Footwork at Year 1

A look back on our firm's first year on the anniversary of closing Fund I.

Welcome to issue #39 of next big thing.

One year ago we announced Footwork, a new early-stage focused venture capital firm, with our debut $175 million fund. To mark our anniversary, we want to bring you under the hood to get a sense for what we’ve been up to.

We made six new investments this past year, and one significant follow-on investment. The Footwork portfolio includes:

• Table22: a platform enabling restaurants to offer memberships to their patrons

• Via: SaaS for mobile eCommerce

• Cradlewise: smart crib that helps babies and their parents get better sleep

• and three more companies in which our investment has yet to be announced

Here are a few stats on these investments:

• An even split between Seed and Series A (3 Seeds, 3 Series As)

• Footwork check sizes in the $2.0-8.3 million range, with an average initial investment of $4.6 million

• We serve on the board of directors at all but one of these six companies

• These businesses are 50% B2B, 33% B2B2C, and 17% B2C

We’ve invested in thesis areas that include B2B marketplaces, the blurring line between consumer and enterprise, digitizing the supply chain, eCommerce enablement, empowering entrepreneurship, the mental health crisis, the post-pandemic family, and the intersection of vertical SaaS and fintech. We’re actively looking at new investments in these themes, as well as climate and crypto, learning loss due to the pandemic, and more that we hope to write about in future posts.

One of the core pillars of our firm is that we believe diversity across every dimension is a competitive advantage. Here’s where the diversity in our portfolio stands today:

• 83% of founding teams have at least one woman or minority founder

• 66% of companies are led by a minority CEO

• 50% of the CEOs in our portfolio are women

Finally, a word about our team. Footwork is three people: the two of us as general partners, with our chief of staff, Katherine. Every day we see the power of our combination of experiences in investing and operating when it comes to seeking out and supporting founders. Our portfolio can call on Mike’s experience as COO of two hyper-growth companies, Stitch Fix and Walmart.com, which grew to billions in revenue under his watch, and on Nikhil’s experience as an investor seeing companies like Athelas, Canva, ClassDojo, Color, Lattice, Frame.io, and The Farmer’s Dog all go from ideas to the unicorn club. As we expand to between four and six equal general partners in the years ahead, we hope to maintain this combination of background and skillsets that leads to the Footwork partnership being greater than the sum of its parts. Most importantly, we hope to continue to live by our values: teamwork, excellence, learning, and joy. We feel very grateful to be building this firm and working closely with the founding teams who have chosen to partner with us.

Our portfolio is hiring — across finance, marketing, product, sales, and, of course, engineering and design. We’d love to hear from you if any of the above speaks to you, and to have you be a part of the Footwork journey.

Team Footwork at a meal together in New York City in Summer 2021.