Leslie here. I’m so excited to share a big event announcement - our first ever Founder Day in Chicago! I’m headed your way October 15th, and can’t wait to meet all the local rockstars. Applications open to the world next week, but you all get a head start. More details below!

Elsewhere in G&W world, we have firesides to recap, a portfolio hiring roundup, and my latest viral-substack-slash-desperate-plea that I sincerely hope every founder reads before sending their next pitch deck. It’s not anti-AI, its pro-human thinking. Just say no to slop.

Here’s the roundup from the G&W team:

🔎 TLDR

• 🎙️ Leslie and Mike Ma on his Alone Together podcast talk about growing up in Costa Rica, outsiders, and why cognitive surrender is the thing to watch for

• 👀 The Care Economy fireside with Life360 CEO Lauren Antonoff is live - a conversation that reframed how we think about the category

• 💡 Read this before you send your next AI pitch deck

• 💼 G&W portfolio companies hiring

• 💸 And, our always up-to-date list of founder resources, grants & opportunities

🎉 Announcing G&W Founder Day - Chicago Edition!

Founder Day is Graham & Walker’s longest-running, most-requested program. We’ve hosted this pop-up bootcamp in all major tech hubs, coaching over 1500 founders to raise their first round of outside capital since 2018. And this year, with support from our partners at Antares Capital, we’re headed to Chicago!

Founder Day is a high-substance, founder-first day of learning and connecting for early stage, pre-consensus founders who are getting ready to raise venture capital. Spots are capped at 30 founders. Applications are open right now exclusively through this newsletter (the rest of the world gets access on September 1).

🔗 Apply now

What to expect:

• Our long-running, highly sought-after fundraising bootcamp

• “Inside VC” Panel featuring local and visiting VCs

• Small-group mentorship with investors, experienced founders and operators

• Plus, plenty of time for community connection and peer networking

To curate the best possible founder cohort we have a lightweight application process - it takes a couple of minutes if you have a deck handy.

Request your spot here!

🎙️ Leslie on the Alone Together Podcast

Leslie featured on the Alone Together Podcast with Mike Ma. They went deep into her childhood in Costa Rica, what it felt like to always be the outsider, and having that chip on her shoulder that became the through line for everything she’s built. They talked about the future of AI in venture, cognitive surrender in founders, and what it means to be an influential micro VC in a world obsessed with fund size.

🎥 Watch it here

👀 Watch the Replay: The Care Economy Feat. Lauren Antonoff, CEO of Life360

Lauren Antonoff has been building products that millions of people rely on for nearly 30 years. Today, as CEO of Life360, she has thought harder than nearly anyone about what it means to build tech for the people and pets we love most.

📖 Read the recap here

🎥 Watch the recording here

💡 Read This Before You Send an AI Pitch

Every Monday, Leslie reviews every deck that comes in through the G&W website. Lately, something has changed. AI generated pitch decks are flooding in looking and sounding practically identical. In other words, there has never been an easier time to stand out from the crowd. Don’t miss it.

The latest Venture with Leslie is out now on Substack and Fast Company, and worth a read before you send out your deck.

Venture with Leslie

💼 G&W Portfolio is Hiring

• Rosie — Infrastructure for flexible, on-demand childcare and household support → Open Positions at Headquarters

• Seven Starling — Maternal and family care platform → Open Roles in Operations, Sales and Revenue Cycle Management

• mpathic — Clinician-founded AI safety company → AI Safety - Human Data, Engineering, Finance, Product & Expert positions

• Source — AI-native procurement platform for hospitality → Open roles in Purchasing

• Culina Health — Virtual nutrition care → Registered Dietitian

💸 Funding & Opportunities

The pipeline doesn't pause for summer. Here's what's open and worth looking into.

• Forbes 30 Under 30 — The definitive list of young people changing the world. Nominations open until September 1

• ODF — An intense one-week in-person experience focused on meeting collaborators, exploring ideas, and gaining conviction.

• Entrepreneurs First — No idea required. Just ambition and potential. Apply by October 15

  💸 Full list with over 50 active ops

That's a wrap for #66. Don’t forget to apply for Founder Day Chicago 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing extraordinary founders and ideas that break the mold.

Leslie here. I’m the GP at Graham & Walker.

If you follow me on Linkedin, you’ve probably seen me complain about the explosion of sameness caused by AI-generated writing and pitch decks. That’s why I’m excited to see substack launch new features to help us tell what’s written by a human and what isn’t. We just added an AI transparency statement to this newsletter, and I thought I would expand on it here.

Every month, my team and I create resources and content for founders, investors and techies at large, in the form of blog posts, fireside chats, workshops, and a list of resources from across the ecosystem that we update weekly. All of that original, human-generated content lives on our website, Youtube channel, and on my personal Linkedin and substack, Venture With Leslie. This newsletter, Graham & Walker Headlines, is a monthly digest where we summarize everything above into one quick email with the help of AI.

In other words, original content is created by us, while AI helps with the summaries. We also use AI for research and analysis that goes into our content, and occasionally for error checking and clean up.

And now for this week’s digest!

Here's everything happening in the G&W community right now.

• 🔥 Our next Fireside Chat: Lauren Antonoff CEO of Life360 and Leslie discuss The Care Economy

• 🎙️ Recap: The State of Play for Female VCs with Paige Hendrix Buckner — the numbers are in and they’re worth knowing

• ⚽️ Leslie’s latest Venture with Leslie: Ode to the Underdogs — this one’s about soccer, and not about soccer at all

• 🚀 Founder Spotlight: Casey Lawlor and Unvale — the platform building the next generation of storytellers

• 💸 Grants & deadlines closing soon

🔥 Upcoming Fireside chat: The Care Economy Feat. Lauren Antonoff, CEO of Life360 (ASX: 360)

Lauren Antonoff has spent nearly 30 years building products that millions of people rely on every day — from Microsoft to GoDaddy to Life360, the world’s leading platform for family safety and connection. On August 19th, she’ll join us for a conversation on how technology is reshaping the care economy, what it takes to earn real trust, and the lessons learned leading through growth at some of the world’s most influential tech companies.

Free and open to all! Register here.

Register here

👀 Watch the Replay: The State of Play for Female VCs
feat. Paige Hendrix Buckner, CEO of All Raise

Paige Hendrix Buckner is not a sugarcoater. As CEO of All Raise, she has the data, inside knowledge, and hard-won perspective to tell it straight. And earlier this month, on a fireside with Leslie, she did.

Some nuggets from Paige:

Firms have been handing out partner titles without handing over decision-making authority, and the gap between the two is wide. Fewer than 1 in 5 people who can actually write a check at a US VC firm are women. Only six women hold a Managing Partner seat at firms managing $1B or more. And for the first time on record, the number of women- and minority-owned firms actively raising capital fell — down 12% in 2025.

But there’s a real case for optimism too. Emerging women-led funds are outperforming, the LP landscape is shifting, and $124 trillion is changing hands in ways that could reshape who writes checks next.

Read the full recap and watch the recording at the link below.

📖 Read the full recap here

🎥 Watch the recording here

⚽️ Ode to the Underdogs

Leslie grew up watching fútbol in Costa Rica — a tiny country that nobody expected much from, on a soccer field or anywhere else. That chip on the shoulder never really went away, and this World Cup brought it all back.

The latest Venture with Leslie uses this year’s tournament — and its biggest, most exciting upsets — to say something true about what it means to build outside the consensus right now. The VC landscape has never been more bifurcated. Dollars are pouring into the expected names, and everyone else seems to be clawing for air.

But underdogs have an advantage that favorites don’t: nobody sees them coming.

It’s a short read, a great one, and the kind of thing worth sending to any founder who’s been told — directly or indirectly — that they’re outclassed.

📖 Read it here

Venture with Leslie

🚀 Founder Spotlight: Unvale with Casey Lawlor

One in 200 high schoolers is already publishing on Unvale.

Casey Lawlor is a three-time founder building the platform he wishes he’d had growing up — a place where the next generation of storytellers can build an audience, self-publish, and own their creative path without waiting for a gatekeeper to say yes. The vision is to lower the average age of a first-time published author or showrunner by 10 years, and make Unvale-born stories 10% of all new IP on streaming platforms. What YouTube did for video. What Roblox did for gaming. That’s the bar Casey is setting.

In a world full of founders chasing headlines, Casey is chasing something harder. "Real progress happens through painful confrontation with the truth." That's the whole philosophy.

Read Casey’s full Q&A on our blog. Inspiration to follow.

Read full interview here.

💸 Funding & Opportunities

The pipeline doesn't pause for summer. Here's what's open and worth looking into.

• Forbes 30 Under 30 — The definitive list of young people changing the world. Nominations open until September 1

• ODF — An intense one-week in-person experience focused on meeting collaborators, exploring ideas, and gaining conviction.

• Milestone Accelaration program: A new accelerator-style program from the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center offering free coaching and paid student interns. Apply by August 3

• Entrepreneurs First — No idea required. Just ambition and potential. Apply by October 15

  💸 Full list with 40+ active ops

That's a wrap for #65. Hope to see you soon on August 19 for out Fireside! 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing extraordinary founders and ideas that break the mold.

Summer is officially here and the G&W team is in full swing ☀️. We hope you're finding ways to enjoy it — even if your inbox says otherwise.

We've got a founder story worth reading, a fireside you don't want to miss, and a few funding deadlines closing fast. Here's your roundup.

🔎 TLDR

🔥 Coming July 8: Fireside with Paige Hendrix Buckner on the real state of play for female VCs

🚀 Portfolio spotlight: Meet Jessica Chen Riolfi and Uprise

💸 Funding deadlines worth knowing about

🔥 The State of Play for Female VCs feat. Paige Hendrix Buckner, CEO of All Raise

Don’t miss our upcoming fireside with one of the sharpest voices in venture. Paige Hendrix Buckner is the CEO of All Raise, the influential non-profit whose mission is to accelerate the success of women and nonbinary investors in venture capital. She’s bringing all of it to our community for a candid, no-filter conversation on the real state of play in 2026.

