xfactor ventures

Venture Partner backing women and gender-diverse founders across the US, Europe, and Latin America; interests include agentic business applications and marketplaces. Co-founded XFactor Ventures and founded a National Women's Soccer League team.

Betsy Fore is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Velveteen Ventures, which invests in solutions for children and the planet. She previously co-founded and co-led Tiny Organics, a company selling organic baby and toddler meals, and earlier founded Wondermento (creators of the WonderWoof dog wearable) and worked at Mind Candy in London leading product. She also co-founded the non-profit Natives Rising, a community of Indigenous technologists and founders.

Chip Hazard leverages 25+ years of pattern recognition, argues AI will be an enabling layer in products, co-created a women-led seed fund, and maintains decade-plus transparency through Hazard Lights.

Fatima Dicko is the founder and CEO of Sugar, a platform that helps apartment managers build community among residents. She previously spent five years as a senior engineer at P&G, where she worked on early-stage product development and received several patents. Originally from Mali and raised in New York City, she holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University and an MBA from Stanford Business School.

Felicia Curcuru is the co-founder and CEO of Binti, a company that builds software for government child welfare agencies to help more children find foster and adoptive families. Binti has raised $60M, grown to about 100 people, and helped over 40,000 families get approved to foster or adopt. As an angel investor, she focuses on supporting women founders raising their first round, most often in SaaS.

Jessica Mah is the founder and CEO of inDinero, which she grew from zero to multi-million dollar revenues with over 200 employees. She left high school at 15 to attend Bard College at Simon's Rock, studied computer science at U.C. Berkeley, and went through Y Combinator. She has been named to the Forbes and Inc 30 Under 30 lists and is a member of the Young Presidents' Organization.

Maia Bittner co-founded Rocksbox and Pinch. As an investor she focuses on fintech, B2B SaaS, and other varied opportunities.

Michelle Egger is a food scientist focused on global food security, malnutrition, and infant nutrition. In 2020 she co-founded BIOMILQ, working on infant nutrition, maternal health, and lactation science. She was named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in the social impact category.

Nanxi Liu is the Co-Founder and CEO of Enplug, a Los Angeles-based company that builds open software for displays used in venues such as stadiums, offices, retail stores, and restaurants, with international offices. She earlier founded Nanoly Bioscience, which develops polymers to allow vaccines to remain stable without refrigeration, and serves as its chairman. A Colorado native, she double majored at UC Berkeley and was named to Forbes 30 Under 30.

Steph Korey Goodwin is an entrepreneur and early-stage investor. She co-founded the lifestyle brand Away in 2015, which raised $156 million and reached a $1.4 billion valuation, and served as its CEO until 2020; prior to that she was Head of Supply Chain at Warby Parker, overseeing product development, sourcing, and fulfillment. She invests in and advises early-stage companies, with most of her investments in businesses founded by entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds.

Danielle Morrill is co-founder and CEO of Mattermark, a data platform that helps venture capital firms identify signals of promising startups. She previously co-founded and led Referly Inc., served as Director of Marketing at Twilio, and held roles including community manager at Pelago, Editor in Chief at Seattle 2.0, and business analyst at Expeditors International.

Erica Brescia, former Bitnami co‑founder and COO, leverages open‑source scaling experience to back infrastructure, DevOps and data tooling startups that prioritize community and coaches engineering leaders on fundraising.

Allison Kopf is the founder and CEO of Artemis (formerly Agrilyst), an agriculture technology platform serving the fruit, vegetable, floriculture, cannabis, and hemp industries. Before founding Artemis, she worked at BrightFarms in the US indoor agriculture space. She holds a BS in Physics from Santa Clara University and was named to Forbes 2019 30 Under 30.

Amanda Bradford is the Founder and CEO of The League, a dating app that integrates Facebook and LinkedIn data to build a curated community of professionally driven singles. She earned an engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon and worked in technical and product roles at Salesforce and Google before attending Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she conceived The League. The company raised $2.1M in seed funding in January 2015 and operates in 37 cities on iOS and Android.

Amy Nelson is the founder and CEO of The Riveter, a membership network offering community, content, resources, and coworking spaces built by women. Before founding The Riveter in 2017, she practiced corporate litigation for over a decade in New York City and Seattle, focusing on First Amendment matters, and she holds degrees from Emory University and NYU School of Law. As an XFactor partner, she invests after growing her own company, which XFactor Fund I backed.

