FOUNDRY - Key Persons
Brad Feld is a partner and co-founder of Foundry. He has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur for over 35 years, since founding his first company, Feld Technologies, in college. Brad is also a co-founder of Techstars and, with his wife Amy Batchelor, runs the Anchor Point Foundation.
Brad has written several books on entrepreneurship and venture capital and started blogging in 2004 before VC Twitter existed.
Brad holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Brad is also an art collector and long-distance runner who enjoys wandering around alone in the mountains for hours at a time.
Chris Moody, aka "Moody," joined Foundry in 2017 after working as an operator for 27 years. Prior to joining Foundry, he was GM & VP of Twitter's Data & Enterprise business and CEO of Gnip, a Foundry portfolio company acquired by Twitter in 2014.
Moody has worked in leadership roles at publicly traded companies (Twitter, IBM, Oracle, EDS,) and fast-growth startups (Aquent, Gnip). He has managed teams with thousands of employees spanning 17 countries. He loves working with entrepreneurs to scale their companies while keeping them fun and agile. He particularly enjoys engaging founders around topics involving culture/values, hiring, branding, partnerships, and sales.
Moody loves spending time with his family. He also enjoys riding his bike in the foothills around Boulder and his snowboard in the Rocky Mountains. A huge fan of the Auburn Tigers, he delivered the university's Spring Commencement Address in 2016. For some reason, he can't explain, Moody is also learning to play golf and welcomes any invitation to play. In his spare time, he's known for creating engaging video content via his own vlog, VentureKills.
Colleen Clair has over 20 years of experience as an EA, and has worked in the Boulder startup community since 1999. Prior to joining Foundry in 2012, she worked at Federated Media, Lijit Networks, and Raindance Communications, where she enjoyed supporting the innovation happening around her. Colleen first learned about Foundry while at Raindance, and she made a conscious decision to seek out an opportunity at the firm out of a desire to assist the network of companies associated with it.
When not at work, Colleen enjoys metalsmithing, spending time with her family and dogs in the great outdoors camping, cycling, and seeking adventure off the beaten path. She supports Ryan McIntyre, Brad Feld and Lindel Eakman.
Jaclyn Freeman Hester is a Partner at Foundry. She joined in 2016 with a passion for supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs and investors. Jaclyn leads direct investments in early-stage companies, often collaborating with Foundry's partner funds. She loves working closely with founders to solve hard problems and think about the human elements of business. She invests across B2B and consumer companies that exhibit strong end-user empathy and use technology to empower individuals, unlock potential, and improve experiences.
Jaclyn helped launch Foundry's partner fund strategy, building the portfolio to nearly 50 managers. Bringing her unique GP + LP perspective, Jaclyn has become a go-to sounding board for emerging VCs.
Jaclyn first fell in love with entrepreneurship while earning her JD/MBA at CU Boulder (Go Buffs!). There, she served as Executive Director of Startup Colorado, where she got to know Foundry and the incredible Boulder/Denver startup community the firm helped catalyze. In her brief stint as a practicing attorney, Jaclyn advised clients in M&A transactions and early-stage financings. She also witnessed the founder journey first-hand, working closely with her husband and his family as they built a B2B SaaS company, FareHarbor (acquired by BKNG).
Jaclyn loves the Boulder lifestyle, but her heart will always be on the East Coast, having grown up a New England "beach kid." She is the proud mother of three humans and three dogs and is a blue-groomer-on-a-sunny-day skier and 9-hole golfer. In her glimpses of free time, you can find Jaclyn enjoying live music, especially at Red Rocks and in Telluride, two of the most magical places in the world.
Job Titles:
- Chief Operating Officer
- General Counsel
Jason M. Lynch oversees Foundry's operations, manages the firm's investment and fundraising processes, consults with portfolio companies on legal issues, and is responsible for all legal matters associated with fund and management company operations and the partners' service on company boards of directors. Jason also serves on the boards of several portfolio companies.
Jason has counseled public and private companies for almost two decades. Prior to joining Foundry, Jason was a partner at Davis, Graham, & Stubbs, one of Denver's leading law firms, and he began his career in New York at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
In private practice, he focused on business and securities litigation, represented numerous companies in Foundry's portfolio, and served as outside general counsel to growth-stage companies. Before becoming a lawyer, Jason worked at Kekst & Company, one of the leading corporate, financial, and crisis communications firms in the U.S. He received his undergraduate and legal degrees from Columbia University.
Outside of Foundry, Jason enjoys shopping at his wife's candy shop, reading his son's fiction, watching his daughter's high school theatrical performances, and skiing. He also is a landlocked sailor, always looking for opportunities to get to a coast and out on an ocean.
Lena Giacomini joined Foundry in 2013, and became the firm's CFO in 2017. Lena leads Foundry's finance function and is responsible for fund operations, financial and tax reporting, and other administrative operations. Prior to Foundry, Lena was a Tax Director at Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PWC), and spent over 10 years in the Bay Area Asset and Wealth Management Practice advising VC & PE clients on a broad array of tax and accounting issues. In her free time, Lena enjoys spending time with her family, traveling, and putzing around the garden.
