I was thinking about our predilection for negative bias on the way into work today. Mostly in the context of the broader community but then that led me to muse about partnerships and spouses. If I’m being honest, I was internally cursing the fools that run in the middle of the street in Boulder….
As a venture investor, we often bemoan churn in our SaaS companies but we’re also seeing churn in our LP base too. Increasing staff turnover in the LP world has been a trend for several years and it has implications for institutional portfolios and private investment managers alike. If you’re a GP, you should…
The idea of an “anti-portfolio” reflects some of the great investments where you had the opportunity to participate but missed for one reason or another. There are many excuses, as you’ll see below, but the truth is that you completely screwed it up. This idea was first shown to me in the Bessemer Anti-Portfolio and…
At the highest level, venture investors are looking for talent and to invest behind that talent. Obviously, it must be a talent that is lined up against an interesting opportunity. Hopefully, it’s a fully complete and talented team of people with specific domain expertise but it may just be a single founder with a burning…
I started investing in venture funds with a very lucky first investment back in 2004. I’m now at LaGuardia airport headed home after attending the 14th annual edition of the firm’s limited partner meeting. Yes, that first fund is still active 14 years later! It is such a privilege to have a long-standing business…
I woke up this morning thinking about networks. Geographic networks in particular. Our Partner Fund strategy is to connect with and support both our peers and the next generation of emerging venture managers. We’ve now supported 27 managers across multiple funds. When you think about this group of individual GPs, it’s a really powerful network…
This post originally appeared as Announcing Foundry Group Next 2018 on the Foundry Group website. We are happy to announce the closing of our seventh fund, Foundry Group Next 2018. The $750 million fund combines all of our prior fund strategies – our early stage, early growth, and partner fund investments – into a single…
I’ve been toying with this idea of working at threshold. It first came to me as I considered a recent hike where I wasn’t synced up with my partner. When hiking, I like to move as fast as I can up a slope at a pace that is sustainable for at least a given section….
I’ve always been a natural early riser. Even as a child, I would put myself to bed at sunset and rise at dawn. My parents tried to make this a feature rather than a bug by teaching me to turn on the coffee maker. That didn’t really work out, as the coffee would be all…
I’ve had two of my good friends lose a parent in the last month. One lost a mother unexpectedly to complications of the flu. The other lost his dad today, after a more than 3-year battle with cancer. His note to me was beautiful. I pretty much tear up every time I read it. “RIP…