Venture Capital

We describe Foundry Group ‘s behavior as “syndication agnostic.” When we make an investment, we are completely agnostic as to whether or not we have a co-investor. This is true at early stages but also true at later stages. We make our own decisions to invest, or not to invest, independent of what other investors are thinking. As part of this philosophy, we’ll lead follow-on rounds for companies we’ve already invested in, including those making great progress where we will lead an up round that we price. We aren’t looking for outside validation from other investors of any sort – either positive or negative. Because we are syndication agnostic, we are delighted to work with great co-investors and welcome and encourage the interaction and partnership. But we don’t have any dependency on it for our decision making. ...

Yesterday I sent emails out passing on participating in two seed rounds for companies I really like. They had lots of investors trying to invest and each company was competitive with two other seed stage companies we’ve seen in the past 30 days. All are exciting, all are working on something that we like, and all of them are at the starting line with different strengths and weaknesses. ...

If you are a running enthusiast you’re going to love today’s Brad Feld’s Amazing Deal . Today’s deal takes the barefoot running phenomena to its logical conclusion. Invisible Shoes, created by two former lead designers from Nike and Reebok, are the closest you will ever get to feeling barefoot, even if you aren’t. They’re perfect for running or walking or yoga. Did I mention that you put them together yourself for the perfect fit? Awesomely loving the DIY world. ...

Last week on Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals we offered a huge discount on Ruby classes, and had one of our most successful offers ever. This week I asked my friends at Udemy to cook up another great deal on the course “Creating iPhone Games for Beginners”. They came up with an offer where $39 takes you through the process of building a complete iPhone game (normally $99). Leave a comment and give me your pitch for a new iPhone game. The best idea by midnight tonight gets a free course.

Today on Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals you can purchase a $250 Ruby course from Udemy for only $49. The course, Learn Ruby Programming (In Ten Easy Steps) contains over 30 video lectures, written course materials, and additional discounts on Ruby literature. With more and more companies making the move to Ruby on Rails, demand for Ruby developers has gone through the roof. If you are interested in giving Ruby a look, this is a great place to start.

On Friday, I saw a tweet from Chris Sacca about super pro-rata rights that said “Seeing a lot of VCs cram super-prorata terms into deals. Feels uncool to me. Any good arguments for why it’s helpful to entrepreneurs?” I quickly responded to Chris on Twitter with “@sacca just say no to super prorata” and then opened up a WordPress window and scribbled some thoughts for a draft post on that that I was planning to put up Monday morning (now). ...

Before we invested in MakerBot , we bought and assembled a Thing-O-Matic. When I say we, I mean me, Jason, and Ross. It took us about 20 hours (Jason and I did the first half; Jason and Ross did the second half) and was a blast – think of it as an adult lego project. Our Thing-O-Matic has been steadily printing stuff – you can play a game of chess with our Thing-O-Matic pieces. the next time you are in my office. ...

Today on Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals , we’ve got another great offering from our friends at Udemy . For $49 you can get The Lean Startup, The Lean Startup Ignite, and The Lean Startup SXSW by Eric Reis. These three courses contain over 9 hours of content and 60 talks from people like Eric Ries, Dave McClure, Steve Blank, Hiten Shah and many more. That’s a lot of knowledge for 67% off. ...

Today on Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals , we are featuring the Urban Sherpa Strap from Go Gaga . Sherpa Straps distribute the weight from laptop bags, gym bags, and briefcases that take straps, across your back and shoulders. I’ve been using the Sherpa Strap for a while – it’s dynamite. With today’s deal, you can get the strap and free shipping for $19, a discount of 50%. ...

When Jason and I started AsktheVC , one of our goals was to have a place where entrepreneurs could ask us questions and get direct answers. We did this for a while, getting to most of the questions which has created a very nice corpus of answers to several hundred questions easily searchable by Lijit . For example: How Did We Get Our Idea For Our Startup? How Much Equity Should an Early Stage COO/CFO Get? How Do You Negotiate a Carve Out With Investors? Of course, these are our answers and opinions, and many of the questions are subjective, but they form a starting point for any entrepreneur looking for answers to a bunch of random questions from a VC. ...