General Partner and Managing Member at Alpaca VC who leads the firm's AI-native investment strategy based on the Aquarius Economy thesis. She has invested across commerce, industrials, energy, and applied AI sectors, served on boards, and provides operational support to founders.

Heather Hasson is the Co-CEO and Co-founder of FIGS, a digitally native, direct-to-consumer healthcare apparel and lifestyle brand making products for healthcare professionals. Under her leadership, FIGS built a branded scrubs business with an online DTC platform. She holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Jilliene Helman is the founder and CEO of RealtyMogul, a fintech company focused on commercial real estate investing, where she has invested in over $2 billion of real estate and deployed more than $400 million of equity capital, raising over $50 million in venture capital from firms including Canaan Partners and Sorenson Capital. She also serves as CEO of several RealtyMogul subsidiaries, including RM Manager, RM Advisor, Mogul Securities, RealtyMogul Commercial Capital, and RM Communities. She led the first round of financing for NextHealth, a health optimization business in the Los Angeles area, and sits on its board.

Joanna McFarland is the CEO and cofounder of HopSkipDrive, a youth transportation ride service that connects families and schools with vetted drivers. Before starting HopSkipDrive in 2014, she led product and business development at technology and online companies including WeddingChannel.com, Green Dot, YP.com, and Oversee.net, and began her career in investment banking and private equity. She holds an MBA from Stanford University and a B.S. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

Jules Pieri is Co-Founder and CEO of the product launch platform The Grommet, which promotes its Citizen Commerce movement for discovering and buying consumer products. She began her career as an industrial designer and later held senior roles at brands including Keds, Stride Rite, and Playskool, as well as VP at Design Continuum and President of Ziggs.com. She holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she serves as an Entrepreneur in Residence.

Katherine Ryder is the founder and CEO of Maven, a telehealth platform providing access to a network of women's and family health providers, including a maternity management program for employers. She previously worked as an early stage investor at Index Ventures in London, focusing on consumer technology across health, education, art, and retail. Before that she was a journalist writing for The Economist and assisted former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson with his memoirs; she holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan and an MSc from the London School of Economics.

Kathryn Minshew is the CEO and founder of The Muse, a career platform used by more than 75 million people. Before founding the company, she worked on HPV vaccine introduction in Rwanda with the Clinton Health Access Initiative and previously worked at McKinsey & Company. She authored "The New Rules of Work: The Modern Playbook for Navigating Your Career," a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Liz Whitman is the Founder & CEO of Exponent Beauty, a clinical skincare brand, and has worked in the beauty industry as a corporate executive, entrepreneur, and early-stage investor. She previously served as President & CMO of The Red Door by Elizabeth Arden, founded the corporate beauty services startup Manicube (acquired by The Red Door), and was an early hire at Quidsi where she launched BeautyBar.com. She also co-founded the womenswear line Lewis Albert and holds a BA from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Mada Seghete is a co-founder of Branch, a mobile deep linking and measurement platform, where she leads community and developer marketing. She also co-founded Mobile Growth, a global community of app developers and mobile marketers, and co-authored the 2016 Mobile Growth Handbook. Born and raised in Romania, she studied Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University and earned a Masters of Engineering and MBA from Stanford.

Dr. Natalya Bailey is the CTO and co-founder of Accion Systems, where she previously served as founding CEO and led the company to its first space flights and $40M in venture capital and government revenue. Her doctoral work at MIT's Space Propulsion Laboratory contributed to an early prototype of the ion engine technology that became Accion's core product. She holds a Ph.D. from MIT, an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Duke University, and a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from San Diego State University, and invests in women-led businesses through XFactor Ventures.

Nicole Sanchez is a Managing Director at Chase and was previously Co-Founder and CEO of Credit Hero, a fintech startup backed by CFSI and JP Morgan. She holds degrees from Harvard Business School and Harvard College and was a Y Combinator Fellow. Her investing interests include fintech, insurtech, mobile messaging, bots, and markets in Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean.

Co-founder and CEO of Gobble.

Trina Spear is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of FIGS, a direct-to-consumer medical apparel company that uses a data-driven e-commerce platform and proprietary performance fabric technology. Before founding FIGS, she worked at The Blackstone Group. She holds a BA in Economics from Tufts University (magna cum laude) and an MBA from Harvard Business School.