This one’s for founders, investors, and anyone who believes the future of venture should look different than its past.

📅 July 8 | 11:30 AM PT | Virtual

🔗 Register HERE

🔗 Register here

✨ Founder Spotlight: Jessica Chen Riolfi founder of Uprise

Every once in a while we back a founder who makes you think: how has nobody built this yet? Jessica Chen Riolfi is one of them. She spent a decade watching fintech democratize everything — and then asked why nobody had fixed the thing that stresses the whole country every April: taxes 🫠.

As with any great founder story, Jessica’s journey is full of twists and turns. Read on for a dose of inspiration (I bet you didn’t think you could be inspired by taxes! Ha).

Tell us who you are and what your company does — in plain language, like you’re explaining it to a friend at a dinner party.

I’m Jessica, co-founder and CEO of Uprise. We’re a premium tax firm for complex earners: people with a small business, real estate, or stock comp bouncing up and down all year. They’ve graduated beyond TurboTax, but the Big Four is out of reach. So they’re stuck in a messy middle — and it’s getting worse as independent CPAs retire and leave people without great options. We do tax filing plus year-round advisory, embedded inside the platforms and advisor relationships clients already trust.

***

We’re so proud to have Jessica as part of our portfolio. Head over to the Graham & Walker blog to read the full interview.

Full interview here

💸 Grants & Accelerators Roundup

The list is updated. New grants, accelerators, and funding opportunities — ready for you to dig in.

• She Seals the Deal Grant — $5,000 for women actively building a revenue-generating business. Apply by June 30

• Beyond CPG — Operator-led accelerator for scaling consumer brands. Apply by July 1

• Visible Hands — Boston-based fellowship for early-stage entrepreneurs representing Greater Boston’s racial and gender diversity. Apply by July 10

💸 Full list of 50+ active opportunities

That's a wrap for #64. See you on July 8th for our Fireside. 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing extraordinary founders and ideas that break the mold.

June is here and team G&W is getting ready for World Cup ⚽️ 🏆. Tell us: who are you rooting for?

Meanwhile on the work front, great conversations and a few deadlines worth knowing about. Here’s your roundup.

🔎 TLDR

🔥 Upcoming Fireside chat with All Raise’s Paige Hendrix Buckner: The State of Play for Female VCs

🎤 Leslie's Women Who Lead Summit talk challenged aspiring founders to start before they're ready

🎥 Recap: No Filter with Charlie O’Donnell — what VCs actually think

💡 Latest Venture with Leslie: Seattle Mourns, or, A Note on What Endures

💸 Grants & deadlines closing soon

🔥 The State of Play for Female VCs feat. Paige Hendrix Buckner, CEO of All Raise

Don’t miss our upcoming fireside with one of the sharpest voices in venture. Paige Hendrix Buckner is the CEO of All Raise, the influential non-profit whose mission is to accelerate the success of women and nonbinary investors in venture capital. She’s bringing all of it to our community for a candid, no-filter conversation on the real state of play in 2026.

This one’s for founders, investors, and anyone who believes the future of venture should look different than its past.

📅 June 25 | 11 AM PT | Virtual

🔗 Register HERE

🔗 Register here

🎤 Bet on Yourself: Watch Leslie’s inspiring talk at the Women Who Lead Summit

Last week Leslie took the stage in Seattle, and she didn’t hold back. Her talk was part personal story, part objection handling, part rallying cry.

Betting on yourself isn’t one big dramatic moment. It’s a decision you make one day, and the day after that, and the day after that. She shared stories of founders who googled their way to their first product, sold macarons to friends before quitting their day job, and built companies that help families through their worst moments — all of them committed to figuring it out.

She also said the quiet part out loud: it’s hard to keep going. Her advice for founders is: don’t quit when it gets hard. Quit when the hard is not worth it.

The full talk is worth sending to every woman in your life who’s been sitting on an idea.

🎥 Watch it here

🔥 Recap: Fireside Chat with Charlie O’Donnell

No Filter: What VCs Are Really Thinking

VC and author Charlie O’Donnell came to our fireside with one agenda: to tell founders what VCs won’t say to their face. Let’s just say the zoom room got uncomfortable… in the best way possible.

🎥 Watch the full recording here

📖 Read the recap in our blog here

🎥 Watch the full recording

📖 read about it in Headlines

A big month across the portfolio. Here's what's happening.

Seven Starling is expanding into menopause mental health care. Women are likely to experience depression during this life transition — yet less than half know that menopause can affect mental health at all. Same clinician-led model, same referral pathway, now covering every season of a woman's life.

mPathic launched mPACT — a clinician-built framework that benchmarks how AI models perform in high-risk conversations. Suicide risk, eating disorders, misinformation. Avoiding harm isn’t the same as providing real support, and no model consistently meets the clinical standard quite yet. mpathic is making those gaps visible and fixable.

it's electric is on a tear. One month, two cities! Philadelphia just signed on for 1,000 Level 2 curbside chargers across all 18 city planning districts. And in DC, they were selected to deploy the city's first solar-powered curbside chargers at public libraries.

Agave Health is opening the waitlist for Rose — an AI companion built specifically for the ADHD brain. Built from thousands of real coaching interactions, Rose helps you start when you're stuck, stay accountable, and know when to bring in a human. Early access opens this summer - join the waitlist here.

🚀 Open roles across the Portfolio

Good roles, great teams. Know someone? Send them this.

• Bigger Picture — Freight Implementation Specialist. Tackling one of the most complex, least visible problems in global logistics.

• mpathic — Multiple open roles at a company that just hit a serious growth inflection.

• Goodword — Join the team building a smarter, more human layer of social software.

• Source — AI-native operating system for commercial construction - multiple open roles

• Rosie — Infrastructure for flexible, on-demand childcare and household support → Head of Engineering · Founding Product Designer

Seattle Mourns, or, A Note on What Endures

This week’s Venture with Leslie is different. No frameworks, no fundraising tactics. Just something worth sitting with.

Reflecting on the loss of two local business leaders, Leslie offers a reflection of what matters. Two men in the prime of their lives, both mainstays of their community. And the tributes that followed weren’t about their accomplishments, they were about who they were. The lives they touched. The seats they gave to others. The way they made people feel.

In a business culture that rewards achievement, it turns out character is what people actually remember.

It’s a short read. The kind that stops you in your tracks for just a minute.

📖 Read it here

💸 Grants & Accelerators Roundup

We update the Founder Hub frequently with grants, accelerators, fellowships, and programs that move founders forward. Here's a few that are closing soon.

• She Builds — SheBuilds is a 48-hour online hackathon where women come together to turn ideas into real, working products Apply by June 2

• Famous Amos Ingredients for Success — $150K in capital awards, mentorship, and resources for early-stage Black business owners. Apply by June 2

• Impact Catalyst — Non-dilutive seed funding for early-stage life science startups. Apply by June 12

• MassNextGen — Non-dilutive grant + lab bench + investor showcase for life

  science startups. Apply by June 12

• Cartier Women's Initiative — Annual international program for women-led businesses with strong social or environmental impact. Apply by June 16

  💸 Full list of 50+ active opportunities

That's a wrap for #63. See you out there. 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing extraordinary founders and ideas that break the mold.

May is right around the corner and we’re bursting with good energy here in G&W world 💫.

Here’s the TLDR:

• Coming up on our next Fireside: Join us and OG VC Charlie O’Donnell for a candid conversation on what VC’s are really thinking

• Natalie Riso’s personal branding for founders session is one to rewatch — hit the replay for the last 10 minutes of very deep & detailed Q&A

• Four portfolio companies hiring right now — meaty roles, great teams

• Funding opportunity deadlines creeping up fast

Let’s get into it 👇

The Founder's Guide to Building a Personal Brand

Natalie Riso showed up and delivered! No fluff, no filler — just a clear, founder-first system for turning your LinkedIn into a business tool. The session covered what to post, how often, and how to make your online presence do real work for sales, partnerships, and hiring.

If you missed it, the replay is worth your time.

🎥 Watch it here

🎥 Watch the recording

🔥 Coming up on May 13th: No Filter - What VC’s Are Really Thinking. A G&W Fireside feat. Charlie O’Donnell

“We’re interested” isn’t a yes. But nobody tells you why.

Charlie O’Donnell has spent 20 years on both sides of the table. He was the first analyst at Union Square Ventures, helped launch First Round Capital’s NYC office, and has funded 100+ startups through his own fund, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. He’s also not afraid to say the quiet part out loud.

This will be an unscripted fireside, led by G&W Founder Leslie Feinzaig. They’ll be pulling back the curtain on how investment decisions actually get made — and what you can do about it.

📅 May 13th 10 AM PT / 1 PM PT

👉 RSVP here

Register here

🚀 Hiring Across the Portfolio

Our standount portfolio companies need standout people. Take a look:

• Bigger Picture — Freight Implementation Specialist. Tackling one of the most complex, least visible problems in global logistics.

• mpathic — Multiple open roles at a company that just hit a serious growth inflection.

• Goodword — Join the team building a smarter, more human layer of social software.

• Amdahl — Founding Growth Lead. Early, high-impact, not for the faint of heart.

💡 When VCs Change Their Stripes (And Why)

Ever notice how many VCs used to be climate investors — until they weren’t? Or how the entire industry pivoted to AI overnight? It’s not just you. And it’s not an accident.

The latest Venture with Leslie unpacks why VCs dramatically shift their thesis — sometimes mid-fund — and what’s actually driving it. Spoiler: it’s less about conviction and more about LPs and the relentless pressure to stay fundable.

For founders, the takeaway is real: don’t build for investors. Build for customers. Investors will get it or they won’t — and their thesis might change six months after they passed on you anyway.

Worth a read before your next pitch prep session.

📖 Read it here

📖 Read it here

💸 Resources and Funding Ops

You’re go-to list of live funding opportunities. Some of these close soon. Don't sleep on them.

Grants & Accelerators Roundup

• Y Combinator — Summer 2026 batch open now.

