Are you looking for unique and cool holiday gifts? Maybe stay-at-home orders have you looking to treat yourself to something new and fun?
Our 2020 Holiday Gift Guide highlights Foundry’s direct investments, as well as our partner funds’ portfolio companies, and it has something for everyone on your list. We categorized all of our offerings to help you zero in on what you need easily.
Happy Holidays from your friends at Foundry Group!
Our Investment in ColdQuanta
We are excited to announce our Series A investment in ColdQuanta, alongside Maverick Ventures, Global Frontier Investments, and LCP Quantum Partners. ColdQuanta, based in our own backyard here in Boulder, Colorado, is the market leader in commercializing quantum atomics. Their Quantum Core™ technology is based on ultra-cold atoms: lasers cool atoms to nearly absolute zero, and manipulate and control them with a high level of precision. This core technology has broad applications in quantum computing and beyond.
ColdQuanta manufactures components, instruments, and turnkey systems that address a broad spectrum of applications: quantum computing, quantum timekeeping, quantum signal processing, and quantum communications.
The company’s origins come from decades of research in ultra-cold atomic physics by founder and CTO Dana Anderson, and his work at JILA, formerly known as the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics. He is joined by CEO and President, Bo Ewald, and Paul Schroeter, COO, who leads ColdQuanta’s R&D, operations, and engineering teams.
ColdQuanta is one of the few companies in the world who can claim to have their hardware survive the rigors of launch and be operational aboard the International Space Station, and has recently announced the availability of Albert, a system enabling researchers to create, manipulate, and measure quantum matter via the cloud.
ColdQuanta’s years of experience developing and deploying real-world cold-atom quantum devices, Bo’s deep background in supercomputing and quantum computing, and Dana’s world-class scientific achievements led us to want to be part of the ColdQuanta mission to power the coming quantum information age.
Foundry Is Hiring: Head of Network
We’re looking for a leader to create a more robust, dynamic, and connected network program at Foundry Group. The Foundry Network, as we’ve been calling it, encompasses founders, CEOs, executives, general partners of our underlying venture capital fund investments, limited partners (our investors as well as other investors in the funds we have investments in), and other members of our ecosystem. We regularly bring together members of this community to connect, share, and learn from each other.
We know we’re just scratching the surface for how powerful this network can be. We’re looking for someone with the vision, background, experience, and skills to help us form the next chapter for The Foundry Network and to continue to grow and adapt how we work with our ecosystem in ways that support and empower our portfolio of companies and VC funds.
ABOUT US Foundry Group is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology companies and venture fund managers. Our passion is working alongside entrepreneurs to give birth to new technologies and to build those technologies into industry-leading companies. We also seek to leverage our experience and relationships as fund managers to help the next generation of venture firms create industry-leading investment businesses. We invest in companies and funds across North America.
SOME INITIAL THOUGHTS ON THE DETAILS OF THE POSITION We’ve put a lot of thought into the development of our network and need help taking it into the future. Below are a few ideas we have about this position and the future of The Foundry Network. We’re looking for someone who can help us craft the vision, not just execute on ours. So take this as a rough draft.
As Head of Network you will participate in our weekly partner meetings and be a member of the senior team, which includes our CFO and General Counsel as well as all of the Foundry Group partners. You’ll have access to and know pretty much everything that’s taking place across The Network and our portfolio. At its core, this role will help strengthen connections between the people with whom we work- we believe strongly in mesh networks, not hub and spoke models. We are also excited to continue to expand The Network and the work we do in this area, such as in talent sourcing, data sharing, and community support.
We’ve historically engaged our network through active digital communication channels, in-person events, virtual events, webinars, and small group meet-ups. Many of these we’ll likely want to continue. Some we may together decide don’t further our key goals any more and will stop doing. And, most importantly, there are opportunities to expand beyond the base that we’ve created to support our portfolio in new and creative ways.
