network today includes 3,500 executives and 700 CEO clients and includes nearly 50 membership partners that refer talented professionals from diverse backgrounds to the platform. Bolster also provides on-demand executives with software and services to help them manage their careers as independent consultants and provides startup and scaleup CEOs with software and content to help them assess, benchmark and diversify their leadership teams and boards. For more information, visit bolster.com.

We are pleased to share Foundry Group’s investment in Starting Line. Founded in 2018 by Ezra Galston, and headquartered in Chicago, Starting Line leads seed-stage rounds for consumer startups building products and services for the 99% economy – companies that leverage technology to be cheaper and better, open up access, and, ultimately, expand markets.

We’ve been a fan of Ezra’s for years, dating back to before he left Chicago Ventures. Seth was a formal advisor to his first fund and will continue in that capacity – working closely with Ezra and this expanding (and fantastic) team at Starting Line. This has given us a unique perspective on the fund as we’ve watched them grow from an experiment to a uniquely positioned, early-stage venture fund. We’re particularly proud of what the team is building and the niche they’re carving out for themselves in Chicago.

Ezra is joined at Starting Line by Partner Haley Kwait Zollo, an early Trunk Club employee, and two Venture Partners, Formstack founder Ade Olonoh and Scott Holloway, who led many of Instacart’s growth initiatives as their tenth employee and whom collectively bring deep Chicago startup experience to the team. Their first fund includes early winners such as Cameo, Made In, Soona, and Unchained Capital, all of whom count Starting Line amongst their earliest backers and board members.

Knowing that technology had the potential to deliver access to information across a wide range of demographics, Starting Line developed a platform to invest in products and services available to a broad range of Americans, what they refer to as the “99% American”. These investments include Airvet, Chowbus, Flyhomes, Hitch, Hungryroot, and Schoolhouse, and overlap with Foundry’s Marketplace theme. Starting Line shares Foundry Group’s values and we are thrilled to begin our formal partnership with them as they support founders who bring value to everyday Americans.