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Henry Kwan was scrolling on LinkedIn at around 7 p.m. on a Tuesday evening last month when he saw a message from investor Beth Turner asking for a meeting. By close of business the following day, Turner had written a $250,000 check to Kwan’s El Segundo, California-based autonomous drone startup Icarus. A couple of weeks later, the company closed its first major funding round, in large part thanks to Turner’s guidance and introductions to other investors. “She was really, really able to help drive this fundraising momentum and close it really fast,” Kwan says. “It’s more than capital.”
Moving fast, investing with conviction and making important introductions are key components of Turner’s playbook. It’s part of why the former managing partner at early-stage venture capital firm SV Angel thinks spinning out on her own will allow her to create a lasting, “generational” VC company. On Thursday, Turner announced the launch of Valkyrie, her solo $45 million fund that aims to invest in AI applications, AI infrastructure and critical industries (like nuclear energy or the electric grid) via early-stage checks like the one she wrote Icarus. The fund closed in May after just five weeks of fundraising and includes capital from SV Angel founder Ron Conway, billionaire Block cofounder Jack Dorsey, billionaire investor Marc Andreessen and VMware cofounder Diane Greene.
Through Valkyrie, named after the fierce female warriors of Norse mythology, Turner plans to invest in around 80 companies over the next two or so years. Since May she has already backed approximately 20 including Icarus, sales software startup ACRONYM and a data center security company in stealth. (Most of Valkyrie’s investments, including companies in energy systems, computer chip manufacturing, robotics and even an AI scientist, are still in stealth mode, meaning Turner can’t yet talk about them publicly, she says.)
“I really want Valkyrie to be one of the highest trust, highest conviction, best reputation collaborative funds in the ecosystem,” Turner says, adding that, of course, she’s also aiming for high returns—in the top decile of funds. “I want founders to refer their friends to me … and to be the first call for founders when things go right and when things go wrong.”
Turner, 37, is part of a wave of venture capital partners leaving established firms to join new funds or start their own, forming a new guard in the VC ecosystem. There’s something “really visceral in the air,” she says. AI is changing the world, people are building companies faster than ever and disciplines that were once separate are all converging. We’re at an inflection point and Turner wants to position herself to take advantage of it.
Turner has always wanted to start a company of her own. She comes from a family of founders. Her dad worked offshore on oil rigs but spun out and started his own oil and gas company when Turner was in third grade; her brother Nat Turner has cofounded multiple unicorns including Flatiron Health; her husband and mother were founders too. Turner, who wanted to be an astronaut and musician as a kid, took a non-linear path to entrepreneurship. She got into acting and singing early—she’s sung the national anthem at NBA and NFL games, and performed with the Houston Grand Opera as a kid and teenager—but used her first paycheck from that to buy a telescope. Her astronomy hobby grew into a science fair project that took her to MIT, where she later got a degree in civil and environmental engineering. After graduating, she worked at a Nairobi, Kenya-based NGO for a few years before joining SV Angel in 2017.
SV Angel is known for writing lots of small checks to early-stage companies, often before there is a product. The idea is to get in early and serve as a strategic partner, not to lock down board seats or lead funding rounds. It’s a proven strategy. At SV Angel, Turner vetted thousands of pitches and led the firm’s investments in, when combined with her personal investments, more than 40 startups that went on to become unicorns, including Anthropic, ElevenLabs and Flock Safety.
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At Valkyrie, Turner is running a similar investing model, but being a solo partner “allows her to shine on her own,” says BoxGroup partner David Tisch, one of Turner’s most frequent co-investors. “She built up enough confidence, independence and network to do it … and in a market where a lot of money is concentrated at existing bigger firms, being able to get a new fund off the ground with such efficiency is a testament to everybody’s belief that she’s here to build something long-term and successful.” Tisch and Turner have both described their approaches as being a sort of “Switzerland of funds,” not vying for control and not even shying away from investing in companies that may compete directly with each other. Instead of “fighting a venture game,” their small, early and high-frequency checks allow them to work with everyone.
For founders like Kwan, Turner aims to be crucial in introducing them to the investors, potential customers or government collaborators needed to take their companies to the next level. “She helped bring the majority of the investor base that we have … and helped me understand what to expect as a first-time founder,” says Ben Biran, founder and CEO of Valkyrie portfolio company ACRONYM.
While Turner is leaving plenty of room for Valkyrie and its portfolio to grow, she’s entirely comfortable serving as its sole partner. It helps that she isn’t leading funding rounds—meaning she’s still collaborating closely with SV Angel, BoxGroup and other investors; they’re just at different firms now. More importantly, being a lone wolf keeps things nimble and unencumbered, which is essential, Turner says, because “you can move really quickly to build a fund in this new era.”
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