Seth Levine

Who are you, and what do you do?

I’m a partner with Foundry Group, a Boulder based technology investment firm which I founded with 3 of my closest friends in 2007. We’ve raised 5 funds – 4 early stage funds and one growth fund – and currently manage over $1BN in assets. Our investments focus around some key areas – what we call themes – of the evolving tech and internet landscape, and have included companies like Zynga (IPO: ZNGA), AdMeld (acquired by GOOG), FitBit (IPO: FIT) and Gnip (acquired by TWTR).

What forms of media have influenced you the most?

I grew up as the Internet was just coming into being and was heavily influenced by bulletin boards and Usenet (and the VMS operating system – my father worked for Digital Equipment). That lead to pirating a copy of the original Mosaic browser into my college computer lab with Jeremy Allaire – who later founded Allaire Software – and truly “surfing the web” for the first time. There were few sites the visit back then; I believe the very first one we visited was whitehouse.gov.

What hardware / software do you use?

I’m a Mac guy. I have a MacBook for travel and an iMac at the office. I keep basically nothing native on any of my machines – it’s all somewhere in the cloud for easy access from any device. In terms of software, my primary vehicles for communication are Gmail, Slack and Voxer. Most of my job involves communicating with the people I work with both at Foundry and more broadly in the companies we back, so I basically live in those tools.

What would be your dream creative setup?

I’m a bit of a morning person. I find that I’m most productive early in the day. My family and I live out in the country on some land and I’ve found that the best place for me to really power through work is early morning at home with a cup of coffee and sweeping views of the flatirons.