Hire the Best, Expand the Nest

I am delighted to announce that ff is expanding significantly.  Firstly, we are very excited to add David Teten as the second Partner in our history and Michael Yavonditte as a Venture Partner in the Firm.  David is Chairman of Harvard Business School Angels New York and an experienced entrepreneur.  He has founded three startups and sold two, most recently selling Circle of Experts to Evalueserve.  Michael is CEO of one of the fastest-growing New York statups, Hashable, and was CEO of Quigo (sold to AOL for a reported $340m), in which we were a seed investor.

These are two of the most talented and experienced entrepreneurs in New York and our Firm is privileged to be associated with them. They bring great talent and heft to what is becoming one of the leading super-angel/micro-VC firm in New York.   As our assets under management are growing fast, it was the right time to add these top-notch partners to continue our high-involvement style of investing that we believe correlates with the best returns.  We have room for a few interns this fall to support our enlarged team; application information is on our careers page.

Second, we have restructured our website to address questions we are often asked, such as where our portfolio companies are located, what themes we invest in, and to provide resources and links for entrepreneurs.  We plan on adding many features to the site over time that can help startups, well, start up.

Finally, we are in the process of building out over 5,000 square feet of space in New York to house ourselves as well as a number of companies we are invested in, such as Parsely and Phone.com.  We might have a few desks available for rent for likeminded members of the NY community, subject to our portfolio companies’ growth.  If you have interest in joining us in our space, please reach out and let us know.  We have some very unusual ideas for how the space will be designed – watch our blogs for details.

This is a new chapter in our Firm, but a continuation of process to build an awesome contributor to the New York and global startup community.  Since 1999, we have made over 100 investments in over 35 companies, and from the beginning we have been highly focused on generating industry leading returns. Among our most successful seed investments that have reached maturity are Cornerstone OnDemand (which raised $137m in a March 2011 IPO, ticker CSOD) and Quigo Technologies.  We have a large crop of exciting growth companies that are starting to come into their own.