INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Foundry Group, the Boulder, Colo.-based venture firm co-founded 11 years ago by startup whispererBrad Feld,has raised a $750 million seventh
fund to target early-stage and growth-stage companies, as well as to invest in other venture funds.
It sounds like — and is — alotof
money, though the firm notes that it encompasses all of its various investment strategies, whereas its last fund, a$500 millionvehicle that
it closed in 2016, was used to invest in other venture funds and growth-stage companies alone; Foundry was separately managing its
early-stage bets in a different fund.
It a little confusing, but if you really want to know the details, Feld breaks them out in a post:
For
historical reference, our early-stage funds (FG 2007, FG 2010, FG 2013, and FG 2016) are all $225 million in size
Our first early growth fund raised in 2013, Foundry Group Select, is also $225m in size
In 2016, when we raised Foundry Group Next, we approximately doubled the size of that fund to $500 million since 30% of it was going to be
invested in partner funds and 70% in early growth
So, at the beginning of 2016, we effectively raised $725 million (FG 2016 and Foundry Group Next)
Foundry Group Next 2018 is simply the combination of those two funds rounded up slightly.
Foundry was founded by Feld,Ryan McIntyre, Jason
Mendelson and Seth Levine — &four equal partners,& as Feld describes them.
With this newest fund, he says, Foundry now has &seven equal
partners,& meaning each receives the same amount of carry — or profits from the firm successful investments — no matter that three of
the partners are newer to the table.
Foundry newer partners include Lindel Eakman, who joined in 2015 to help Foundry identify venture funds
(Very meta, we know.) Eakman had previously spent 13 years with the University of Texas Investment Management Company (or UTIMCO), which was
Foundry Group largest investor.
The firm last year also added Chris Moody, who&d been the CEO of Twitter data reseller Gnip before Twitter
acquired the company in 2014 and made Moody a GM and VP of its data and enterprise business
(Foundry was an investor in Gnip.)
The firm newest partner is Jamey Sperans, who was as an early member and managing director of Morgan
Stanley Alternative Investment Partners, where he served on the global investment and executive committees
Sperans, who joined earlier this year, has also founded five companies over the years.
In case you are wondering, yes, that is seven men
(Just remarking.)
Foundry has had at least 44 exits over the years, according to Crunchbase
Among its most recent wins: the email service provider SendGrid, which staged a successful IPO last November; and the 2015 IPO of Fitbit,
the wearable device company, whose shares are trading at roughly $5.50 apiece right now but were as high as $47 in the months after the
offering.
Among Foundry newest investments isChowbotics, a four-year-old, Redwood City, Calif.-based company that makes a salad-making robot
and raised $11 million in Series A-1 funding last month; and Sensu, a year-old, Portland, Ore.-based full-stack monitoring platform that
raised $10 million in Series A funding back in April.
It has also re-upped in plenty of its portfolio companies in recent months,
includingUrban Airship, an eight-year-old, Portland, Ore.-based company behind a digital customer engagement platform
In June, it raised $25 million in Series F funding led by Foundry, which had also led the company Series B round in 2010.
