Heart & Dicipline
I've never believed these two things are in opposition.
Heart without discipline is just a wish. Discipline without heart is just a machine. The most enduring companies I've built — and the ones I'm most excited to back at Velveteen Ventures — are built from both, simultaneously, without apology.
Geri Stengel captured something important in her Forbes piece: that what I'm doing at Velveteen isn't just a different kind of fund. It's a different kind of thesis about what venture capital can be.
Every company I've ever built started with love. WonderWoof was for my terrier, Whisky. Tiny Organics was for my son Sebastian. I launched Natives Rising when my son Azure was born. And I closed Velveteen's first institutional round the day my daughter Amelia arrived. These weren't coincidences. They were the clearest possible signal of what I mean by a Deep Inner Why — the kind of conviction that doesn't waver when the pitch goes sideways or the market turns.
That same standard is what I look for in founders. Not polish. Not pedigree. An authentic, unshakeable sense of purpose that guides every decision. A founder who has found their Deep Inner Why doesn't perform conviction — they live it. Investors can feel the difference. Customers can too.
What I call "manifesting with discipline" is the same thing: it's not magical thinking, it's neuroscience. When we visualize success with genuine emotion and intention, we activate the brain's circuits for focus, resilience, and creativity. It’s a competitive advantage. At Velveteen, we invest in founders who lead with both heart and strategy — who understand that purpose and performance are the same force pointed in the same direction.
The fund's name comes from The Velveteen Rabbit — the story my grandmother read to me as a child, from a plush rabbit she brought home from Goodwill. She read that same "What Is Real" passage at my wedding. Velveteen is about believing that if you pour enough love, care, and attention into something, it can become real. That is exactly what founders do every day.
Our investment thesis is rooted in the Indigenous seven-generation principle — the idea that the decisions we make today should be evaluated through the lens of their impact on the next seven generations. That's not a constraint on returns. It's the most rigorous long-term ROI framework I know. We invest at the intersection of family, health, and planet — and we bring that same lens to who sits at our table, who we back, and how we build.
We are building for children and the planet. For the next seven generations. If that's not the deepest kind of ROI, I don't know what is.
Read the full Forbes article here.