Foundry Group quietly broadcasts a giant fats $750 million fund

Foundry Group, the Boulder, Colo.-based enterprise agency co-founded 11 years in the past by startup whisperer Brad Feld, has raised a $750 million seventh fund to focus on early-stage and growth-stage corporations, in addition to to spend money on different enterprise funds.

It feels like — and is — a lot of cash, although the agency notes that it encompasses all of its numerous funding methods, whereas its final fund, a $500 million automobile that it closed in 2016, was used to spend money on different enterprise funds and growth-stage corporations alone; Foundry was individually managing its early-stage bets in a special fund.

It’s a little bit complicated, however should you actually wish to know the main points, Feld breaks them out in a submit:

For historic reference, our early-stage funds (FG 2007, FG 2010, FG 2013, and FG 2016) are all $225 million in measurement. Our first early development fund raised in 2013, Foundry Group Choose, can be $225m in measurement. In 2016, after we raised Foundry Group Subsequent, we roughly doubled the dimensions of that fund to $500 million since 30% of it was going to be invested in accomplice funds and 70% in early development. So, in the beginning of 2016, we successfully raised $725 million (FG 2016 and Foundry Group Subsequent). Foundry Group Subsequent 2018 is solely the mix of these two funds rounded up barely.

Foundry was based by Feld, Ryan McIntyre, Jason Mendelson and Seth Levine — “4 equal companions,” as Feld describes them.

With this latest fund, he says, Foundry now has “seven equal companions,” which means every receives the identical quantity of carry — or earnings from the agency’s profitable investments — regardless of that three of the companions are newer to the desk.

Foundry’s newer companions embody Lindel Eakman, who joined in 2015 to assist Foundry establish enterprise funds wherein to take a position. (Very meta, we all know.) Eakman had beforehand spent 13 years with the College of Texas Funding Administration Firm (or UTIMCO), which was Foundry Group’s largest investor.

The agency final yr additionally added Chris Moody, who’d been the CEO of Twitter knowledge reseller Gnip earlier than Twitter acquired the corporate in 2014 and made Moody a GM and VP of its knowledge and enterprise enterprise. (Foundry was an investor in Gnip.)

The agency’s latest accomplice is Jamey Sperans, who was as an early member and managing director of Morgan Stanley Various Funding Companions, the place he served on the worldwide funding and government committees. Sperans, who joined earlier this yr, has additionally based 5 corporations through the years.

In case you're questioning, sure, that's seven males. (Simply remarking.)

Foundry has had a minimum of 44 exits through the years, based on Crunchbase. Amongst its most up-to-date wins: the e-mail service supplier SendGrid, which staged a profitable IPO final November, and the 2015 IPO of Fitbit, the wearable machine firm, whose shares are buying and selling at roughly $5.50 apiece proper now however have been as excessive as $47 within the months after the providing.

Amongst its latest investments is Chowbotics, a four-year-old, Redwood Metropolis, Calif.-based firm that makes a salad-making robotic and raised $11 million in Sequence A-1 funding final month; and Sensu, a year-old, Portland, Ore.-based full-stack monitoring platform that raised $10 million in Sequence A funding again in April.

It has additionally re-upped in loads of its portfolio corporations in latest months, together with City Airship, an eight-year-old, Portland, Ore.-based firm behind a digital buyer engagement platform. In June, it raised $25 million in Sequence F funding led by Foundry Group, which had additionally led the corporate’s Sequence B spherical in 2010.