A LITTLE ABOUT YOU It’s hard to put into words exactly what we’re looking for because the right person for this role could come from a number of different professional backgrounds. But there are a few things that we know will be important to success in this role and our firm culture.
This is a relationship-centric role and we are looking for someone who has a demonstrated aptitude for building and maintaining professional relationships. You have built your own network and are driven by helping others succeed and connecting the dots between people and companies. You have connections in and around the tech industry and have interacted with executives at a senior level in prior jobs and experiences.
At Foundry, we are not top-down managers. Our Head of Network will need to be comfortable working independently and own this core functionality of our business You will be included in and supported by the core team, but the role is primarily self-directed. While we will provide input and help you understand our goals for The Network, there is a lot of room for creativity and expansion.
In addition to creativity and vision, the ability to execute and achieve high-quality outputs are imperative for success in this role. Every senior role at Foundry – including our partners – is an individual contributor. We work collaboratively and in close coordination with one-another, but we do our own work and, while we have people on board to help with implementing events, much of the work of the Head of Network will be not just coming up with ideas, but seeing them through personally.
We live by a #givefirst mentality at Foundry, and we hope you can show us how you’ve done the same.
Finally, we want to be clear that this role isn’t a pathway to an investment role at Foundry. We want you to be excited about this role and this position. We think it’s a great opportunity to work alongside us as we continue to build out the Foundry Network.
EXPERIENCE There is not one particular background that fits this role and we are open to candidates across the board. Given the autonomy of the role, we believe an individual with at least 7 years of professional work experience and who has previously held a senior level role will thrive. We’re focused on how your experiences drive your interest in this position and how they will contribute to your success in this role and at Foundry.
SOME DETAILS Our firm is based in Boulder, but we’re open to you living anywhere, so long as (once travel resumes) you’re able to be here from time to time (most of our in person events are in Boulder, for example). This is a senior position and will be compensated as such. Additionally, we offer a generous benefits package (fully paid health insurance, along with a number of other benefits).
Foundry Group is an equal opportunity employer. We strongly encourage and seek applications from candidates of all backgrounds and identities, across race, color, ethnicity, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, martial status, pregnancy or parental status, or disability. We are committed to creating a supportive and inclusive workplace.
NEXT STEPS If you’ve read this post and think, “this is me!”, we’d love to hear from you. Please feel free to be creative and choose a medium that allows you to express yourself and give us a sense for whether you are a fit for this role. To apply, please submit your application materials to apply@foundrygroup.com. We’d love to hear from you by the end the day on Friday, November 6, 2020 if you’d like to be considered. If you can, please tell us how you learned of this opportunity (who or what pointed you to this post?).
Foundry’s Newest Partner: Jaclyn Hester
We are thrilled to share the news that Foundry Group has a new partner. She’s someone many of you who are close to the firm already know: Jaclyn Hester.
We think of partners in the very literal sense of the word – someone whom we trust and work with in partnership; someone whose judgement and wisdom we rely upon; someone who embodies the values and the work ethic that we try to exemplify at Foundry. In the life of a venture firm – especially a small one like Foundry – new partners are few and far between. It’s an important decision and one that we don’t take lightly. For Jaclyn, who joined us in 2016, it’s deserved and well earned.
Jaclyn joined us after a few years of life in big law firms, where she worked on everything from startup formation and financing to large M&A processes. She first caught the entrepreneurship bug during graduate school at CU Boulder, and immersed herself in the local startup community, serving as the Executive Director of Startup Colorado. She has also lived the startup life with her husband, the inimitable Anders, and their family’s boot-strapped tour and activity software company that was successfully acquired in 2018 by Booking.com. These experiences combined with Jaclyn’s warm, extroverted, empathetic personality and her natural instincts, curiosity, and analytical prowess made her a great fit for venture and for Foundry. We were lucky to have her join us just as we raised our first Foundry Group Next (“FG Next”) fund.
