Founder-Market Fit

When I meet a founder, I ask one question before anything else: Why you?

Not why your company. Why you — specifically — to solve this problem. What have you lived or witnessed that no one else in the room has? At Velveteen Ventures, that's what we call founder-market fit. It's the number one thing we look for. And it's born from authenticity.

Venture has long optimized for pattern-matched founders — right schools, right networks, right rooms. We're looking for something different: founders whose insight comes from where no one else thought to look.

I built Tiny Organics because my son needed real, whole organic first foods and it didn't exist. My partner Karla Brollier, an Alaska Native from the Arctic, came to climate investing not through policy briefs but through identity and lived stakes. What we share — and what makes Velveteen distinct — is that we're not coming from groupthink. We're coming from a values-driven perspective that's been forged, not borrowed.

That's who we back. The healthcare founder who navigated a broken system for her own child or herself. The climate founder whose community absorbed the costs of others' decisions. These founders will see their vision through because it’s coming from their deep inner why.

ImpactAlpha recently covered our work, and I'm grateful — not for the recognition, but for what it signals. Overlooked founders with unique advantages are not a niche thesis - they are the future of venture. We're institutionally backed, four investments in, and just getting started.

To truly shift who gets funded and whose problems get solved, we need people like us on the other side of the table. We are what our ancestors prayed for. That's not just inspiration — it's a responsibilty.