Lindel followed his passion as an investor across global capital markets to focus on early-stage investing with Foundry. Lindel has been investing in venture-backed companies and venture firms for nearly two decades, building an extensive network of limited partners, venture capitalists, and founders. He joined as a partner in 2015 and is active across the portfolio, working closely with partner funds and leading new direct investments. Lindel brings a blue-collar approach and humility to his work with a lot of respect for founders and the effort it takes to make something out of nothing. He will support you through thick and thin.
Prior to joining Foundry, Lindel managed the private investment program for the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO). At UTIMCO, he developed his love for early-stage investing as he built the endowment's venture capital program. He was fortunate to sponsor early investments in many of the now leading venture capital firms, including IA Ventures, True Ventures, Union Square Ventures, and, of course, Foundry.
Lindel received his MBA from the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business and his BBA in accounting and finance at Texas Christian University. He is a CPA and a CFA charter holder. Lindel previously served as Vice-Chair of the Institutional Limited Partner Association and is a member of the St. David's Foundation Investment Committee and the University of Colorado Foundation Investment Committee. Lindel resides in Boulder with his incredible wife and two amazing daughters. The hiking, fishing, and skiing almost make him forget how much he misses the tacos, music, and lakes of Austin.
Megan O'Connell joined Foundry in 2019 coming from a background in higher education administration at Harvard University and Montserrat College of Art. Megan supports Seth Levine and helps with engagement initiatives across the Foundry network.
Megan enjoys boating with her family, reading fiction and historical nonfiction, baking, the occasional road race, and taking long walks exploring her hometown. She is a proud, longtime resident of Salem, Massachusetts, where she lives with her partner, her two children, and her dog.
Melissa Childers, Operations Specialist, came to Foundry from UCHealth where she was a Project Coordinator in Nursing Research. She attended CU Boulder where her work in Molecular Biology instilled a love of problem solving and curiosity in how things work. She has a knack for organization and enjoys the work of creating processes to streamline workflow. Melissa loves spending time with her daughter and cycling with her husband. She enjoys a good book and early morning dog walks.
Ryan McIntyre is a founding partner of Foundry. Ryan started his career in venture at Mobius Venture Capital in January 2000, just before the bursting of the first internet bubble, timing Ryan compares to arriving at a party at the moment when the keg runs dry and the cops arrive.
Prior to becoming a VC, Ryan co-founded the early internet search engine Excite in 1993, which went public on NASDAQ in April 1996 and later became Excite@Home following the merger of Excite and @Home in 1999, and was one of the top five websites in the early innings of the world wide web.
Ryan was a software engineer at Excite, and his experience there at the dawn of the web building the infrastructure to support a large-scale consumer-facing site informs his predilection to invest in developer-focused products and services as well as enterprise and consumer-facing businesses.
Ryan holds a bachelor's degree in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University, where he learned about genetic algorithms and neural networks well before computers and data were big enough to make them useful, and he once wrote a Boggle-playing algorithm in LISP as a class project.
Ryan is a proud dad, husband, and labradoodle guardian. He is an avid guitarist and collector, has a recording studio in his basement, loves craft beer, runs the occasional marathon (eight so far), and can sometimes be found hanging out in New Zealand.
Job Titles:
- Partner
- Trustee of Macalester College
Seth Levine is a partner at Foundry and is a co-founder of the firm. He is also the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of GoodBread, a small business lending platform. Easily distracted and a passionate advocate for entrepreneurship, Seth also spends time as an advisor to venture funds and companies around the world.
The intersection of community and business has always been a driving force for Seth. He co-founded Pledge 1%, a global network of companies that have pledged equity, time, and product back to their local communities that, since inception, as resulted in nearly $3 billion in philanthropy. He was a founding board member of StartupColorado, an organization that promotes entrepreneurship in areas of Colorado outside of the front range, serves on the Investment Committee of Gary Community Ventures, which partners with the local community to reshape the arc of opportunity for Colorado children and families, and is the former Board Chair of EforAll Colorado, an organization dedicated to supporting main street entrepreneurship.
Seth is a Trustee of Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, where he helped found their entrepreneurship program as well as a popular student hackathon (the "Macathon"). He serves as a formal advisor to a number of funds and companies in the U.S. and around the world - especially in the Middle East and Africa - to help promote entrepreneurship and economic development.
A passionate cyclist, above-average skier, and general fan of all things outdoors, Seth and his wife live in Colorado with their three children. He is the co-author of The New Builders: Face to Face with the True Future of Business. His new book, Capital Evolution, about the future of capitalism, will be released in the fall of 2025.
Job Titles:
- Executive Assistant
- in 2017 As an Executive Assistant and Human Resources Coordinator
Shannon Maier joined Foundry in 2017 as an executive assistant and human resources coordinator. In these roles, she manages a number of back-office functions. In addition to providing executive support, administering Foundry's human resources function, facilitating the partner fund network, and documenting investments, she also contributes to content creation. She works with partners Chris Moody and Jaclyn Hester.
Shannon came to Foundry after five years at portfolio company, Gnip (acquired by Twitter in 2014), and over ten years working as an educator, author, and archivist at the University of Wyoming. Perennially curious and always up for a research project, she strives to solve problems before they arise and reduce friction through process optimization. A graduate of Randolph-Macon Woman's College and the University of Wyoming, Shannon lives in the foothills above Boulder with her spouse, two Great Pyrenees, and a 21 year- old cat. When not herding cats at Foundry, you can find her doing the same at her home on the edge of a national forest.