Last week we hosted what we called the “Foundry Group Digital Life Summit” here in Boulder, Colorado. While we are no strangers to helping host conferences such as Defrag and Glue, this was a much more intimate event that we arranged ourselves. The genesis of the idea was to get our three portfolio companies in our Digital Life Theme together – namely Cloud Engines, Memeo, and Pie Digital – for a day or two of knowledge ...

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Posted by: Jason Mendelson

We’ve been flattered with the feedback on our new Foundry Group website design.  We had a lot of fun putting it together and are really happy with how it turned out. Websites for venture firms can be a challenge and in our case we wanted to create a site that was informative, serious but not stuffy and corporate. It was also important to us that it reflected our personalities. The front page picture for us ...

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Posted by: Seth Levine

The annual meeting of the National Venture Capital Association just wrapped up in Boston yesterday. As you can imagine in these economic times there was plenty for the group (which is the industry association representing the approximately 450 venture capital firms in the United States) to discuss.  If you’re interested, Jason has a post on his blog talking about the main news from the meeting – the NVCA’s view on how to fix the current ...

Continue reading Jason is appointed to the NVCA Board

Posted by: Brad Feld

Foundry Group attended the latest incarnation of CES this past week and thought we’d give some of our thoughts on the show. In no particular order, here is “What We Learned at CES.” Don’t buy a television for the next 6 months. This is certainly counter to what retailers and producers would want us to say, especially given the current state of the economy, but all the major brands are introducing exciting technologies in the first ...

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Posted by: Jason Mendelson

We made seven new investments in 2008. Two of the investments were seed rounds, four were first rounds, and one was a second round investment. We invested across three of our themes: Glue, Human Computer Interaction, and Digital Life. We covered plenty of geography with investments in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, and Boulder. While the global economy took a major downtown in 2008, we are strong believers that great companies can be started ...

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Posted by: Brad Feld

Of all the questions that we get, this one is the most common: “What do you guys like to invest in?” Unlike many venture capital firms that invest in certain geographic regions or specific technologies and sectors, Foundry Group’s investing activity is largely driven by a thematic approach. The themes we pursue tend to be horizontal in nature and are often driven by underlying technology protocols and standards or emerging market trends and customer needs. Rather ...

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Posted by: Jason Mendelson

As a technology focused venture capital firm, we’re often asked how we make use of technology in running our business.  While some software exists to help finance firms run their operations, there’s no magic “venture capital in a box” software (at least one that we’ve found) that would enable us to manage every aspect of running our firm.  As a result we’ve put together our own technology infrastructure that helps us manage our business, better ...

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Posted by: Seth Levine

Among our core beliefs at Foundry Group is the idea that we bring more value to our business as a team than as individuals.  We believe that as a group we have more impact on our portfolio companies, are better at making investment decisions and are more thoughtful about the themes in which we invest. This is somewhat of a departure from the typical venture capital model, in which venture partners are often islands unto ...

Continue reading There is no "I" in Foundry

Posted by: Seth Levine

All of us at Foundry Group try hard to be substantive members of our community. We have all chosen to live in Boulder, Colorado and we share the belief that giving back to the community in which we live is an important part of supporting this goal. In addition, we strongly believe in the cliché of “putting our money where our mouths are.” As a result, we are proud to announce that we have recently ...

Continue reading Foundry Group Joins the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado

Posted by: Brad Feld

In a follow up to our Who We Are post, Ryan and I thought we would compare VC life in Boulder, CO to that of the Silicon Valley. In some ways it’s remarkably similar and in some ways wonderfully different. For those of you who don’t know, Ryan and I met in 2000 while at the California offices of Mobius Venture Capital, became quick friends and even started a band or two. (Shameless Plug Alert: ...

Continue reading What We Learned By Moving To Boulder

Posted by: Jason Mendelson