• Founder Fellowship: Blue Ridge Labs’ Founder Fellowship helps early-stage founders move from idea to MVP through mentorship, research, and hands-on support. Deadline May 3

• Startup Battlefield 200 — $100K equity-free + TechCrunch stage. Nominate by May 27

• Women Founders Network Fast Pitch — $25K cash grant. Deadline May 31

• Head to our blog for the full list of 50+ active applications and rolling deadline opportunities.

  💸 Full list

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing extraordinary founders and ideas that break the mold.

Spring is here, and we are not slowing down, allergies be dammed. Here’s what we got for you this month:

• Workshop recap: We wrapped our live Claude Code build session — catch the replay in our Founder Hub!

• Coming April 14: Personal branding workshop with 3x LinkedIn Top Voice Natalie Riso. Yes, even if the phrase makes you want to eye-roll 🙄 😅

• Venture with Leslie: Do you know the only 3 reasons why VCs invest? You should… and you should know which box you’re in.

• Resources: Our always-live grants & accelerators list is freshly updated!

Let’s get to it!

🔥 Coming up on April 14th: The Founder’s Guide to Building a Personal Brand

feat. Natalie Riso — Head of Startups at Rho · 3x LinkedIn Top Voice

You already have a personal brand. The question is whether it’s working for you. Natalie Riso joins us for a practical, zero-fluff session on turning your online presence into a real business asset — for sales, partnerships, and hiring. Built for founders who are heads-down building and don’t have time to waste.

📍 Tuesday, April 14 | 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET | Virtual
👉 RSVP here

👉 RSVP here!

💡 ICYMI: The 2-Person Startup, 10-Person Team: Claude Code for Founders

Logan Currie has raised $1.4M and written zero lines of code. Last week, she built a live investor dashboard in 30 minutes in front of 150+ founders — then turned it into a full investor update with one prompt. The room hasn’t been the same since! Replay, starter kit, and Chief of Staff templates are waiting for you in the Founder Hub.

🎥 Watch the recording

📣 There Are Only 3 Reasons VCs Invest — and You Need to Know Which One You're Chasing

Faith. Opportunity. Evidence. Every VC round comes down to one of these three — and they’re sequential. No investor skips steps.

The catch: the gap between them has never been wider. AI has supercharged the earliest rounds and raised the bar everywhere else. If you’re somewhere in the middle — real traction, still needing capital — the math is working against you in ways most founders don’t see coming.

The latest Venture with Leslie breaks it down clearly and tells you exactly what to do about it depending on where you are.

Worth a read before your next investor conversation!

📖 Read it

Deadlines are moving fast! 🏃‍♀️ Here’s a few things that might spark your attention right now 👇

Grants & Accelerators

• Y Combinator: accepting applications for the Summer 2026 Batch funding cycle. The batch will take place from July to September in San Francisco. You can also apply to future batches (Fall, Winter, and Spring) Applications due on Star Wars day (May the 4th 🤓)

• Startup Battlefield 200: The world’s most promising early-stage startups. Selected by TechCrunch. Trained, tested, and put on a global stage. Startup Battlefield brings together 200 standout companies to showcase at Disrupt and compete for a $100K equity-free prize, investor attention, and the kind of media exposure that can change the trajectory of a company overnight. Nominate yourself, a fellow founder, or a portfolio company by May 27th

• Demo26: DEMO (April 22nd) is the largest student-run entrepreneurial conference in Southern California, annually bringing together startups, investors, and students for a day-long event

• Neurodiverse Entrepreneur Program: Through partnership with Autism Angels Group, The Neurodiverse Entrepreneur Program increases business leadership opportunities for people with developmental and/or cognitive differences such as autism, dyslexia, learning disabilities, ADD/ADHD, and other related diagnoses. Selected NDEP Companies will receive over $19,000 in Grants and Services: Apply by April 15

• Women Founders Network: Women Founders Network 14th Annual Fast Pitch Competition will open applications for the 2026 season on April 1. The winner gets a $25k cash grant. Apply by May 31

💸 Get the Full List

That’s a wrap for now! See you on the 14th 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing extraordinary founders and ideas that break the mold. By founders, for founders, built on and for a powerful founder community.

March is bringing the momentum. This week’s newsletter is jam packed with founder insights, resources and ways to connect. Check it out below!

🔎 Here’s the TLDR:

• 🤖 Join us TOMORROW for a live working session for founders to learn how to use Claude Code. No coding experience required.

• 💡 Leslie’s coffee chat with a pension fund CIO made into way into Fast Company this week.

• 🌵 1 in 3 adults with ADHD don't receive care. G&W portco, Agave Health, is changing that.

• 🤝 The G&W x Goodword workshop is a wrap. The frameworks, replay, and slides are all live on the Founder Hub.

💸 As always, our running list of founder grants and accelerators is live.

❗TOMORROW: The 2-Person Startup, 10-Person Team

Have you been hearing about Claude Code and wondering what it actually means for your startup? This session is for you.

In 60 minutes, we go from a blank page to a polished, investor-ready dashboard. Designed for non-technical founders. No coding experience required.

Led by Logan Currie, 2x founder, non-technical builder, and AI educator who has vibe-coded 10+ AI tools with zero lines of code.

📅 Thursday, March 12 | 12pm PT / 3pm ET
🔗 Sign up here

💡 ICYMI: Leslie’s latest on Fast Company

It started when a pension fund CIO told her he has trouble understanding VCs. Financiers want returns. Politicians want power. But VCs? They dress like they’re going to brunch and talk like they’re saving the world.

Leslie’s take: that’s not entirely a bad thing. And founders do it, too.

The reason we sound like this (the dreamy, hyperbolic, change-the-world language) is because some of us actually mean it. And we wouldn’t be doing it otherwise.

Check out the full piece to learn more about how VCs talk and think — and what it means for you.

PS: Want more VC coffee chats turned finance lessons? Leslie writes about all of it on Venture with Leslie.

Subscribe to Venture with Leslie

🚀 Agave Health is Proving Neurodiversity Care is a Real Business

Ori Fruhauf and Eve Lise Mamane at Agave Health, are building what too many employers are sleeping on.

15-20% of employees are neurodivergent. 1 in 3 adults with ADHD don’t receive care. And employer healthcare costs for employees with ADHD run up to 60% higher than for those without. That’s real money. Real productivity loss. And a fixable problem.

Agave Health is fixing it. Here’s where they stand right now:

• 87% of Agave members report improved symptoms and day-to-day functioning

• Early claims data shows a 3.4:1 ROI for employers, with potential cost reductions of up to 76%

• Now in-network across 7 states with Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, UnitedHealthcare, and Cigna, reaching 35+ million members

• Named to the 2026 Digital Health 100 by Digital Health New York

• One of the most prominent tech and AI companies in the world just launched Agave as an employee benefit

The clinical rigor is real. The business case is concrete.

🚀 Check out our blog for a full update on Agave's recent progress

🤝 Founder Workshop Recap: Make Your Network Work for You

We teamed up with G&W portco Goodword for a workshop on one of the most underutilized founder tools: your network.

Full Recap + Slides

As Leslie put it: “Use AI to manage your process. Don’t use it to replace your brain — because you’re supposed to be the thing that’s special about you.”

In other words, be a human (not a robot). Use the robots to make you a better human.

💸 Funding Resources Roundup

The list is updated. New grants, accelerators, and funding opportunities — ready for you to dig in.

• Climate Smart Communities Initiative — Funding and technical assistance for community-based climate resilience startups. Apply by March 12

• Ladies Who Launch — In partnership with Boundless Futures Foundation, awarding $10K each to 10 US-based women-led businesses that generate growth for good. Apply by March 17

• Neurodiverse Entrepreneur Program — $19K+ in grants and services for founders with developmental or cognitive differences including ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and more. Apply by April 15

Get the Full List

See you soon! 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing pre-consensus founders and ideas that break the mold.

Over here, February is all for founders. Whether you’re looking for new ways to work your network or want to sharpen your fundraising strategy - we’ve got you covered.

Plus, some exciting updates from G&W portcos that are catching fire! Let’s get into it.

Here’s what’s inside:

• TODAY: Make Your Network Work for You! 🎤 Goodword is joining us for a tactical workshop on how you can make your network your greatest asset.

• Portland, thank you for an incredible evening! 💌 An IRL roundtable conversation with 30 female founders and investors, who reminded us that ambition and vulnerability must coexist to build something extraordinary.

• Portfolio recognition across the board 🚀 From mpathic’s feature by Google, Skylight Social called out by Buesky CEO Jay Graber, LiquiDonate’s first television feature, and Goodword’s exclusive report on The State of Human Connection in 2026.

• Founder Hub 🧠 Founders, you hear this advice all the time: fundraising isn’t a moment, it’s a process. Catch our latest Zero to One Guide where we break down active vs. passive fundraising.

💸 Plus, our always updated list of 50+ of live grants and accelerators.

💌 An Evening with Graham & Walker: Portland

Last week, we headed to Portland for an intimate gathering of female founders and investors. It was the type of evening we live for over here at G&W.

Leslie Feinzaig and Nicole Schmidt (Founder & CEO of Source, a G&W portfolio company) led an unfiltered conversation about what it actually takes to build, raise, and lead in today’s market. No pitch decks. No performance. Just real talk.

What struck us most: the hunger for honesty. Founders and investors alike craving a space where ambition doesn’t have to be wrapped in false confidence. Where vulnerability and power can coexist.

HUGE thank you to our friends at Perkins Coie for making it happen. And to everyone who showed up ready to connect.

🎤 TODAY: Make Your Network Work for You!

Alex Chung, master connector and Head of Growth at Goodword, is walking us through the exact frameworks and workflows she uses to turn relationships into real leverage—for fundraising, customers, hiring, and credibility.

What you’ll get:

• A clear framework for turning your network into real outcomes

• A repeatable approach to follow-ups, warm intros, and relationship management

• Tactical systems you can use immediately

📅 Today, February 18 | 10am PT / 1pm ET | virtual
🔗 Register here

Scaling Empathy: mpathic Featured by Google & GeekWire

mpathic landed stories in both Google Public Policy and GeekWire for a bold question that founder Dr. Grin Lord asked years ago: Could machine learning help scale the expertise of psychologists?

