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Planes, Trains, and AutomobilesShare

Written by: Brad Feld

Article Overview: By the time you read this I'll be in New York (right now I'm on a plane.) If you follow me (or any of my partners) on twitter, you will quickly understand why a Boulder entrepreneur recently referred to twitter as the "Foundry Group location / travel finder."

Planes, Trains, and AutomobilesShare

By the time you read this I'll be in New York (right now I'm on a plane.) If you follow me (or any of my partners) on twitter, you will quickly understand why a Boulder entrepreneur recently referred to twitter as the "Foundry Group location / travel finder."

We travel plenty. My partner Chris Wand just wrote a post titled Is “Geography” a Cliché in Venture Capital? Unlike many VCs who prefer to invest close to home, we view the United States (and Canada) as our oyster. Take a look at Chris' post to understand why.

For perspective, the geographic distribution of our first six investment is two in the bay area (Zynga, Gnip), two in southern California (Oblong, Memeo), one in Boulder (Lijit), and one in New York (unannounced.) We are in the process of closing an investment in Seattle and our active deal log (stuff we are seriously looking at) covers California, Colorado, New York, North Carolina, and Utah.

Having lived the life of a satellite office for ten years at Mobius Venture Capital (Chris, Seth, and I were in Boulder; everyone else was in the bay area) I can assure you that "being the satellite office" in a venture capital firm ultimately sucks. While it's fun at first because you think everyone leaves you alone, you eventually end up spending more and more "junk time" at wherever the main office is and you are the one that ultimately has to travel (at some point almost every week) to make sure you are in the flow of things.

When we created Foundry Group, it was important to us that we all be located in Boulder. We've always been thematic investors and have gone where our themes took us, rather than being bounded by geography. While flying United out of DIA has its moments, the decision to be located in one place but invest throughout the US is a powerful one for us and the entrepreneurs we back.

Read this post in Brad's blog.

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Article Tags: california colorado, entrepreneur, foundry group, geographic distribution, geography, group location, mobius venture capital, oyster, perspective, planes, satellite office, seattle, seth, southern california, trains, travel finder, twitter, vcs, venture capital firm, wand



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