Dear Investors and Friends:
It’s been a busy Winter for us at Fitz Gate Ventures as we exercised our pro rata investment rights alongside Andreesen Horowitz in Fitz Gate portfolio company Overtime (more info below) and made new seed stage investments in 2 extremely innovative companies, Uplevel Security and Pledgeling (please see descriptions below). Liz Maida (Princeton 1998) founded Uplevel Security after receiving dual masters degrees from MIT in Computer Science and Technology and Policy (where she was the only woman) and spending 13+ years in product development at Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM) where she worked for founder Tom Leighton (Princeton 1978). James Citron (Princeton 2000) is an extremely charismatic and accomplished 2-time tech CEO, having previously co-founded and run startups with successful exits.
And we have kept up the busy travel schedule:
- Meetup with Princeton alumni group in Los Angeles focused on Princeton startups
- Trips to NYC and Princeton for, among other things:
- Meetings with various founders of startups we are evaluating
- Meeting with the new Dean of the Graduate School to discuss Fitz Gate Ventures teaching a series of evening seminars on venture capital to graduate students and post doctoral students
- Board and other meetings with our own portfolio companies
- The Celebrate Invention event on the Princeton campus showcasing faculty and grad student startups and IP
- Judging once again the final exam/business plan competition for undergraduate class on entrepreneurship
In December our portfolio company, Overtime, closed a Series A round at a significant premium to the valuation at which Fitz Gate invested in Overtime’s Seed round in January 2017. We doubled down in Overtime by re-investing in the Series A round which was led by Andreesen Horowitz (with co-investors Kevin Durant, NBA Commissioner David Stern and other pro athletes) (see Tech Crunch article here: Overtime Funding in Tech Crunch). We remain very bullish on Overtime’s ability to become the next great digital media platform for sports. Last month the site had more views (150mm+) than CBS Sports online, apparently.
As always, please feel free to contact us directly if you have any questions about Fitz Gate Ventures or have come across an interesting early stage company with a Princetonian on board. Please also check out our slightly revamped website (www.fitzgate.com).
Jim Cohen and Mark Poag