That question became a mission - they’re building the infrastructure to keep humans safe in the age of AI. The proof is in the impact: their AI is seven times more accurate than humans at detecting suicide risk in clinical trials.

👉 Plus, they’re hiring. Join a team building safety where it matters most.

LiquiDonate: From Industry-Leading Report to Public Television

LiquiDonate just dropped a major industry report on returns fraud. The findings? Returns fraud doesn’t always look like fraud. It shows up as operational drag, unexpected costs, inventory that never adds up.

Plus, they landed a spot on All Access with Andy Garcia, won the NRF's 2026 VIP Award for Best Supply Chain Innovation, and got covered by Supply Chain 247.

All of this for solving a $850B problem nobody else wanted to touch.

Skylight Reimagines the Social Graph (and gets a shoutout on stage)

Jay Graber, CEO of BlueSky, called out G&W portco, Skylight, at the Women's Venture Capital Summit as the future of interoperable social graphs. Your Tik Tok followers port over automatically—no rebuild, no lock-in, just real creator independence.

This is the shift we're betting on: creators building once, distributing everywhere. It’s exciting to see the interop thesis move from theory to reality.

📖 The Fundraising Playbook: Passive vs. Active

Here’s the move that separates good founders from great ones: they fundraise always, but they raise decisively.

In Part 3 of our Zero to One Guide, we break down the distinction that actually matters—passive fundraising (the evergreen relationship work) versus active fundraising (the short, high-intensity round). You’ll learn how to build your network before you need it, when to switch modes, and why most founders blur the line and suffer for it.

🚀 Check out the full post here.

💸 Founder Resources Roundup

Fast-closing deadlines this month. Get on these.

• Avalanche Build Games — $1M prize pool for crypto-native builders | Apply by Feb 13

• CAFE Spring Accelerator — Two-month hybrid fintech accelerator for financial equity founders | Apply by Feb 17

• Culture Shift Lab House of Health & Wellness Boston Deal Making Summit — 10 health/wellness founders pitch to active investors; one wins $25K | Apply by Feb 19

• CTIA Wireless Foundation Catalyst — Grants for social entrepreneurs with mobile-first solutions | Apply by Feb 24

Get the Full List

Bye for now! 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing pre-consensus founders and ideas that break the mold.

February is full of ways to connect. Whether you’re looking to meet IRL, sharpen your networking skills, or tap into early-stage wisdom, we’ve got something coming your way. Plus, exciting portfolio update from a portco that’s catching fire.

🔎 Here’s what’s inside today’s issue:

• 💬 Join Leslie Feinzaig and Ndonga Sagnia on Feb 10th for a real talk on everything that happens behind the scenes during an exit.

• 📍 Meet us in Portland on Feb 12th for an invite-only evening with founders, funders, and honest conversations.

• 🤝 Learn to make your network work for you in a tactical workshop with Goodword’s Alex Chung on Feb 18th.

• 🚀 Unvale is on fire—the creator platform just hit breakout growth and deep engagement.

💸 As always, explore the Founder Hub—now updated with new grants, accelerators, and a fast-track to AWS credits.

💬 Fireside Chat: When the Exit Isn’t the Whole Story (Leslie Feinzaig x Ndonga Sagnia)

📅 Tuesday, February 10 | 11:30am PT / 2:30pm ET | virtual
🔗 Register here

So much of the startup narrative centers on headline outcomes. This conversation focuses on everything that happens behind the scenes.

Join us for a live, candid conversation with Ndonga Sagnia, co-founder of TimeCredit AI, on the emotional, financial, and personal dimensions of an exit, how founders recalibrate identity and ambition afterward, and what it really means to define success over the long arc of a startup journey.

​This is an honest, founder-first conversation about growth, perspective, and learning from outcomes that are meaningful even when they don’t fit a single headline.

📍Graham & Walker Is Headed to Portland!

📅 Thursday, February 12 | 5-7pm
🔗 By invitation only— apply here if you’d like to attend.

We’re bringing together female founders and investors for an intimate night of candid conversation, warm connections, and good wine.

We’ll kick off with a founder–investor fireside featuring Leslie Feinzaig and Nicole Schmidt, CEO of Source (a G&W portfolio company). Then, stick around for bites, drinks, and open conversation.

🤝 G&W x Goodword: Make Your Network Work for You

📅 Wednesday, February 18 | 10am PT / 1pm ET | virtual
🔗 Register here

Early-stage founders hear it all the time: use your network! But how?

We’ve partnered with Alex Chung, Head of Growth at Goodword, to show you how high-performing founders build and maintain real relationships. Expect:

• A tactical framework for leveraging your network

• Workflow tips for follow-ups, intros, and long-term credibility

• Tools that make it super easy

This isn’t a mindset talk. It’s a practical, founder-first workshop that’ll help you turn relationships into outcomes.

🚀 Portfolio Spotlight: Unvale’s Creator Platform Hits an Inflection Point

Unvale is gaining serious traction. Daily usage is up 60%. More than 300 new creators join every day, without marketing. Over 130,000 in-app notifications go out daily as users engage in real time.

This is not a platform chasing virality. It is a social-first space for long-form storytellers—writers, illustrators, and world-builders—who want to share work as it develops and grow an audience along the way. Creation and distribution happen in the same place, rooted in craft, not clicks. AI-generated content is not allowed. That matters.

And the data reflects it. Nearly three million social interactions every month. Day one app retention of 68%. Users come back because the platform gives them momentum.

Founder and CEO Casey Lawlor brings both creative instinct and operational rigor.

The traction they’re seeing is not luck. It’s disciplined execution.

We backed Unvale when it was still early. Now, the product is working, the community is growing, and the loop is spinning. From here, the opportunity only grows.

📖 Read the full post for more on why we believe this team is just getting started.

💸 Founder Resources Roundup

The Founder Hub is freshly stocked—with 50+ live opportunities, including grants, accelerators, and tactical support to help you build through Q1 and beyond.

• VCMatch — Upload your deck and get instantly matched with investors who actually invest in companies like yours. Backed by data, not guesswork. Over 2,200 VCs indexed, 850+ matches made, and $2.3B raised. Built to save founders time, cut through noise, and rebalance the power dynamic in fundraising.

• AWS Prompt Library — BTW, want AWS credits? Use code 1cdwJ to activate. Then explore a massive prompt library to generate architecture, scale faster, and deploy your startup stack in minutes.

• Founded in Texas — For women founders building B2B or B2B2C tech in Texas. Not a pitch competition, but a chance to present to investors and experts for real, actionable feedback. Apply by Feb 13

• Flywheel 2026: Turn Your Pitch Into Investment. The Flywheel Investment Conference is where startups meet investors, mentors, and community champions who believe in helping great ideas grow.

Get the Full List

Bye for now! 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing pre-consensus founders and ideas that break the mold.

2026 is off and running, and we’re already feeling the energy!

Here’s what’s inside today’s issue:

• 🔥 Alex Wilhelm breaks it down. Catch highlights from our first fireside of the year, where the conversation went broad and deep across tech, power, and perspective (and parenting).

• 📣 Inside the G&W Portfolio. 2025 brought real momentum. From Uprise’s standout partnership launch to major hires and meaningful traction, our founders turned bold bets into visible progress.

• 💼 G&W portcos are hiring! Goodword, Mpathic, Seven Starling, and more are growing their teams. See all open roles here.

• 🧠 Real beats perfect: Leslie’s latest essay makes the case for imperfection as your competitive edge.

Plus, the Founder Hub is freshly updated—with new grants, accelerators, and a wellness session to help you start the year strong.

📈 ICYMI: Starting the Year with Cautious Optimism

We kicked off 2026 with a live fireside featuring tech journalist Alex Wilhelm for a conversation that was meant to be about the year ahead in tech, finance, policy, and power — and turned into something much more profound.

The takeaway? Cautious optimism over hype, intentional energy over volume, and a wider aperture beyond AI headlines.

Catch the Full Replay

📣 Across the Portfolio: 2025 was 🔥🔥🔥

Seven Starling reached critical mass, raising $8M to expand their maternal mental health platform into 18 states, with over 1,500 OBGYNs on board. Culina Health earned national recognition, closed a Series A, and made the Inc. 5000 while co-founder Vanessa Rissetto shared her raw, inspiring story in Inc.

Pitch to Us

LiquiDonate was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions, transforming retail returns into large-scale donations. Mpathic launched foundational new capabilities for clinical data capture and earned a feature in Forbes spotlighting how their AI fosters trust and collaboration in surgical teams.

Meanwhile, UnVale surpassed 250,000 users and Planette was tapped by NASA to build a quantum-inspired AI system for weather prediction.

And we welcomed bold new builders into the fold. Skylight Social caught Mark Cuban’s attention with an “unbannable” TikTok alternative. Bigger Picture tackled one of the messiest problems in the global economy: logistics coordination. And Goodword emerged from stealth to help us all nurture authentic professional networks in a world of algorithmic noise.

From product breakthroughs to category-defining partnerships, it was a year of progress you could feel. And it’s only the beginning.

👉 Read the full 2025 recap here

🚀 Portfolio Spotlight: Uprise x HoneyBook

If you want to know what we mean by substance over hype, look no further. G&W portfolio company Uprise just launched a standout partnership with HoneyBook, bringing certified tax filing and financial advice directly into the tools small business owners already use.

Every pilot user gave the experience a perfect score, citing clarity, confidence, and real impact. It’s a smart solution to a real problem, and part of a larger shift toward embedded advisory that actually helps users take action.

We’re SO proud to support Jessica Chen Riolfi and the team as they help small businesses make smarter moves, faster.

👉 Read the full story here

💼 G&W Portfolio Companies Are Hiring!

