Recent news from our
‍portfolio and fund

This week we hosted our Matchstick Campfire (founder retreat) in Boulder! We spent an inspiring and connecting 36 hours with our incredible founders. We covered topics to identify areas of improvemens within the company without increasing costs, leadership styles and how to get the most out of our teams, and board member dynamics. Of course we had a great time outside in the beautiful Colorado fall weather and meals where our founders built bonds with each other.

We're very excited to announce a project to make it easier for startups in Colorado to connect with investors, PitchColorado.com. Startups can now submit a single pitch and reach 15 amazing local investors. Our hope is this platform increases access to capital for startups, and access to great founders for investors. We plan to expand this project to more investors and more geographies. A big shout out to Mat Vogels, a Matchstick founder and currently with Julian Capital for leading this project with us.

Environmental, social and governance technology startup Optera released that it has closed on a $12 million Series A round led by Next Frontier Capital to grow its enterprise-focused ESG and carbon management platform. Congratulations to the Optera team!

We're looking forward to Denver Startup Week September 18-22 this year! We're helping organize and lead the "VC Day" activities to help startups succeed at raising capital. We've put together a huge meet and greet for investors and startups along side six panel sessions. Check out the schedule of events available now.

Congratulations to Fulcrum on the announcement of their Series A2 round of funding!

We are excited to announce that Matchstick Ventures Fund III has completed an investment in Liminal. Liminal delivers horizontal security for all generative AI, enabling CIOs and CISOs to take back complete control over AI data privacy, security, and sovereignty.

We are so proud of our very own Natty Zola for being named one of the most important investors in the Rockies!

We are excited to announce that Matchstick Ventures Fund III has completed an investment in Silkline. Silkline is a modern operating system for B2B procurement, organizing communication with suppliers to deliver a more connected supply base.

We loved seeing all the new faces at our AI Boulder meetup! 100s signed up, 80+ attendees! There is a ton of AI happening in Colorado and we're thrilled to host events to help the community make connections. Thanks to all the presenters and attendees. The monthly meetups will continue.

During Chicago Tech Week, Ryan Broshar participated in a panel that shared a lot of great tactical advice for founders building a company in the Midwest.

This week we hosted our Matchstick Campfire (founder retreat) in Minnesota! It was such an amazing and inspiring 24 hours with our incredible founders. We covered topics to improve negotiations, decision making, personal trajectory, and getting the most from a board. Of course we had a great founder story with the Sports Engine team and dinner at a classic Minnesota lake front supper club.

We have a great startup community but it could use a bit more organization...Each month we’ll send around an email with the following:

Events ← to help connect people

Colorado startup news ← to highlight cool stuff happening

New local startups launching and getting funding ← to build awareness for local companies

Insightful reading ← to help us all grow and be better

Hopefully, this helps bring our community together and allows us to support and help each other on a larger scale.

We are excited to announce that Matchstick Ventures Fund III has completed an investment in Freedev.ai. Freedev.ai is building an AI agent platform for software teams that automates many common development tasks, including maintaining code documentation, managing technical debt, identifying and eliminating PII leakage problems, flagging and fixing SLA compliance issues, and resolving code vulnerability issues.

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We are excited to announce that Matchstick Ventures Fund III has completed an investment in Tab Commerce. Tab Commerce is an intelligent expense control software designed to maximize restaurant profitability.

Two Boxes, the best way for brands and 3PLs to process returns and capture critical data from the return process, emerged from stealth today with $4.5 million in seed funding. We are so excited for this team, and the chance to participate in this round (and their prior round) with Vinyl Capital and Range Ventures.

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See more here:

Two Boxes Raises $4.5M In Seed Funding (FinSMEs)

Denver logistics startup exits stealth with $4.5M raise (Colorado Inno)