Lisa Calhoun

Lisa Calhoun is the Founding Managing Partner of Valor Ventures, an Atlanta-based venture capital firm she launched in 2015–2016 as the South's first woman-led, institutional venture fund. Valor focuses exclusively on leading the first institutional round for software companies building in the U.S. South — a strategy Calhoun frames around the thesis that the region has the country's largest and fastest-growing population and wealth influx but the least venture capital access per capita. She holds an MBA in management science (statistics concentration) from the University of Texas and a BA from Baylor University.

Before venture capital, Calhoun was a founder and CEO herself. In 2006 she founded Write2Market, an Atlanta-based public relations and digital marketing agency serving technology startups. Under her leadership the firm was recognized among the top PR agencies in the nation (alongside Silicon Valley and New York firms), and she helped tech startups achieve more than $1B in exits. She was named Female Entrepreneur of the Year by the American Business (Stevie) Awards in 2012. That operating background shaped her investor approach — she looks for founder persistence, intrinsic motivation ("what's the thing they would do if no one paid them"), and strong market fit.

Calhoun is a Kauffman Fellow (Class 23) and recipient of the Kauffman Fellows Leadership Award for her class. She has been recognized as Atlanta Investor of the Year 2024 by Startup Atlanta, a Top 10 Female Founding Managing Partner by Bridge Funding Global (2024), and one of Business Insider's best 30 women seed investors (2023). Beyond Valor, she founded the Startup Runway Foundation in 2016 — a 501(c)(3) that has grown into one of the nation's largest nonprofits introducing underrepresented founders to their first investors, offering non-dilutive grants. She also serves on the Women Who Code Board of Advisors and co-hosts the Atlanta Startup Podcast.

• Leads first rounds only. Valor is a pure first-round lead fund — it aims to lead the seed round rather than follow, one of the few funds in the South committed to this position.
• The South is the thesis. Invests in software companies building in the U.S. South, betting on the region's population/wealth growth and its underfunding relative to coastal hubs.
• B2B AI and SaaS. Backs "B2B AI and SaaS founders solving real problems with clear ROI," favoring AI-augmented businesses with technical founders and early product-market fit.
• Check size ~$500K–$3M at seed, leading the round.
• Founder-first evaluation. Calhoun assesses persistence and intrinsic drive, studying how founders have made past life decisions; she stresses that "in a great market, many decent ideas with reasonable, rational teams, work."
• Value beyond capital. Positions Valor as a "Community of Courage," investing heavily in founder networks, a Masterclass program, podcasts, and the Venture Atlanta conference. In her words, she wants to "buy a piece of a founder's business at a fair price and work side-by-side to grow that piece into something 10 times more valuable or more."
• Commitment to underrepresented founders, reinforced through the affiliated Startup Runway Foundation.