We’ve got several open roles across our ecosystem. A few hot picks:

• Goodword: Smart networking copilot that helps you turn relationships into opportunities without losing the human touch

  • AI Engineer, Fullstack Engineer, Strategy & Ops Lead, Customer Success Associate

• Mpathic: AI-enabled clinical insights platform

  • IT, Security & Compliance Lead, Project Manager, Chief Marketing Officer, Head of Sales, Clinical AI Roleplays

• Seven Starling: Maternal and family care platform

  • VP of Sales

• Source: Global procurement and technology platform building an AI-native operating system for commercial construction

  • Semi-Senior Software Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, Executive Assistant to the CEO, Product Data Scientist

Explore all open roles

🧠 Venture with Leslie: Real Beats Perfect

Leslie’s latest essay takes aim at a growing truth in founder life: perfection is starting to sound the same.

Subscribe to Venture with Leslie

She makes the case that AI has leveled the playing field, but also flattened it. Today, everyone can send a flawless cold pitch, craft a perfect resume, and write the exact right hook for LinkedIn. But when every message hits the same notes, nothing sticks.

So what does? The handmade. The weird. The unmistakably human. Leslie shares a personal story (spoiler: it involves a homemade pie with a burned smiley face) and reminds us why imperfect things still matter. Maybe more than ever.

👉 Read it on Substack: How to Stand Out When Everyone Is Perfect

🧘 It’s January. Founders are focused. Wellness is trending.

So here’s your reminder: those employee wellness funds? They’re often unused. Let Breakthru turn them into 2-minute movement breaks, right inside your team’s Slack, Zoom, or Google Meet.

📍Join live: Breakthru: Putting Wellness Funds to Use in 2026

💸 Grants & Accelerators Roundup

We’ve curated 50+ active opportunities, including these standout picks:

• Braze Tech for an Equitable Future: 12 months of product access for underrepresented founders. Apply by Jan 16

• Her Agenda, The Breakthrough Grant: Vol II: $5K for one bold woman entrepreneur. Apply by Jan 18

• Funding Lab Q1 2026: Virtual advisory program that helps early-stage startups raise seed funding. Apply by Jan 18

• Flywheel Investment Conference 2026: Put your company in front of accredited investors actively looking to fund early-stage startups. Apply by Jan 31

Get the Full List

Bye for now! 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing pre-consensus founders and ideas that break the mold.

I started writing Year In Reviews in 2018, a year into building what would later become Graham & Walker. By now, this early winter reflection has become a ritual in my long and winding entrepreneurship journey. There’s been major successes and hard lessons. A lot of growth. A whole bingo card of wild, unprecedented stuff we had to deal with. Yet the themes I end up coming back to at the end of every year are always the same:

Challenges. Gratitude. And awe that I get to do this work.

This year is no different, although it feels completely different. Because in the world of venture capital, never has chest-beating bravado been more exuberant than in 2026 - and that is saying a lot. Never have I felt more pressure to all-caps you with some “CRUSHED IT, CRUSHING IT”.

So yes, it has been a great year. Lots of wins. I’m proud of myself, my firm and my portfolio.

But also: So many people have opened up to me this year and shared the incredible dissonance between what they see in public and what they’re experiencing in private. In their honor, I want to bring you into the fold and tell you the truest version I can of what this year was like for me:

2025 was completely, utterly exhausting. I started the year already stretched thin, and the pace never let up. The national mood shifted. The macro environment turned even more toxic for a fund and community like mine. Sandwich caretaking… I can’t get into it in public, but IYKYK. November came back around, and my burnout had only gotten worse.

“How is this possible?” I asked myself. “How can I feel burnout doing work I love?”

I beat myself up for a while, as only I can do, piling guilt on top of exhaustion. I put on the best face I could. Luckily I’m high-functioning so no balls were dropped. But on the inside, I felt defeated. When one of my portfolio CEOs asked how she could help me for a change, I found myself in tears.

At some point in those darker days I found something in my kitchen drawer, in a notebook full of grocery lists. It was dated March, 2023. A list of reasons why I do what I do.

What a gift I left for myself. And what a fateful time to find it.

I want you to know I’m doing much better now. I started working with a coach who helped me identify the real root causes of burnout and what I can do about them. I said no, a lot. I cleared air that needed clearing. I didn’t travel for three whole weeks - the longest I’ve been home since August - and in those weeks I didn’t miss a single dance class. I finally started the gratitude journal I bought for myself last year - and I stuck to it, every morning and night.

I don’t think I’m out of the woods - some of these changes need to be permanent (apologies in advance, there will be a lot of protecting my calendar in 2026!). But I’m better enough that I remember what it is that keeps me going.

Because exhaustion accumulates, but gratitude compounds.

And gratitude - that is something I have in spades.

I want to list every single person I am grateful for and to, but there’s many so I will summarize. My LPs - some of you have shown up above and beyond this year. I am so lucky. My team, the old and the new, I am grateful for all of you. Our portfolio - it is a privilege to be on this journey with you. Our partners, community, my peers - a special mention to everyone who’s been part of the Recast program this year. Most of all I’m grateful to my family, especially my husband. You’re the one thing I write in that gratitude journal every single day. And not just because you have coffee waiting for me downstairs every morning.

With that, I leave you with my warmest wishes for this holiday season, and all the best in the year ahead. May it be filled with abundance, kindness and joy.

In gratitude,

Leslie

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing pre-consensus founders and ideas that break the mold.

The end of the year is in sight, and we’re taking a moment to reflect, recharge, and get ready for what’s next. Whether you’re deep in year-end projects or just catching your breath, we hope this issue gives you fuel to finish 2025 strong.

Here’s what’s inside:

• 🌟 Meet Deema Adada, Founder of BiggerPicture. She’s transforming the freight logistics industry and doing it with relentless Graham & Walker founder energy.

• 🤝 We asked Series A investors to let us in on what they are looking for in today’s market. Check out our newest playbook with key insights from these learnings.

• 💬 Take a minute to indulge in Leslie’s latest on gratitude and power. A very real (and much needed) look at what it means to show up authentically in an industry obsessed with bravado.

• 💰 As always, we’ve rounded up standout opportunities with fast-approaching deadlines—live now on the Founder Hub.

💬 Power, Gratitude, and the Performance of Success

From handwritten thank-you notes to dinner-table “roses and thorns,” Leslie lives with gratitude wired into her life.

But in venture? That kind of vulnerability can feel risky - especially in an industry obsessed with power, performance, and pretending to crush it 24/7.

Check out Leslie’s latest piece for an inside look at some hard truths in venture.

Venture with Leslie

The incongruity of gratitude in Venture Capital

Every night at dinner, our family plays “roses, thorns, buds and kindness”. We all go around and share our rose (favorite part of the day), our thorn (least favorite), our bud (something we look forward to), and our moment of kindness (it can be something kind we did, someone did for us, or that we witnessed between two people…

Read more

9 months ago · 14 likes · 3 comments

Subscribe to Venture with Leslie

🌟 Founder Feature: Deema Adada, BiggerPicture

In every industry, there are founders who see around corners and simply refuse to accept “the way things are.”

Deema Adada, founder and CEO of BiggerPicture, is one of them.

Her career spanned Coyote Logistics, Uber Freight, and years of advising global supply chain leaders. But the same issue kept surfacing: antiquated systems, disconnected data, and massive inefficiencies in freight logistics.

“After working for cutting-edge tech companies, it was clear to me how far behind freight was. I knew there was a better way.”

That conviction became BiggerPicture—an AI-powered appointment automation platform that connects shippers, carriers, brokers, and consignees. The result? A more predictable supply chain and a dramatic reduction in waste and delay.

As the final investment from our first fund, Deema embodies everything we look for in a founder: relentlessness, alchemy, zero-BS, and a drive that’s almost electric. She’s one of those rare builders who won’t stop until they go all the way. It’s a little crazy—and a lot inspiring.

At Graham & Walker, we’re energized by the superhuman capabilities of our founders. Deema is a powerful reminder of that in every way.

👉 Read the full feature and watch her pitch on our blog

📣 Across the Portfolio

It’s been an exciting month across the G&W portfolio! Here are some highlights.

• Goodword landed in Business Insider with an exclusive look at the pitch deck behind their $4M seed round.

• Uprise hit a major milestone with the launch of Flychain Taxes, bringing embedded tax filing and planning to healthcare practices. Congrats Jessica and team!

• LiquiDonate was just named a 2026 VIP Awards Finalist for Best Supply Chain Innovation at the National Retail Federation. Plus, help them uncover the gnarly world of returns fraud for a 2026 retail report.

• mpathic was highlighted in Forbes for leading the future of human–AI collaboration in high-stakes clinical settings.

• Seven Starling earned a Bronze Anthem Award for its collaborative maternal mental health initiative with Pacify and Hello Helio — and expanded its care model to support mothers with children up to age five, meeting a critical need in the often-overlooked toddlerhood stage.

• WorkTorch secured a district-wide partnership with USD 259—Wichita’s largest school system—to roll out their platform beginning February 2026, with a clear path to expand across K–12 and postsecondary programs. Major congrats to the team on this work!

  Pitch to Us

🎯 We Asked Series A Investors What They Want in Today’s Market.

Here’s What They Told Us—and How You Can Use It

Over the past few months, we hosted a series of deep-dive sessions with our portfolio companies and top Series A investors. The takeaway? The expectation for Series A rounds has changed. Dramatically.

The bar is higher. The path is narrower. And the founders who succeed are the ones who can connect a confident narrative with real traction and strong metrics.

We turned those insights into a practical playbook with the same tools and frameworks we’re using with our own companies.

If you’re raising in the next 12 to 18 months, this is for you.

💰 New Drops in the Founder Hub

We’re always scouting the best programs, grants, and funding paths for early-stage founders—and our Founder Hub is where they land first.

