Graham & Walker is a Seattle-based early-stage venture firm founded and led by Leslie Feinzaig. It launched in October 2021 with a $10 million debut fund raised from 105 backers — two-thirds of them women and 40% first-time fund investors — including institutional names such as Bank of America and Carta alongside individuals like former DocuSign chief executive Court Lorenzini. The firm invests in women-led technology startups at pre-seed and seed, with a stated mission of changing the face of the public markets.
The name is deliberate. Rather than being named after two men in the mould of an old-school law firm, Graham & Walker honours Katharine Graham, the Washington Post publisher who became the first female chief executive of a Fortune 500 company, and Madam C. J. Walker, widely recognised as the world’s first self-made female millionaire. Feinzaig has said the ampersand is meant to represent community — “you and me”.
The fund grew directly out of the Female Founders Alliance, the community Feinzaig founded in 2017 that served as a national network for women and non-binary founders. After years of connecting founders through community, education and founder programmes, the organisation concluded it should be writing cheques itself — and rebranded as Graham & Walker as it moved into investing.
Graham & Walker writes average cheques of $25,000 to $400,000 into pre-seed and seed rounds, backing early-stage tech companies across North America. Its focus is industry-agnostic, centred on software and technology-enabled businesses led by what the firm calls “pre-consensus” founders — teams it aims to meet before the rest of the market catches on. Its own site frames the firm as being “for founders, by founders”, with the direct house rule: “No a*holes allowed.”
Early investments from the debut fund included PairTree, an adoption-facilitation platform; Health in Her Hue, a culturally aware telehealth marketplace; Brightly, an eco-friendly living and shopping community; and Datacy, a data marketplace. More recent portfolio names reported include Tokki, a Seattle gift-wrap service; Planette, a climate-tech startup; and Proxi, a mapping startup.
Alongside the fund, Graham & Walker continues to run the Ready Set Raise accelerator, a virtual fundraising programme for women chief executives built to ensure women founders could participate regardless of their at-home responsibilities, plus its founder community, summits and awards that recognise champions of equity in business.
In March 2025, a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing indicated the firm was raising a second fund targeted at $15 million. Feinzaig declined to comment at the time, and a filing is not confirmation of a closed fund — treat Fund II as in the works, not done.
Why it matters for founders
If you are a woman founder raising pre-seed or seed in North America, Graham & Walker is built precisely for you: a fund run by a former founder community, cheques starting as low as $25,000, and an accelerator route into the portfolio. Watch whether the reported $15 million second fund closes — that would materially increase its firepower.