Jaclyn has always been a key member of our team as we refined our strategy and built out FG Next’s portfolio of partner funds and direct investments. She has seen the successes and challenges of being a VC and understands the commitment of time and energy it takes not only to invest but to support portfolio companies as they grow, thrive, and sometimes struggle. She’s seen good exits and disappointing misses, celebrating positive outcomes with founders and consoling others.
In addition to the Foundry DNA, Jaclyn has had the advantage of exposure to many other venture firms. In her first few years at Foundry, she focused on working with Lindel to build out our partner fund portfolio and has been integral in constructing our portfolio of world-class managers. Many VCs grow up in one fund, perhaps jumping to two or three over the course of their career. Jaclyn has had the privilege to partner with and learn from more than 30 firms, and spend time with countless others.
In our role as a GP that also invests in other funds, we seek to help our partner fund managers build their own businesses and to partner with them on direct investments. This enables and requires a closer relationship than with traditional LPs. We often serve as a friendly sounding board for fund strategy, portfolio construction, fundraising, and individual deal positioning at entry and exit. As with founders in our portfolio, we’re often the first call for our partner funds when they’re facing a challenging situation or critical decision. We seek to collaborate across all elements, sharing our own successes and mistakes, while engaging with our partners to constantly learn and evolve as the venture landscape changes. Jaclyn has been in the middle of these conversations since day one and has become a trusted partner and advisor across the FG Next portfolio.
We consistently think about the world in terms of networks. Jaclyn’s super power, or “Zone of Genius,” as her Kauffman Fellows classmates would call it, is building trusted relationships. She has created her own network of peers, friends, and collaborators across the industry, especially amongst the next generation of VCs. She has earned a reputation for being a helpful advisor to emerging managers as they think about fundraising and firm-building. Through her network and unique perspective, Jaclyn brings valuable data, gleaned insights, and exciting investment opportunities to our partnership.
Howdy, Partner!
Our Investment in Elevate Security
We are pleased to announce our recent investment in Elevate Security. We invested alongside our partner fund, Costanoa Ventures, and our friends at Defy. Based in Berkeley, California, Elevate is a human risk management platform for the enterprise. It empowers CISOs and their teams to leverage powerful, data-driven insights to influence employees to make better security decisions across the enterprise.
As many of us have unfortunately experienced, the biggest security risk in a company is employees. Over 90% of security breaches are caused by human error such as compromised credentials in a phishing attack, accidentally uploading sensitive information, or using weak passwords. These actions increase risk to the enterprise and are often termed as human risk. Elevate is building the first ever human risk management platform for enterprise, enabling customers to measure, influence, and reduce human risk to strengthen their company’s defense against the next cyberattack.
Elevate leverages security logs and employee data already available within the enterprise to deliver human risk insights from the organization level, to the departmental level, and down to the individual. Armed with this insight, CISOs are in a better position to optimize their security technology spend, focus their monitoring and detection capabilities on the high risk groups, and strengthen their overall cyber defense strategy. When it comes to paying back debts the Iva advice can help with writing off the loans.
Founders Robert Fly and Masha Sedova started Elevate after several years of leading the security team at Salesforce. They saw the need for a platform that focused on human risk factors as a key part of a strong cyber defense strategy. They recognized that spending on technology alone did not protect the enterprise and without the insights into human risk, enterprises were left with a blind spot when it came to the risk posed by employees’ everyday security decisions. Elevate’s goal is to provide critical insights to empower CISOs to quantify human risk as part of their cyber risk management, reduce this risk through consistent and personalized nudges to employees, and communicate more effectively to the board and their peers.
We were introduced to Elevate by our partner fund, Costanoa Ventures, who led the company’s seed round. We were excited by their unique and impactful approach to building an enterprise security solution rooted in human insights. Elevate fits in our Glue theme, alongside enterprise solutions like Pantheon, Helpscout, and Quiq. You can read more about Elevate and the financing here.