Here’s what’s catching our attention this month:

• Right Side Capital 2026 Pre-Seed & Seed Active VC List: curated list of around 200 venture capitalists who actively invest at the Pre-Seed and Seed stages

• Hey Helen Grant: The Hey Helen Grant gives $10,000 in financial support to women founders building impactful, mission-driven businesses in the USA. Deadline to apply: December 30

• Future Founders Startup Bootcamp: A free bootcamp designed to help 18- to 30-year-olds turn ideas, passions, and side hustles into functioning businesses. Including workshops, mentorship opportunities, and peer support to help you launch and grow. Apply by Dec 10

• NYC/EDC 2026 Founder Fellowship: New York City Economic Development Corporation’s Founder Fellowship, an accelerator program designed to improve access to capital and networks for underrepresented founders across all tech-enabled sectors. Apply by Dec 31

• ✨AWS is offering up to $10,000 in Activate Credits for G&W community founders. Apply here using Org ID 1cdwJ

Get the Full List

Bye for now! 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing pre-consensus founders and ideas that break the mold.

As Thanksgiving week begins, we find ourselves reflecting on this community with deep appreciation. We spent the past two weeks on the road hosting Founder Day in Los Angeles and San Francisco. It reminded us why we do what we do: building a community of extraordinary founders who show up for each other and for the work. You are the heart of our fund and our favorite part of the job.

We’ve been hosting Founder Day for eight years and through it have helped over 1k first time founders raise over $200M in pre-seed capital. And we’ve kept the program free and non-dilutive this whole time, all thanks to the partners who generously subsidize the cost. In the spirit of gratitude, we’re giving a hand to the three partners who’ve stuck with us for years to make this program possible: AWS for Startups (discount code below!), Cooley, and Antares Capital. These guys are the real deal - if you care about who you hire and partner with, we hope you’ll give them your business.

Here’s what we’ve got for you this week:

• 🤝 We met more than 90 founders across LA and SF last week — takeaways from two massively successful Founder Days.

• 📚 For Your Reading List: Three new pieces in Venture with Leslie on scarcity, discipline, and building enduring companies in a market that’s learned all the wrong lessons from the last decade.

• 🎯 Three Standout Resources on the Founder Hub to Level Up Your Momentum: 2 exceptional programs now open for applications plus a weekly-updated list of VC funds freshly closed and ready to deploy capital.

After eight years of running Founder Day, one thing is clear: these rooms move founders forward.

Last week in LA and SF, more than 90 founders joined us from across the country for full days of real learning and real conversation.

The caliber was extraordinary — founders across AI, health tech, future of work, climate, and fintech sat shoulder-to-shoulder with operators and investors who speak plainly about what it takes to raise, scale, and survive the early stage.

Investors from Magnify Ventures, Alpha Edison, Emmeline Ventures, Operator Collective, Initialized Capital, Emerson Collective, and more helped cut through noise and get to the insights that matter most.

And founders felt it:

“I’m planning a Q1 raise and now feel much more confident and strategic.”

“I had no idea how much I didn’t know going in.”

“This was one of the most thoughtfully designed founder events I’ve attended.”

Follow-ups, warm intros, and new advisors are already happening.

Huge thank-you to AWS for Startups, Cooley, and Antares Capital for helping us build spaces where founders learn fast and connect deeply. And to our new partner Rho for hosting a beautiful cupcakes and tea happy hour that wrapped up the day.

We’re Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud (Again)

Leslie’s recent essays are sparking big conversations, offering founders a grounded view of what it really takes to navigate this moment with clarity and conviction.

As early stage investors operating in one of the most unpredictable markets ever, we believe something simple. Extraordinary companies still break out, but only when investors stay disciplined and anchor themselves in what actually endures.

These pieces lay out how we think, how we invest, and what we look for at the earliest stages.

Here’s what’s new:

• “What We Built When We Built for Attention”: What the attention era taught us and why optimizing for virality over value comes at a cost.

• “The French Laundry and McDonald’s”: A look at scarcity, quality, and why exceptional founders still break through even when capital tightens.

• “How to Not Lose Your Shirt in This Market”: Why disciplined underwriting matters more than ever and how to stay rational when everyone else is chasing heat.

Together, these essays shape how we show up as investors in this market.

Subscribe to Venture with Leslie

At Graham & Walker we stay clear on what matters, disciplined in how we evaluate opportunities, and committed to backing founders who are building for the long run.

Fresh Opportunities to Level Up

We update the Founder Hub frequently with grants, accelerators, fellowships, and programs that move founders forward.

Here are some standouts on our radar right now:

• 💥 Who’s Raising Now: A weekly-updated list of VC firms that recently closed new funds — so you know who has dry powder.

• ✨Visible Hands NYC Fellowship: Selective, community centered program for pre seed founders who are building tech enabled companies and want structured support to reach investability.

• 💥 Fierce Foundry Investment Readiness Bootcamp: Designed for female founders who are ready to sharpen their fundraising strategy, strengthen their pitch, and walk into 2026 with confidence and clarity.

• ✨AWS is offering up to $10,000 in Activate Credits for G&W community founders. Apply here using Org ID 1cdwJ

🚀 More opportunities live on the Founder Hub

Get the Full List

Happy Turkey Day to All! 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing pre-consensus founders and ideas that break the mold.

The rooms that matter most are the ones with the right people inside - but only if they make you feel seen, heard, and challenged to think bigger. That’s what Graham & Walker Founder Day is built for.

Over the past eight years, more than 1,000 founders have joined Founder Day, together raising over $200M in pre-seed and seed capital. The vast majority were first-time founders.

Each cohort is intimate by design, connecting you directly with the people who write checks, shape markets, and mentor the next wave of breakout companies.

Learn More On Our Blog

This November, we’re bringing Founder Day to the West Coast.

• San Francisco (Nov 5th)

• Los Angeles (Nov 14th)

🤝 Founders: Apply now for your seat in the room.
🌐 Know a founder? Send them our way.

🙏 HUGE THANK YOU TO OUR FRIENDS AT AWS STARTUPS, COOLEY, ANTARES CAPITAL for their continued partnership and support in powering the next wave of founders. 🙏

💡 What to Expect?

Part bootcamp, part group therapy.

Founder Day is a working session, not a conference. It’s where you’ll connect directly with top investors, operators, and fellow founders who know how to navigate today’s market. You’ll leave with sharper strategy, clearer investor fit, and a stronger network of allies who open doors.

You’ll dive into:

• Fundraising Fundamentals, a killer workshop led by G&W Founder Leslie Feinzaig

• Inside VC Perspectives, featuring top tier seed-stage VCs

• Small-group mentorship, with leading investors and operators

• Tactical advice to help you Navigate Bias While Fundraising

Most importantly, ample time to connect with peers, investors, and partners who want to see you win.

Learn More On Our Blog

🌉 San Francisco | Wednesday, Nov 5

In the room: Sarah Pinto (Emerson Collective), Mallun Yen (Operator Collective), Parul Singh (Initialized Capital), plus investors and executives from Alchemist Accelerator, Crosslink Capital, Threshold Ventures, Block, Cooley and more.

Apply to SF Here!

🌴 Los Angeles | Thursday, Nov 14

In the room: Julie Wroblewski (Magnify Ventures), Britt Danneman (Alpha Edison) and La Keisha Landrum Pierre (Emmeline Ventures), plus investors and operators from Dangerous Ventures, Slauson & Co, Yamaha Music Innovation Fund, FounderForward, Cooley and more.

We’ll end the day with Katlyn Gao, Co-founder and CEO of League One Volley Ball, on what it takes to scale a purpose-driven brand that delivers both impact and commercial success.

Apply to LA Here!

💬 Why Founders Love It

“Excellent mentor sessions, great headline speakers, and I literally teared up with inspiration… Sometimes, we need practical advice combined with spiritual and mental inspiration — this was both.”

“It was one of the highest-quality events I’ve ever attended. I met high-caliber VCs who helped me think through how to grow my product.”

“Engaging, relevant, and helpful. The perfect mix of listening and interacting. It felt more personal than any other event I’ve been to.”

Learn More On Our Blog

👋 Who Should Apply

Pre-seed and seed-stage founders building software-first, venture-scale companies who are preparing to raise or refine their investor strategy.

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis — limited to 25 founders per city to ensure depth, access, and connection.

💌 Investors & Partners: Spread The Word

If you know a founder ready for this level-up, send them our way.
Forward this email or share the links:
👉 SF Founder Day Application
👉 LA Founder Day Application

Let’s make this the strongest Founder Day yet. Two cities, one mission: helping extraordinary founders build what’s next.

See you there,

G&W team

NYC showed up for us last week. From big-room conferences to intimate founder dinners (see photo), the conversations were electric and we left buzzing with ideas.

Here’s what we’ve got for you this week:

• ❤️‍🩹 Build the backbone: Shared insights on what care-as-infrastructure looks like in practice, with Leslie x Springbank Collective.

• 🌶️ Consensus Capital ≠ VC: The piece everyone’s talking about, and the playbook implications for LPs and founders.

• 🔔 G&W Founder day is coming to the West Coast… claim your spot!! Apply to join us in SF on Nov 5th and LA Nov 11th.

📉 ICYMI: Investing in the Backbone of Modern Life

Last week, Leslie went live with Springbank Collective’s co-founder Courtney Leimkuhler for a thoughtful conversation on investing in the care infrastructure that underpins modern life.

Key takeaways?

1. Care is infrastructure. When families don’t have access to affordable, reliable care, the economy suffers. Investing here is as critical as roads and bridges.

2. This is a trillion-dollar market hiding in plain sight. From childcare to eldercare to the tools that support working families, demand is massive and growing.

3. Founders are stepping in where policy lags. Innovative companies are building solutions that governments can’t or won’t move fast enough on.

Catch the Full Replay

🌶️ She said the thing out loud: Andreessen Horowitz is Not a Venture Capital Fund

Last week’s essay struck a chord (with max spice level!). What started as a Substack post quickly traveled far and wide.

On LinkedIn, hundreds of you weighed in (including folks at megafunds who can’t say these things in public). Fast Company republished the essay, and within days it became the top tech story of the month. Even the Wall Street Journal picked it up.

In Leslie’s words:

“I’ve been writing about venture for almost 5 years, but this one hits different. There’s a tidal wave of change in our industry. Everyone can feel it. I just happened to put it into words.”

