Foundry Group
Boulder-based venture firm with a concentrated portfolio approach investing in software companies.
Here's the deal: Foundry announced in January 2024 that their current $500M fund (raised in May 2023) will be their last, and they're still actively investing out of it through Series A and B rounds. This isn't a fire sale or distressed situation - they planned this from day one, never wanting to build a "legacy firm" that outlives the founding partners. The transparency thing is real - they literally published standard deal terms and wrote books demystifying VC, with "Venture Deals" selling over 200,000 copies. Founders genuinely love working with them because of their "Give First" philosophy and the network they provide beyond just capital. But here's what founders need to know: taking money from a fund that's winding down creates follow-on funding risks and could make future rounds harder. They say they'll support portfolio companies for the next decade, but that gets challenging when management fees dry up.
- —Best for: Founders who value radical transparency, strong networks, and genuine partnership over fancy offices
- —Watch out for: They're winding down - no new funds after current one is deployed by ~2026
- —Known for: "Give First" philosophy, transparency, co-founding Techstars, and treating founders like actual humans
Foundry Group takes a thematic approach to investing, focusing on "software and Internet" companies through broad, horizontal themes rather than traditional sector verticals. These themes are abstract in nature and serve as an intellectual filter, strongly guiding their investment activity.
Foundry primarily invests in Series A and Seed stages, with 90 Series A investments averaging $8.71M, 52 Seed investments averaging $1.67M, and 33 Series B investments averaging $19M. Their portfolio spans Enterprise Applications, Consumer, High Tech, Enterprise Infrastructure, and Retail, with 219 Tech companies, 161 Enterprise (B2B) companies, and 96 Consumer (B2C) companies.
Brad Feld is a venture capitalist who started with partners Seth Levine, Ryan McIntyre, and Jason Mendelson, and was an early investor in Harmonix, Zynga, MakerBot, and Fitbit. He co-founded Feld Technologies in 1987 while at MIT, which was acquired by AmeriData in 1993 for around $2 million. Known for radical transparency, co-founding Techstars, and writing influential books like "Venture Deals."
Seth Levine joined Mobius on September 6, 2001, and was introduced to Brad through their friend Mike Platt, a managing partner at Cooley's Boulder office. One of the four original Foundry Group founders who worked together at Mobius Venture Capital before starting Foundry.
Jason Mendelson joined Mobius as general counsel after starting as a software consultant at Anderson Consulting, becoming a lawyer at Cooley's California office, then joining Mobius in 2000 and starting to make investments in 2004. Co-author of the influential "Venture Deals" book with Brad Feld.
Ryan started in the VC business at the peak of the bubble, which he describes as "the point in the party where the kegs had run dry and the cops had just shown up". Previously co-founded Excite before joining the Foundry team.
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