Jan 6 2009

AdBurner, FirstDocs and our 2008 investments

First off, happy 2009 to you all! I’m looking forward to a little more frequent blogging this year (if not exactly a resolution for 2009 since I think those are a bit cheesy, at least a goal for the year).

A few items of note to start off the blogging year:

Today NewsGator, AdMeld, Technorati, Gigya, Medialets and Tremor Media announced AdBurner – a partnership that is designed to optimize the management and monitization of network traffic for large publishers. NewsGator is providing the distribution platform through their widget network and existing publisher relationships and the remaining companies are the key partners for monitizing that traffic – whether that traffic is a diverse media type, on a mobile platform, etc. With NewsGator, AdMeld and Technorati all in the portfolio (NewsGator and Technorati are Mobius portfolio companies, AdMeld is a Foundry Group investment) I’ve been close to the formation of this partnership. There’s clearly a market need here and the companies involved are all clearly top of class – they together have really created a compelling product.

In case you missed it over on the Foundry blog, Brad has a nice post up that summarizes the 7 new investments we made as a firm in 2008. It’s humbling for me to read through this list of great companies and think that each chose to work with us.  I’ve said it many times and Brad says it at the end of the post – it’s the entrepreneurs that make our world go around and we have great respect for them.

Lastly, my partner Jason has a post up (both on his own blog as well as the on the Foundry blog) that describes our latest investment (we completed it just prior to the end of the year) – FirstDocs.  For me the title of Jason’s post says it all – "Our Investment in Law Firm 2.0". Jason has been a thought leader around some of the changes that are happening (or should be happening) in the legal world and our investment in FirstDocs follows directly from his work in this area (and not just figuratively – FirstDocs initially reached out to Jason after reading his posts on Lawfirm 2.0).  The company has developed a software platform that automates much of the creation process for the legal profession’s most commonly used documents (freeing up time, energy and client money for more important matters).  This will definitely be a fun one to watch!