Here’s the heart of it:

• These aren’t VCs anymore. They’re what Leslie calls Consensus Capital: big finance with a Sand Hill Road address. They’re making money, but following a fundamentally different strategy than true venture capital.

• For LPs: Know what you’re buying. True venture is about messy, conviction-driven bets on non-consensus founders. Consensus Capital is about indexing into the obvious. Two different products.

• For founders: The label shapes expectations. Consensus Capital flows to pedigreed, discoverable founders. But there are still alpha-seeking VCs who look for the outliers. If that’s you… keep going.

Consensus Capital and Venture Capital can co-exist. But it’s time to call them what they are.

Subscribe to Venture with Leslie

🔔 Founder Day is coming to LA + SF!

Part bootcamp, part group therapy.

Founder Day is where select pre-seed and seed founders gather to sharpen their edge, expand their network, and find the fuel to go further.

📍 San Francisco | November 5 👉 Apply now to join us
📍 Los Angeles | November 14 👉 Apply now to join us

🚀 Plus, more funding opportunities on the Founder Hub

Don’t miss our full roundup of grants, programs and accelerators!

That’s all for this week! 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing pre-consensus founders and ideas that break the mold.

We’ve got a jam-packed lineup this week. Here’s what’s inside:

• 🤖 AI Agents for Founders: Build an Agent that Works for You this Thursday!

• 🔥 Live with Leslie & Springbank Collective — join a conversation on solutions for care, career, and consumer on Sept 4

• 📉 ICYMI: Live with Leslie & Peter Walker on what’s REALLY happening in VC

• 💡 Paint a big vision. Even if it terrifies you. Why ambition plus accountability wins every time.

✨ Plus: details on an exciting opportunity from AWS Impact Bootcamps you won’t want to miss.

🤖 Workshop: AI Agents for Founders

A 60‑minute, hands‑on workshop where you’ll leave with a production‑ready lead‑tracking and enrichment agent.

👉 Featuring: Jacob Bank – Founder & CEO, Relay.app
👉 Format: Live build, step‑by‑step. No fluff, practical automation you can ship.
👉 Who should come: Founders drowning in manual lead triage, GTM operators automating busywork, and investors helping portfolios operate lean.

RSVP to save your spot

🔥 Leslie x Springbank Collective: Where venture meets care infrastructure

​​Join Leslie Feinzaig with Elana Berkowitz and Courtney Leimkuhler, co-founders of Springbank Collective.

Springbank Collective an early-stage investment firm that focuses on the infrastructure that supports women and working families. The team invests in solutions for care, career, and consumer.

🗓️ Thursday, September 4th
⏰ 11:00am PT / 2:00pm ET
📍Register now

📉 ICYMI: Highlights from Leslie x Peter Walker, straight from Carta’s dataset.

Last week, Leslie sat down with Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta, for a no‑spin look at what’s really happening in venture.

Top takeaways for founders?

• The sub‑$5M round is not dead. Smaller, faster, cleaner raises are still getting done when teams are precise on milestones and use of proceeds.

• The bar is higher, not closed. Lean teams that show real customer pull, efficient growth, and tight cap‑table hygiene are clearing it.

• Your job: de‑risk the next check. Treat every update as a mini‑investment memo. Translate progress into clear metrics that move a future round from “maybe” to “must‑do.”

Catch the Full Replay

🧠 Venture with Leslie — What’s your BHAG??

Leslie’s latest essay argues that “pitch bigger” isn’t a call for bluster, it’s a call for inspiration. Venture prices upside, teams join missions, and customers buy outcomes. So your job is to make the destination unmistakable and the path credible.

Reframe ambition as an operating system: pair a bold, named BHAG with near‑term proof points, cap‑table hygiene, and updates that de‑risk the next check. The smartest move in the essay is her own modeling—she names her north star out loud, acknowledging the discomfort, and shows founders how conviction and accountability can coexist.

👉 Read it on Substack: Paint a big vision. Even if it terrifies you

Subscribe to Venture with Leslie

💸 Calling all underrepresented founders: AWS Impact Bootcamp!

We are excited to share that AWS Impact Bootcamps, in partnership with Techstars, are now open for applications.

If you’re a self-funded or early-stage startup (up to Series A) looking to scale or prepare for your next raise — this program is designed for you.

What you’ll get:

🔹A chance at up to $50K in non-dilutive funding

🔹A chance to be selected for the AWS Founder Retreat

🔹Up to $5K in AWS Activate credits

🔹Hands-on technical training

🔹 Real-world business advice

🔹 Access to mentors, investors, and strategic partners

Locations: London | Mexico City | Berlin | Tokyo | Atlanta | New York

You can learn more and apply here!

🚀 More Funding Opportunities on the Founder Hub

Don’t miss our full roundup of grants, programs and accelerators!

See ya later! 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing pre-consensus founders and ideas that break the mold.

We’re still riding the high from an unforgettable Seattle Tech Week (more on that below) but before we dive in, a quick milestone: this is Community Newsletter #50! Thanks for being part of this journey with us.

Here’s what we’ve got for you this week:

• 📉 Tuesday, Aug 12th: Peter Walker (Head of Insights at Carta) x Leslie Feinzaig on what’s really happening in venture and how founders can navigate it.

• 🫶 A moment of appreciation (plus photos!) for an unforgettable Seattle Tech Week: 250+ founders, funders, and friends showed up—and reminded us why this gathering matters more each year.

• 💡 G&W Insight: Leslie’s "6 Questions to Ask Before You Invest in a VC Fund" is a must-read for anyone putting capital (or time) into venture

Let’s dive in 👇

🔜 Leslie is going live with Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta, next week

Founders, you know the story: Funding is up. Round counts are down. Traction bars are rising. We want to make sense of it all.

Join us next Tuesday, August 12th, as our Founder & GP Leslie Feinzaig sits down with Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta.

Peter’s team tracks data from 50,000+ private companies and 3,000+ funds, giving him a rare view into the pulse of startup investing.

🎯 You’ll learn:

• Why the <$5M round isn’t dead: Early-stage capital is still out there—especially in SAFEs. We'll show you where it's flowing and what’s working.

• The new fundraising bar (and how to clear it): Expectations are shifting. Get the inside track on which metrics matter and how lean teams are closing rounds.

• How to use data to win your next raise: From pitch ammo to board alignment, we’ll show you how to use benchmarks to your advantage.

🗓️ Tuesday, August 12th
⏰ 11:00am PT / 2:00pm ET
📍Register now

🫶 ICYMI Seattle Tech Week: What a Moment

Over 250 founders, funders, and friends joined us at the iconic Pacific Science Center to celebrate innovation, connection, and the future of tech. The weather showed up, the community showed out, and once again, this event reminded us why we love doing what we do.

We’re deeply grateful to everyone who attended with warmth and curiosity, and to our partners at Silicon Valley Bank and Pacific Science Center who helped bring the day to life. A special sweet thank you to Leslie’s sister, owner of La Bonbonniere CR, for the delicious and beautiful cupcakes.

Seattle, you always deliver. 💌

🧠 So you want to be an LP? Six Questions to Ask Before You Invest.

Leslie recently shared a powerful framework in her Venture with Leslie newsletter: 6 Questions to Ask Before You Invest.

Whether you’re deploying capital as an angel, fund manager, or even investing your own time and energy as a founder, this piece is a must-read. Leslie walks through six deceptively simple questions that reveal how aligned your investment decisions really are with your goals and values.

Save it, share it, revisit it. You’ll come back to this one.

Subscribe to Venture with Leslie

💸 August Funding Picks

As always, our Founder Hub is where you’ll find tactical tools (like our newest 0 to 1 Guide!) and live funding opportunities to support your journey through the early stage and messy middle.

Here are a few standout picks this month:

🔎 Alibaba CoCreate Grant: offers $20K – $200K non-dilutive funding to founders; apply by Aug 15 2025.

🎙 Amber Grants: awards up to $10K monthly grants to women founders; rolling applications.

🧠 QuickBooks Small Business Hero Grant: offers $20K grants to founders; apply by Aug 14 2025.

🪴 TechRise Chicago Grants: awards $25K – $50K non-dilutive funding to Chicago founders via weekly pitch competitions; rolling applications.

🚀 🚀 🚀 Check out the full roundup here—it’s always fresh and updated

Until next time 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing extraordinary founders and ideas that break the mold.

Summer is in full swing and the G&W engine is running hot. From powerful conversations to practical tools, here’s a quick update on everything we’ve been up to and what’s coming next!

• Seattle Tech Week is around the corner and we are thrilled to connect with you all IRL!

• Earlier this month, Leslie went live on all things healthcare with investor Halle Tecco. Catch the TLDR here.

• Zero to One Guide, Part 2: Types of Capital and How Rounds Really Work is live! Founders, read it before you pitch. More below.

• Plus, our recently launched Founder Hub! Your go-to space for tactical resources and curated funding opportunities to navigate the early stage (and messy middle) with grit and grace.

Let’s go 👇

🔜 Seattle Tech Week

We’re thrilled to return to Seattle Tech Week next week for our marquee Women Founders & Funders Brunch. Join us IRL for meaningful convos and connections at the stunning Pacific Science Center. Note, the event is currently at capacity but we will be letting folks off the waitlist as RSVPs change.

📍 Tuesday, July 29 at 10AM
👉 RSVP now

🔁 ICYMI: Live with Halle Tecco

🎙 We kicked off July with a powerful fireside chat with Halle on healthcare investing, why she pressed pause on angel checks, and the book she wished existed when she started.

Catch the Replay Here

One takeaway? Healthcare belongs to everyone. The industry needs newcomers and fresh ideas, and you do not need an MD to have a voice in how AI and innovation reshape it.

🎯 Plus, Leslie’s Office Hours, “Should I Raise VC?” edition

Ten hand-selected founders joined an intimate, unscripted conversation on early-stage capital strategy. Together, we compared notes, shared real stories, and left with clear takeaways on how early stage founders can navigate the billion dollar question.

🧠 The 0 to 1 Guide, Part 2: Types of Capital and How Rounds Really Work

If Part 1 helped you decide whether to raise VC, Part 2 breaks down from whom.

