The Foundry Group closes $225 million fund
AdMeld, Lijit, Zynga investor focused on early-stage startups raises new money
The Foundry Group, a venture capital firm with an early-stage focus, announced Tuesday the closing of its second $225 million fund.
Managed by Brad Feld, Seth Levine, Ryan McIntyre, and Jason Mendelson, the Boulder, CO-based Foundry Group raised its first fund back in 2007.
Since then, the firm has added a variety of promising startups to its portfolio, including advertising network AdMeld, Lijit, a search provider for online publishers, and Zynga, the most popular social gaming startup worldwide. The most recent companies to receive money from the Foundry Group are TechStars Boulder 2010 program graduate Orbotix, creator of an innovative gaming platform, and FitBit, a San Francisco-based “human instrumentation” company whose first product is a $99 3D motion sensor device that tracks the user’s calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled, and sleep.
“We will continue to do exactly what we have always done: invest in seed and early-stage investment opportunities in the software and IT space that are located across the United States,” said Jason Mendelson, one of the group’s four managing director, in a statement. “We’ll also continue to pursue a strategy of Thematic Investing that has served us well over our investing careers.”
As opposed to targeting specific geographical regions or sectors in the technology market, the Foundry Group invests in a wide range of startups across North America, as long as they fall under one of the firm’s key themes, like Human Computer Interaction, Implicit Web, Email, Glue, and Digital Life.
FitBit, for example, in developing a new kind of comprehensive health monitoring device, fits the bill for “Human Computer Interaction,” which represents the Foundry Group belief that “the world of computing is ripe for a series of major shifts in user-interface paradigms.”
The firm actually has an individual page (links above) dedicated to explaining the appeal of each theme. It’s refreshing to see investments targeted at concepts and visions of future technology, as opposed to less meaningful factors, like location.
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Lijit
Startup/Business
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Lijit's search service enables readers to search blog publishers' posts, bookmarks, blogroll, and more from a widget placed on the publisher's property. Essentially, it becomes a single box to search any published material from a company or individual no matter where it is, be it on blogs, Flickr or other social networking sites.
Lijit's search statistics can be utilized by publishers to better understand what users search for on a particular site when they visit.
In January 2008 Lijit acquired Big Swerve, a blog comment indexing engine that has indexed over 400 million comments across 3 million authors.
AdMeld
Startup/Business
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The AdMeld platformoptimizes and manages multiple ad networks and exchanges for premiumpublishers. Customers include Discovery, FOX News, Huffington Post, IAC,Thomson Reuters and WWE, among many others, who use Admeld to manage variousnetworks and maximize revenues. AdMeld does things like locate undervalued adinventory and replace it with higher performing stuff, prevent and resolvechannel conflicts. AdMeld also offers publishers centralized reporting andother features. AdMeld customers typically see anincrease in revenues from remnant inventory between 30% and 300%. In addition,AdMeld provides its customers with centralized network performance reporting,unique brand protection tools such as FireMeld, and a range of white-gloveservices.
Memeo
Startup/Business
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Memeo Inc. based in Aliso Viejo, CA, is a privately held software company backed by venture firm G51 Capital and Foundry Group. The company is focused on helping consumers and businesses manage and protect their digital life. Founded in 2003 in an effort to capitalize on the rapid move towards a digital world, the company developed its flagship software, Memeo AutoBackup, to give consumers and businesses alike a better way of protecting, managing and sharing digital, portable files and make them universally accessible. For more information on Memeo and its products, please visit www.memeo.com.
Memeo, A Digital Media and Information Management Company founded in 2003 and based in Aliso Viejo, CA, Memeo (formerly Tanagra, Inc.) is a software company focused on providing software and services that will dramatically simplify the way individuals manage digital media and information across their desktop computers, storage devices, media appliances, mobile devices, and the web. Memeo's goal is simple, providing innovation solution to meet people's every-day needs.
Memeo products are used in homes, home offices, small businesses and corporations across the globe. Our satisfied customers include families managing and protecting their digital photography, music and documents as well as businesses, colleges/ universities, and government organizations interested in a simple way to organize and protect critical files.
Memeo, Inc. trademark statements. Memeo, AutoBackup, LifeAgent and Zero-Touch are trademarks of Memeo.
Zynga
Startup/Business
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Zynga is the largest social gaming company with 8.5 million daily users and 45 million monthly users. Zynga’s games are available on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Yahoo! and the iPhone, and include Texas Hold’Em Poker, Mafia Wars, YoVille, Vampires, Street Racing, Scramble and Word Twist. The company is funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, IVP, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Pilot Group, Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel. Zynga is headquartered at the Chip Factory in San Francisco. For more information, please visit www.zynga.com.
seth levine
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Brad Feld
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Ryan McIntyre
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