Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 22, 2012

We constantly hear about “product market fit.” ” But my post yesterday about The Power of Passion When Starting Your Company was about “founder market fit.” The three of them had extraordinary founder market fit, well before they figured out the product market fit.

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Founder Marketing Cofounder Lean 147

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 18, 2017

When you bring up Feld Thoughts in your browser, you should see something like the following: Pantheon , one of our portfolio companies, hosts my website and made this happen, in zero clicks. Website technology providers had to make HTTPS a turnkey experience. This is happening now. I am happy with what the Pantheon team has built.

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Caching Security Green Global 70

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 9, 2023

We encourage all our portfolio companies to add multiple independent directors and build diverse boards. Diversity of experience and thought, along with an independent vs. investor perspective, is something every CEO can use, especially in this market environment. We’ve made this an operating principle at Foundry.

Curation 162

Curation Early Stage Hosting Portfolio 162

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

Working through my market portfolio this am and thought This metric would be of interest to this group. These 6 companies have more market cap than the entire emerging market sector. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix and Microsoft have added 3 trillion dollars to their value since COVID started.

Colorado 207

Colorado Small Business Portfolio Metrics 207

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 30, 2011

They, and others, continue to aggressively search for great software developers to join their team – when I look at the Foundry Group Jobs page I see well over 100 open positions for developers across our portfolio and I know this list undercounts since not all of the companies we are investors in are listed there.

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Software Developers Software Development Startup Hiring 136

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 10, 2011

My friends at Fitbit are hiring a director of marketing. If you, or someone you know, wants a director of marketing job in a fast growing, well funded company in San Francisco, go take a look at the job spec and apply. There is a ton of hiring going on in our portfolio right now at all levels. just a new financing).

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Marketing Portfolio Finance 128

Feld Thoughts

JULY 12, 2018

One of our portfolio companies recently engaged with an industry analyst for the first time with a very disappointing outcome. All decisions and scoring were left to vendor claims (also known as “marketing”) while operational aspects of the customer, and how the various products addressed them, were ignored.

Technical Review 73

Technical Review Warrant PR Portfolio 73

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 25, 2011

As my partners at Foundry Group know, every time I hear the word “marketing&# I throw up a little in my mouth. I hate traditional marketing and have always resisted it early in the life of a new company. Fred Wilson has a phenomenal blog post up this morning titled Marketing. were a key part of every startup plan.

Marketing 139

Marketing PR Startup Social Media 139

Feld Thoughts

MAY 26, 2014

Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising (APenguin Special from Portfolio) : I figured I’d read the cannon on Holiday so this was next. Dynamite book – I’m glad I put the time in. Holiday covers the topic well in a very accessible way.

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Dallas Technical Review Vertical PR 113

Feld Thoughts

JULY 14, 2020

Seven years ago this week, I posted about a new book in our Startup Revolution series called Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business , by my friend Matt Blumberg, then CEO of email marketing company Return Path in the Foundry portfolio.

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Startup Portfolio Email Sales 134

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 25, 2015

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. Instead, the driver was the 1983 bull market. Put a willing and forgiving exit market following any investment period and you get spectacular returns.

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Venture Capital SBIC Technical Review Silicon Valley 70

Feld Thoughts

JULY 25, 2013

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. We are the leaders in our market, and they will follow, after we’ve found and laid the path. Before any big city, there was once The Frontier.

Vermont 165

Vermont Startup Campaign Virginia 165

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 8, 2014

We created a conference on DevOps last year for our portfolio companies and it was a huge hit. And – if you are a VP of Marketing, JumpCloud is looking for a great one. Raj Bhargava (CEO of JumpCloud ) and I have been talking about how startups can leverage DevOps and Agile more. My Investments DevOps jumpcloud'

Agile 131

Agile Startup Portfolio Community 131

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 19, 2013

When I look at our Foundry Group portfolio of over 60 companies , I see many of them in two distinct scaling up phases. The second are companies like Fitbit that are clear leaders in their market, are on the 100 to 500 person ramp, and pacing the innovation in their market segment.

Denver 130

Denver Portfolio Leadership Finance 130

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 14, 2012

If you’re up for it I would love the opportunity to briefly introduce our firm, our strategy and portfolio, and discuss ways we might be helpful in the future. Go through their portfolio – make sure there are companies you want intros to. Ask specifically for introductions that you identified within their portfolio.

Email 141

Email Deal Flow Portfolio Finance 141

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 5, 2018

The idea of product/market fit has been around for a long time. 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.)

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LP Portfolio Management Founder 87

Feld Thoughts

MAY 11, 2017

And, instead of ARR thresholds ($10m ARR, $25m ARR, $50m ARR, $100m ARR), I like to use MRR thresholds, which I talked about extensively in a post from 2015 titled The Illusion of Product/Market Fit for SaaS Companies. If you can blast through the $500k MRR mark and march to $1m MRR, you’ve found product/market fit.

IPO 171

IPO Portfolio Channel Revenue 171

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 10, 2014

The number of companies I’ve heard of (mostly outside our portfolio) who are “getting ready to raise money in Q1″ is a very long list. They are maddening to mature CEOs who have built real companies that dominate their market segment but are in either an out of favor segment or using an approach (e.g.

