Thursday, March 22, 2012

Downside of Active Venture Capital: Inter-company Poaching

What's the downside of being one of the biggest venture capital firms in the region? Apparently, your portfolio firms poaching employees from one another. Boulder-based Foundry Group took the subject head on this week in a public post, telling its firms that it has "no policy relating to the hiring of employees by one portfolio company from another", saying that the question had come up "a number of times" recently. In a post from Managing Director Seth Levine, the venture group said that it now has over 40 companies in its portfolio, with many concentrated in such areas as Boulder, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York. The issue appears to be pretty much unavoidable for a firm as active as Foundry, particularly in the Rocky Mountain region.