The people you invite to your cap table have a big impact on your company's trajectory. Before you close a round (actually, before you even pitch) make sure you understand whether your incentives are aligned.

In this edition, we demystify:

• The four major players: Angel Investors, Venture Capital Funds, Crossover Funds, Corporate Venture Capital

• What actually shapes an investor’s behavior?

• The checkpoints investors look for on your hike up a mountain

🔎 Read Part 2 now → “Types of Capital and How Rounds Really Work”

💸 Grants & Accelerators Roundup

Latest funding opportunities are live! Remember, this list now lives permanently on the Founder Hub. We update it continuously with the latest funding programs on our radar.

• Project W Women Entrepreneurs Boot Camp (WEB) | Health Tech: taking place Sep 11 in San Francisco, this program supports women founders building healthcare solutions with a day of expert mentorship from leading healthcare execs and investors.

• Capital & Catalyst Grant: offers $40K in funding and mentorship to women-owned food or beverage businesses with $500K+ lifetime sales and 2.5+ years in business; with Enthuse Foundation & Spearhead Global. Apply by Jul 28.

• SPC Founder Fellowship: offers $400K for 7% on a SAFE plus $600K guaranteed in next round to entrepreneurs at the -1 to 0 idea stage building venture-backable startups; cohort begins October. Apply by Aug 03.

🚀 Head over to our blog for the full list, currently at 27 live opportunities!

Until next time 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing extraordinary founders and ideas that break the mold.

This newsletter might look a little different today (peek Founder Hub at the bottom 👀), but the mission remains the same: real insights, fresh updates, and the tools you need to build what’s next.

Our goal? To bring founders and trends out of the dark.

This month, we’re showing up for founders on every front:

• Tomorrow! Halle Tecco joins GP Leslie Feinzaig for a fresh fireside chat on healthcare, impact, and staying grounded

• Seattle Tech Week is almost here, and we can’t wait to meet up IRL!

• A look at how Forged in Fire is resonating across the ecosystem 🔥

PLUS — the G&W Founder Hub is officially live! Founders, this is your go-to space for tactical resources and curated funding opportunities to help you navigate the early stage (and messy middle) with grit and grace. We’re kicking it off with an exclusive small-group G&W office hours 🎙️ on the topic “Should I Raise VC?”.

Let’s get to it 👇

🔥 Fireside Chat: Leslie Feinzaig x Halle Tecco

Halle Tecco is the co-founder of Rock Health, one of the first digital health venture funds, Natalist, a consumer health brand reimagining fertility and pregnancy essentials, and The Heart of Healthcare Podcast.

📍 Thursday, July 10 at 11 AM PT / 2 PM ET
👉 RSVP here!

🥂 Seattle Tech Week: We Can’t Wait to See You!

We’re thrilled to be hosting Seattle Tech Week’s marquee women’s gathering: the Women Founders and Funders brunch at the iconic Pacific Science Center courtyard. See you there!

📍 Tuesday, July 29 at 10 AM
👉 RSVP here!

📣 Forged in Fire: The Stories Are Yours. The Ecosystem Is Listening.

Last month, we released Forged in Fire: Insights from 180 Female Founders Building in 2025. The report is a treasure trove of data, and reveals the personal, structural, and economic weight that female founders carry every day.

To bring the findings to life, we hosted a private conversation for survey participants and G&W LPs with Tiffany Dufu, President of the Tory Burch Foundation. From founder exhaustion to the pressure to outperform to caregiving, the conversation was raw and deeply personal, energizing and inspiring.

Watch the Replay Here

We worked our butts off on this research and report. And the response has been extraordinary.

📣 First, the press took note.

GeekWire, Fortune and Forbes all featured the report in stories that spotlighted its central paradox: while funding for female founders has decreased, optimism and resilience are on the rise. And today, Fast Company picked up Leslie’s OpEd on the findings she was moved by. These pieces helped bring your stories to a broader audience, showing that founders are pushing forward despite any and all headwinds.

💬 Then, founder voices echoed across LinkedIn.

It was a proud moment to see this labor of love ripple across the ecosystem — trickling onto screens, surfacing in comment sections, and reminding us just how powerful it is to feel seen.

This post from Svetlana Kazantseva, CEO of Strawberry Health, captured that spirit perfectly. Her honest reflection on the challenges of fundraising struck a nerve for us, and for fellow founders who recognized themselves in her words.

📩 And finally, our inbox filled up.

We’ve received dozens of personal notes from folks who felt seen through this research. One wrote:

“I just forwarded it to my husband with a note saying ‘SEE!!!’ I think my Berkeley politics weren’t prepared for how hard this was actually, really going to be.”

That is exactly why we did this: to give founders a voice, grounded in truth and backed by data.

📖 Download the full Forged in Fire report.

Let’s keep the conversation going.

New on our website: Meet your new home for funding, programs, and resources built to help you navigate the early stage and messy middle with grit and grace. First up:

🧠 The 0 to 1 Guide, Part 1: Should You Raise Venture Capital?

Venture capital is one way to build a business, one that shapes your goals, timeline, and day-to-day reality as a founder.

Not every startup needs it. Not every founder wants it. Do you?

Our first 0 to 1 Guide post will help you figure out whether this path is right for you.

🎙️ Live Office Hours: “Should You Raise VC?” Edition

BONUS: Join GP Leslie Feinzaig for a small-group Zoom where she will walk through the key frameworks from "Should You Raise Venture Capital" and answer your specific questions about early stage funding.
📍 Thursday, July 17th at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET

👉 Apply here!

💸 Funding, Grants & Accelerators Roundup

For years, we’ve sent founders a monthly roundup of opportunities from across the ecosystem… and now, your favorite resource list lives here! Same content, easier to find, and always up to date 🚀

Sneak peek at some current standouts:

• UpScaleX S’25: offers $500K on founder-friendly terms to startups reshaping the future of AI and digital commerce, with strategic partnerships, 1:1 mentorship, investor access, and product/growth workshops.

• Betaworks AI Camp: Interfaces: supports early-stage startups rethinking the human-machine boundary through new interface paradigms like ambient agents, voice-native tools, multi-modal or invisible I/O, and sophisticated prompt-based design.

• Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech: honors breakthroughs that will shape the future over the next 5 years—highlighting tech, products, features, or research with positive consumer, business, or societal impact. Apply by June 30.

• Shorty Impact Awards: celebrates purpose-driven orgs and individuals creating meaningful change through social impact initiatives. Apply by Aug 14.

Head over to our blog for the full list, currently at 21 live opportunities!

Until next time 👋

Graham & Walker is an early-stage venture fund backing extraordinary founders and ideas that break the mold.

• 📅 June Fireside Chat: Join us June 10th for a live conversation with Eric Newcomer of Newcomer Media, one of the sharpest voices in the VC ecosystem.

• 📅 July Fireside Chat: Healthcare is on the cusp of reinvention. Join us July 10th for a live conversation with Hallee Tecco on what it takes to build lasting impact in healthcare.

• ✨ G&W Portfolio Spotlight: Big news-Goodword is out of stealth! We wrote about how co-founders Caroline Dell and Chris Fischer are reimagining how we build and maintain authentic professional relationships in a digital world.

• 💸 Funding Report: This month’s notable fundraises led by women founders.

• 💡ICYMI: We could all use a little inspo… Leslie Feinzaig’s latest Blind Spots post, A Commencement Speech for the Grown-Ups, has you covered.

📅 Upcoming Events

June Fireside Chat: Eric Newcomer - June 10th

Join Leslie Feinzaig, Founder & General Partner of Graham & Walker, for an exclusive fireside chat with Eric Newcomer, journalist and founder of Newcomer Media.

Eric has built a reputation as one of the sharpest voices covering venture capital and startups today. In this candid conversation, we’ll dive into:

• How the VC landscape is shifting and what it means for early-stage founders

• Strategies for standing out in a crowded market

• The stories behind the headlines

👉 RSVP here!

❗Up Next: Halle Tecco – July 10th

We’re keeping the momentum going! Join us on July 10th for a live conversation with Halle Tecco, healthcare investor, entrepreneur, and women’s health advocate.

From founding Rock Health to hosting The Heart of Healthcare podcast, Halle has spent her career advancing the future of healthcare. In this session, we’ll dig into:

• How emerging technologies are transforming healthcare and women’s health

• What’s ahead for health tech founders

• Lessons from Halle’s journey building and backing companies that make a difference

🗓️ July 10th | 11AM PT / 2PM ET
👉 RSVP here!

✨ Portfolio Spotlight: Goodword!

We are thrilled to introduce Goodword, G&W’s newest portfolio company, now emerging from stealth under the leadership of Caroline Dell and Chris Fischer!

Goodword is a smart networking copilot that helps turn authentic human connections into real opportunities. Their mission is simple: in a world of endless digital noise, the right connection changes everything.

🚀 Head to our blog for more on their story and the TLDR on why we invested.

💸 Female Founders Funding Report

• ChurchSpace, a shared-space marketplace that turns under-used church buildings into rental venues, co-founded by Day Edwards Antwi and Emmanuel Brown, announced the closing of an oversubscribed $1.2 million seed round led by Black Ops Ventures, with participation from Michigan Rise, Dug Song, and others.

• Rentana, an AI-driven revenue-management platform for multifamily real-estate operators co-founded by Julie Blanc, raised nearly $5 million in seed financing led by Zigg Capital and Benchstrength Ventures, plus angels.

• Mura, an AI-powered field-service operations platform, announced the closing of a $6 million seed round co-led by Level One Fund and Lerer Hippeau, with participation from angels.

🚀…dive into the full funding report on our blog

💡 ICYMI: Leslie shared a Blind Spots post on why today’s grads need action

In her latest Blind Spots essay, Leslie reminds us that “the Class of 2025 isn’t looking for a shortcut—they’re looking for a job.” It’s a timely reminder for founders to turn uncertainty into fuel and back it up with real-world kindness.

🚀 Give the full article a read here.

🔥 Team G&W