Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 2, 2017

It’s not enough for tech firms to say “we need more diversity – let’s go find different founders!” A classic investor problem is a tension between wanting to be accessible to new founders while at the same time giving existing portfolio companies the time they deserve.

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Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Watch David Campbell, one of JumpCloud’s other co-founders, explain JumpCloud at TechCrunch Disrupt. While the event is for Foundry Group, Techstars, and Bullet Time Ventures portfolio companies, we have a few open slots in case a few folks would like to join us. Just reach out to me via email and I’ll get you connected.

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Feld Thoughts

JUNE 9, 2021

Matt was the co-founder/CEO of Return Path. The founders of each company talked and, in between efforts to decimate the other, agreed it might be worth merging to survive. It’s a follow-up to his previous book, Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business. I’ve been working with Matt since 2000.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 21, 2016

But in 100% of the cases, we all know what is going on, have relationships with the founders and CEO, and can quickly engage and help wherever and whenever we bring something to the mix. One of the things we do is a full portfolio review. .” In about 90% of the companies we are investors in, two of us are actively involved.

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Feld Thoughts

APRIL 16, 2011

So when Jim Franklin, the CEO of SendGrid (one of our portfolio companies and a TechStars Boulder mentor) asked if I would write a post about the Founder Institute program in Boulder, I told him that I’d give him control of my blog to write a guest post on it. Last summer Founder Institute held its inaugural class in Denver.

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Feld Thoughts

MARCH 8, 2021

At the end of last week, two articles written by CEOs in our portfolio made the rounds on our CEO list. It’s an article on TechCrunch titled Investors are missing out on Black founders. Black founders need to own their resiliency and leverage the power that has resulted from their unique experiences.

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Feld Thoughts

MAY 13, 2021

After some entertaining back and forth, I encouraged Craig Lewis, the founder/CEO of Gig Wage , to write up a quick story of how things unfolded, as he remembered them, and I’d post it here. I love founder stories, and origin stories, and always learn something from reflecting on them.

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Feld Thoughts

JULY 8, 2020

Raj and I have done seven companies together, including his most recent company JumpCloud which is one of the fastest-growing B2B SaaS companies in our portfolio (and in Colorado.). They share their tips, secrets, and advice in a frank, founder-to-founder discussion with you.

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Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

In our portfolio, we generally don’t have this problem because we aren’t big fans of either (a) overfunding companies or (b) escalating burn rates based on headcount. I have two simple rules for founders in my head from this experience. It’s simply not true. Pragmatic cost cuts are always possible and often productive.”

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Feld Thoughts

JULY 25, 2013

Following is a guest post by Zack Rosen , co-founder and CEO of Pantheon. Pantheon is one of the Silent Killers in our portfolio – and I’m immensely proud of the progress they are making and excited about their future. Pantheon is building “A big badass platform that will run 30% of the Internet.”

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 23, 2020

Yesterday, Josh Felser of Freestyle Ventures wrote a post titled For the Love of Founders and their mental health. My founder stress and burnout couldn’t be contained despite my best efforts. To begin, they are underwriting 100% of the cost for two programs – Meru Health and Hoffman Institute , for all of their founders.

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Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 25, 2015

Jack Tankersley, a long time mentor of mine, co-founder of Centennial Funds, and co-founder of Meritage Funds, wrote me a very long response. Secondly, the driver of returns for the funds raised in 1978 – 1981 was not their underlying portfolios, at what stage, or in what industries they were built.

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Feld Thoughts

JUNE 20, 2019

In interviews, Make founder Dale Dougherty explains that the company wasn’t interesting to investors anymore, and that, frustratingly, it was failing as a business, but thriving as a mission. As an investor in many businesses whose founders and customers count themselves among this maker movement, this gives me pause.

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Feld Thoughts

MAY 9, 2018

Alex has been the Managing Director of Techstars NY for a number of years and I think he’s now run seven programs and built an impressive portfolio of around 80 companies. Some of my favorites include: 30 Questions Investors Will Ask Founders. 11 Questions Founders Need to Ask Investors. Founders, Beware of Happy Ears.

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Feld Thoughts

JUNE 16, 2020

In addition to asking me to spend more time with Backstage Capital portfolio companies and founders, she told me about a non-profit called Cover that she created in 2016 with Bryan Landers and Dianne Cherrez. Arlan Hamilton was my first call. I'm working on a small passion project this weekend that is making me feel so content.

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Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 19, 2013

years it’s a pretty awesome example of a company going from a seed investment with three founders (Matthew Bellows, Cashman Andrus, and Raj Bhargava) to a rapidly growing 40 person company. When I look at our Foundry Group portfolio of over 60 companies , I see many of them in two distinct scaling up phases.

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Feld Thoughts

JUNE 5, 2018

And, while founder/market fit is a newer concept, it turns out to be just as important. There’s an interesting graph in the post, which shows that a typical LP is going to add less than five new managers a year to their portfolio (and, on average, only two or three.) The idea of product/market fit has been around for a long time.

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LP Portfolio Management Founder 87

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 10, 2013

Chris is president and COO of Gnip , one of the silent killers in our portfolio. Chris is a huge part of this – he joined Gnip when they were 10 people and has been instrumental in working with Jud Valeski, Gnip’s founder and CEO, to build a mind blowing team, business, and market leadership position.

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Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 21, 2014

The first was at Denver Startup Week, where we did a panel discussion with Ben Huh and Bart Lorang where we discussed the pact between CEO and Board, the pact between Founder and Investor, and how to be transparent and direct. The next day, Rand led a full day offsite for a number of CEOs in our portfolio.

