About us

Fortify Ventures is a venture capital ecosystem, investing in early stage founders disrupting the status quo.

Our reach extends far beyond capital, and our network includes far more than founders. We are an organization of operators, thinkers, executors, and change-makers aligned on a mission to move us one step closer to tomorrow’s world.

37+
Investments
9+
Successful Exits
100+
Years of Experience
13+
Years Active
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How we invest

Fortify Ventures’ wide investment thesis allows us to see companies tackling a variety of problem sets. Rather than investing in companies based on a criteria checklist, we build conviction holistically as we get to know companies and their founders.

Things that help our investment team build conviction about the company’s ability to succeed are:

➤ Thematic alignment with our core areas of focus

Human Health
The Future-of-Work
Infrastructure (including Energy, Cyber + Defense, and Manufacturing + Industrial)

➤ Exceptional Themes

Teams with complementary and supplementary superpowers are the most likely factor to drive us to invest. As a people-focused fund, we seek to find resilient and brilliant teams that have the qualities needed to succeed as entrepreneurs and creators.

➤ The whole is greater than the sum of the parts

A team whose combined strength outweighs each individual’s abilities. We look for unique synergies between people that allow them to unlock superpowers they may not have on their own.

➤ Defensible technologies

The technologies we invest in should not be replicable in less than 2 years or with less than $2M. They should fall into or near the category of “deep tech,” being highly scientific, proprietary, and protected through intellectual property.

➤ An unfair advantage

We value teams and companies that have an unfair advantage to win the market that they are competing in.

➤ Mature markets

We prefer companies who are competing in mature markets — to us, that refers to the existing customer base. We dislike companies that are slowly creating customers, compared to companies that are winning over customers from incumbent players.

➤ Those who welcome competition

We love founders and teams who welcome competition and take on the challenge of competing in the marketplace. More competition often means better solutions for the consumer, doubling down on our belief that falling in love with the problem is far more important than falling in love with the solution.

➤ Revenue focused leadership

The path to profitability is one that is far too often overlooked by early-stage startups. We believe strongly that “cash is king,” and profit is far more valuable than valuations.

➤ User-centric design

We value founders who approach product design by starting with the problem first, and solution second. These founders don’t have a fear to iterate and pivot, allowing their agility to become a competitive edge.

➤ Demonstrated traction

We see traction as points of validation that demonstrate product-market fit and/or team-market fit. We have no fixed metrics for traction — it can be demonstrated through a variety of ways, each appropriate for a different product, market, and team.

➤ A 10x improvement: innovation vs. iteration

We value innovation over iteration. Rather than making small, incremental changes to existing solutions, we hope that our portfolio companies will present such a dramatic improvement to the status quo that switching is a “no brainer” regardless of switching costs.

Our investment thesis

When we started Fortify Ventures in 2011, we were one of the few funds placing early bets into ambitious founders with a desire to disrupt. Many of our best bets from Fortify Ventures, Fund I were idea-stage investments into amazing people who executed on their vision. It was the agility, resilience, and disruptive nature of these founders that allowed them to win and provide outsized returns to their teams and the fund. Startups are society's best tool for problem-solving. Fortify Ventures provides its portfolio companies with a robust community and operational guidance to make the largest impact possible. With that experience in hand, Fortify Ventures remains focused as follows:

Fortify Ventures invests early in people building innovative and disruptive technologies for human health, the future-of-work, and the infrastructure that powers them both.

Our broad investment thesis allows us to see a wide variety of companies, and pick those with the greatest potential for global impact, led by the best founders. We typically write $100K - $500K first checks into pre-Series A rounds, and are comfortable either leading or participating.


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The story behind Fortify

June 2011

Fortify Ventures was created to provide the DC startup ecosystem with a much-needed jolt of capital and operational support.

October 2011

The first Distilled Intelligence was held in Washington, DC, presenting 55 startups to over 500 investors in attendance. Fortify Ventures, along with sponsors, gave away $25,000 in prizes to participating startups.

January 2012

The creation of The Fort, Fortify Ventures’ incubator in Washington, DC. During The Fort’s first cohort, 17 companies were housed on K Street in Downtown DC, just a few blocks from the White House.

June 2012

The creation of The Fort, Fortify Ventures’ incubator in Washington, DC. During The Fort’s first cohort, 17 companies were housed on K Street in Downtown DC, just a few blocks from the White House.

October 2012

Distilled Intelligence 2.0 was held in Washington, DC, presenting 100 startups to over 750 investors in attendance. Fortify Ventures presented $100,00 in investment capital to the top six participating startups.

May 2013

At the culmination of The Fort’s second cohort, Fortify presented nice companies to a group of angels, venture firms, and strategic investors at the second Fortify ‘Investor Day’ in Downtown DC.

August 2024

Fortify Ventures, Fund II, an early-stage fund with a thesis mirroring that of Fund I while expanding the scope of the fund.

October 2025

Distilled Intelligence 3.0 will be held in Loudoun County, VA, hosting 100 startups and hundreds of investors, sponsors, and operators for four days of pitches and networking. Over $1M in funding will be provided by Fortify to Distilled Intelligence 3.0 participants.

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