Today is turning out to be quite the day for @trueventures! The biggest news happened at 6:30 am when FitBit ($FIT) completed its public offering. There was @jcal7 with all the other investors and executives ringing the bell at the NYSE to commemorate Fitbit’s offering. We were the first institutional investor in Fitbit almost 7 years ago. Soon thereafter, I saw the article in Re/Code about our portfolio company Namely announcing its $45 million Series C round of funding led by Sequoia Capital. (That article is here.) We have been investors in Namely for over 2 years. We also signed a termsheet for a new investment in a super exciting start up. This is our classic investment of $1.5 million for a minority (but significant) stake in a company led by incredibly dynamic founders who have a visceral belief about a new market they want to tackle. And finally, we have one portfolio company sending around a notice for really good furniture at a cheap price because they are shutting down tomorrow. We have been investors with them for just over 4 years.
In baseball parlance, i would say that we have hit for the cycle today. it’s a rare thing to have one of your companies complete such a large and successful growth round and it is even more rare to have a successful, multi billion valuation IPO. Those types of events, though, do not occur without founders and investors alike taking incredible risk at the earliest stage of company formation. I salute Fitbit cofounders James Park & Eric Friedman and Namely’s Matt Straz, but I also salute the founders of businesses who are just starting out on their journey and also those that are writing the final chapter on their particular business. We are proud partners with you all.
Phil Black 