Investments

At Foundry Group, we always look for companies that we think build magic into their products. Occipital has been one of those companies. Three years ago, they launched Structure Sensor , which pioneered bringing dense 3D sensing to mobile devices (and it’s only just now that are we seeing some of the world’s biggest tech companies catching up by launching similar technology to consumers). Since that launch three years ago, the team at Occipital has been quietly at work on their next product. Today, they’re announcing Bridge. ...

I love Alexa. Of all the various tech things I’ve bought in 2016, Amazon’s Alexa has become the most consistently used new thing in my world. I’ve even had a breakthrough on the home front as Amy now regularly says “Alexa, play …” We’ve got them everywhere and the Echo Dot that showed up in October is centrally located on my office desk at Foundry Group. On Wednesday, Techstars and Amazon announced the Alexa Accelerator, powered by Techstars. Applications will open in January and the first program will start in July 2017. ...

We’ve just closed a financing in Borrowed & Blue and Jason joined the board. Given that Jason is also on the board of Craftsy and Havenly , I’m going to bring up the idea with my partners today that we create and design a new theme around arts and marriage. See what I did there? A friend of mine sent out a wonderful note (well – actually an FAQ) last night about eloping. He and his now wife are in Hawaii at an event and tied the knot over the weekend. I’m psyched for them as we talked to him recently about whether they should elope or not. Amy and I eloped so while we are a fan of weddings, we realize how stressful and expensive they can be. ...

When we invested in FullContact in 2012, they were a small team with a big vision to create One Address Book To Rule Them All . Over the past four years, they’ve systematically executed on their vision, building a contact management platform that touches all aspects of the problem . Along the way they built a sizable business. Two weeks ago FullContact raised a $25 million round. They followed this up with two acquisitions – first Conspire and then Profoundis. ...

I love getting this in my inbox. Over the past few years I’ve walked from the North Pole to the South Pole. That’s 12,430 miles. If you are counting steps, it’s 23,882,806 as of this morning. And my best step day ever was April 7, 2012, when I ran a 50 mile race and covered 96,442 steps. Ok – back to work …

We just led a $35 million financing at Formlabs . In case you were wondering, lasers are super cool . In 2010, when we invested in MakerBot, the maker movement was just beginning . While 3D printing technology had been around for 30 years, there were no desktop 3D printers. The concept of using an additive process for 3D printing, where you built up a 3D object from continuous extrusion of a material such as ABS or PLA (plastics) was well understood. But this technology had not been brought to the desktop at a $2,000 price point. MakerBot did that and created an entirely new market segment within the 3D printing industry. ...

We just led a $22 million financing in Glowforge . I’ll start with the punchline – lasers are super cool . When we led a $9 million financing in Glowforge a little over a year ago, we were excited about the potential to do to the subtractive 3D printing world what we did with MakerBot in the additive / FDM 3D printing world. We were also fired up by the beautiful and practical stuff that the team made us to show what the product could do. ...

Many cities around the world have bike to work day. We take it up a level in Boulder and have an annual tube to work day which occurred today. The gang at Sphero went all in and decided to make it a Raft to Work day. They tried hard, but ended up with a classic FAIL blog experience. Enjoy a laugh at the end of the week after a troubling few days in the world.

My friends at Oblong have been involved in some very cool new installations of their Mezzanine product in different vertical markets. They are suddenly seeing a lot of interest from hospitals and health care systems. A recent new installation is the Mercy Virtual Care Center , which is the world’s first virtual care center. If you are at HIMSS this week in Las Vegas, go visit Oblong at booth #10725 on the show floor and see the future of collaboration in action.

The Force Awakens has been particularly exciting to me since we are investors in Sphero . If you haven’t seen BB-8 from Sphero yet, take a look. I watched Star Wars for the first time the week it came out in 1977. I was 11. I’ve been an unashamed Star Wars fan since then, loving almost every moment except for the ones I had to suffer through with Jar Jar Binks. It turns out that I’m about six months older than J.J. Abrams so I feel similar to him about Star Wars . ...