December 14, 2015
Steve Vassallo
We’re pleased to officially open the investment period of Foundation Capital Fund 8 (FC8), a $325 million early stage fund.
With seven funds over two decades, we’ve invested in more than a hundred companies, launched 26 IPOs and helped create more than $200 billion in market cap value. With FC8, we’re excited to build on our strong recent momentum. The three IPOs we launched in the last 12 months represented 10 percent of all non-life science IPOs during that time frame and included Lending Club, the 4th largest U.S. internet IPO to date.
FC8 will be led by general partners Ashu Garg, Paul Holland, Charles Moldow and Steve Vassallo —with the support of our exceptionalinvestment team and staff. Together, we’re building on three generations of venture capital experience, which includes all the relationships developed and insights gathered while helping our entrepreneurs build successful companies like Netflix, Lending Club, Sunrun, MobileIron, TubeMogul, and many others.
At Foundation, we’re more than a firm of investors—we’re also former operators. We know what we wanted from our investors and deliver that experience for the companies we invest in. We know firsthand that success requires more than the right idea for that market—you have to connect that idea with the right business model, the right execution, and, most importantly, the right leadership team. That’s why we take such great care to invest in and strengthen our networks of entrepreneurs, thinkers, and tinkerers.
We also believe that it’s not enough to sit by the phone or wait for great ideas to walk through the door. We’re committed to doing the work necessary to develop a strong point of view—one that walks the fine line between having a unique insight and being receptive to ideas that have the potential to totally (and profitably) upend accepted thinking about a market. We love challengers.
Over the past year, we’ve also shared our own thinking on a variety of trends and sectors—everything from FinTech to MarTech and from Millennials and their money to design thinking in startups. That’s just to name a few, and, of course, there’s much more to come. Suffice it to say, we’re excited to build on our success by doing what we do best—helping talented entrepreneurs turn great ideas into enduring businesses. After 20 short years in this business, we like to think we’re just getting started.