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Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 9, 2018

I bought 100 copies and am sending them out to every CEO in our portfolio. Scott was the founder of Behance, a company funded by USV and a bunch of seed/angel investors, that was acquired by Adobe. This summer I read the page proof version of Scott Belsky’s new book T he Messy Middle.

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Feld Thoughts

MARCH 15, 2015

Many of our portfolio companies are those types of cloud services and the ecosystems that AppDirect powers can help them get to market faster, reach more users, and drive more revenue. They also give providers and developers an easy way to distribute, sell, and market cloud services.

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Feld Thoughts

MAY 1, 2013

I co-founded it with two long time friends, Martin Babinec (founder of Trinet ) and Keith Alper ( founder of Creative Producers Group ). Setting Up Family Office to Manage Diversified Portfolio. For the past two days I’ve been at an even called SERGE (Seasoned Entrepreneurs Gathering Exchange).

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Feld Thoughts

JUNE 4, 2014

On Monday we had a Foundry Group portfolio company sales summit. We are fortunate in that we’ve got a bunch of amazing sales execs in our portfolio, including several CEOs like Howard Diamond of MobileDay and Matthew Bellows of Yesware who have long histories selling and building sales organizations.

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Software Portfolio Sales Cofounder 140

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 30, 2013

A few weeks ago I did an event with Built In Denver where I interviewed Tim Miller and Ryan Martens, the founders of Rally Software , on their journey from a startup to a public company (NYSE: RALY ). The attendance at the event was roughly 50% Boulder entrepreneurs and 50% Denver entrepreneurs. They then roll up to the city level.

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Colorado Denver Cofounder Community 142

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

Today one of our portfolio companies BigDoor announced the acquisition of San Francisco-based OneTrueFan , a community and web check-in company. When there is a great fit, I love seeing our portfolio companies make acquisitions.

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Feld Thoughts

MAY 17, 2016

My portfolio melted down with the bursting of the Internet bubble. I felt a deep obligation to all the various people involved – the founders we had invested in, our LPs, and all the people who were still working for Mobius. My whole world blew up in 2001.

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Feld Thoughts

APRIL 19, 2017

When we started Foundry Group in 2006, we were very clear that we were not going to build a legacy venture capital firm; one meant to outlive its founders. With each new fund we raise, we are making at least a ten year forward commitment to each other, our investors, and the founders whose companies in which we invest.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 5, 2011

You may be familiar with them from a well known TED Talk that co-founder David Merrill did in 2009. Sifteo is another HCI investment with its roots in the MIT Media Lab, joining Oblong and EmSense in this part of our portfolio. Or maybe the recent TEDxMonterey Talk that David did earlier this year with a more in-depth demo.

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Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 12, 2015

One of our portfolio companies, WootMath , won a similar App Challenge back in 2013. In some ways, the judging criteria we’ll all be working from are basic questions any founder should ask themselves: Quality of Idea: Is the idea creative and original? Implementation of Idea: Was the idea well executed by the developer?

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Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

Indulge me while I go on an amazing product rant from our portfolio. And the founders come from a product first mindset – their goal is to unambiguously create the best product that delight users every time they come in contact with it. The second is that price of admission is an amazing product.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 8, 2014

While I didn’t work with him at Twitter, I was on the board of FeedBurner and worked with him and his three founders (Eric Lunt, Steve Olechowski, and Matt Shobe), who are all still close friends. I’m encouraging all the CEOs in Foundry Group’s portfolio to take the class, and I encourage you to take the class as well.

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Feld Thoughts

MARCH 11, 2010

Tyler’s background follows: Mr. Tysdal serves on the Board of Directors for the following Mantucket Capital portfolio companies: BrandJourney Capital and PRN Medical Services. Mr. Tysdal is also the founder of Sports Shares, a fractional luxury suite club. He began his career in investment banking with Alex.

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Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 26, 2015

March 25th: Ottawa with L-Spark , Algonquin , and Fresh Founders. March 27th: Montreal with Real Ventures + portfolio. March 24th: Waterloo with Communitech. Register here. Register here for the afternoon event. March 26th: Toronto with Ryerson Digital Media Zone. Register here. Register here.

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Feld Thoughts

APRIL 5, 2015

In addition to the board meeting, they spent a bunch of time with founders in other Boulder-based portfolio companies of ours. At about 7pm we shifted into an executive session of just founders and board and then Danielle and I spent 30 minutes just doing a 1:1. We then jumped into cars and went out to a late dinner.

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Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 1, 2011

When I go through our portfolio at Foundry Group , I consider many of the companies we’ve invested in to be first movers in their current segment. Early on, his coach and Nike co-founder, the amazing Bill Bowerman , encouraged him to “change the game&# by running the 3 mile (5k) instead of the mile.

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Social Network Cofounder Portfolio Networking 143

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 22, 2015

Following is a guest post from Zack Rosen at Pantheon about his experience shadowing Jud Valeski, founder and then-CEO of Gnip for a day in 2012. Foundry Group is a mutual investor of ours, and Jud and I met at an event in Boulder that they organized for portfolio CEOs. The post CEO Shadowing appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

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Feld Thoughts

JUNE 25, 2015

We talked to our LPs about what we were thinking, quickly raised a late stage fund to invest on in our later rounds for our portfolio companies, and made our first investment from that fund in the last round Fitbit did in 2013. With Select, we are no longer limited to investing $15 million per company.

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