Later Stage 142

Later Stage Syndicate Syndication Portfolio 142

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. Why Founder-Market-Fit is so Important. I’m a huge Alex fan and love his writing. How to Ask Me and Others for an Introduction.

Startup 77

Startup Angel Investor Portfolio Metrics 77

Feld Thoughts

MAY 8, 2018

My experience with ESPs goes back more than 20 years and, since the mid 1990s, I’ve seen the ESP ecosystem evolve from its infancy, with just a few startups blazing a trail, to today’s robust industry populated by mature marketing technology platforms. The post Return Path’s Partner Platform Solution appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

Partner 73

Partner Metrics Portfolio Email 73

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 15, 2015

They also give providers and developers an easy way to distribute, sell, and market cloud services. 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. Investments appdirect Jobs standing cloud'

Finance 70

Finance San Francisco Hiring Silicon Valley 70

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 30, 2013

Last week our portfolio company, JumpCloud - who is deep in the DevOps market with their automated cloud server management product – hosted the first annual DevOps conference here in Boulder. It was a huge success – we had over 200 people show up and engage in a full day of deep discussions on DevOps.

Conversion 132

Conversion Agile Portfolio Lean 132

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 3, 2020

Many companies in our portfolio have multiple locations and increasingly distributed workforces. I know there is an increasing number of technologies in use for helping manage organizations that are distributed – I’m interested in real stories of what works, vs. marketing hype.

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Distribution Seattle Portfolio Video 99

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 13, 2011

When I look at the Foundry Group portfolio , we’ve got a bunch of them in it. They are the unambiguous and dominant market leader. On my run yesterday in Central Park, I was thinking about the characteristics of some of my favorite companies. They don’t spend a lot of time trying to get written up in TechCrunch.

Portfolio 171

Portfolio Community Revenue Partner 171

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. Never more (who can wait?),

Software 140

Software Portfolio Sales Cofounder 140

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. Recently the market demand has been outpacing their ability to keep up, so they turned to OneTrueFan as a means of accelerating their product development and overall growth.

San Francisco 115

San Francisco Acquisition Cofounder IPO 115

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.

Portfolio 195

Portfolio Leadership Founder Operations 195

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 17, 2012

After months or years of iterating and pivoting, they finally have the right product for the right market at the right price. My friend Chris Moody , President/COO at Gnip , refers to this as the execution phase of a business and there is no better example of execution in our current portfolio than the team at Gnip.

China 137

China Portfolio Product Development Engineer 137

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 12, 2016

I’ve been a long time believer in Jack Welch’s famous thesis that if you aren’t #1 or #2 in a market, you should get out of it. When I reflect on our investing approach, we have a very strong focus on helping the companies we invest in become the #1 or #2 player in their market.

Jordan 70

Jordan Early Stage Portfolio Video 70

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 12, 2015

One of our portfolio companies, WootMath , won a similar App Challenge back in 2013. Market Readiness: Is the application market ready? Not all ideas will be winners and it depends on the goals of the event and participants. Implementation of Idea: Was the idea well executed by the developer?

API 70

API Portfolio Channel Email 70

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 26, 2010

Now, there are a number of strong web design and development firms in Boulder, such as our friends at Slice of Lime , and we use them regularly throughout our portfolio. It’s going to market in Q4 with a unique product that has the potential to really shake up a particular segment. They are also plenty of strong UI developers.

Portfolio 125

Portfolio Web Design Software 125

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 8, 2014

While Return Path has had countless twists and turns along the way, Matt has been CEO from inception and presides over a large and significant company that continues to be a leader in a market it helped create. The class starts on January 20th on the NovoEd platform.

Startup 139

Startup Portfolio Demand Audience 139

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 7, 2010

Even though I enjoy hazing Seth, after reading the post again this morning, I thought about how other companies in our portfolio have been effective at using stealth mode principles from Niel’s post. AdMeld , another company that Seth is on the board of, adhered to many of these principles as they built up a massive position in their market.

Stealth 130

Stealth Portfolio Partner Marketing 130

Feld Thoughts

JULY 28, 2014

When I first heard about VC firms in the late 1980s, and my first company (Feld Technologies) started writing portfolio management software for some Boston-based VC firms, many of them had funds with SBIC leverage, although even by the late 1980s this was changing and many of them had shifted away from the SBIC.

SBIC 142

SBIC Venture Capital Colorado SBA 142

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 4, 2012

One of the most enduring challenges any Internet marketer faces is getting users to come back regularly and engage on their website. That doesn’t feel very loyal, and this is the challenge, or opportunity, that our portfolio company BigDoor set their sites on. In other words; loyalty.

Web 134

Web Widget Analytics Programming 134

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 1, 2011

I’m involved in a lot of companies, many of which are either the market leader in their segment, fighting head to head with a few other companies for clear market leadership, going after an existing incumbent, or creating a new segment entirely. “Google? My measurement window here is usually six months, not five years.

Social Network 143

Social Network Cofounder Portfolio Networking 143

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 22, 2015

Behind the stories of most first-time venture-backed CEOs building startups and attacking markets at breakneck speed, there is usually a tight network of mentors and peers showing them the ropes of company building. Foundry Group is a mutual investor of ours, and Jud and I met at an event in Boulder that they organized for portfolio CEOs.

NDA 70

NDA Portfolio Operations Management 70