Founding partner — Evolv-X
Amplifying foundersothers overlook.
Venture Builders Fund connects a venture fund, accelerator, and founder community into one flywheel designed to generate deal flow, support founders, and reinvest in the ecosystems that fuel it all.
- Venture Capital
- Accelerators
- Founder Ecosystems
- Community
01 / What we do
Three interconnectedpillars.
Exceptional founders exist everywhere. Access to capital, networks, and venture-building resources does not.
Venture Builders Fund combines investing, accelerator infrastructure, and founder community to find promising founders earlier, help them build, and strengthen the ecosystems where they operate.
The Fund
An early-stage fund investing in exceptional founders emerging from vetted accelerators and venture-building ecosystems across North America — working with trusted ecosystem partners that provide behavioral insight and context beyond what can be found in a pitch deck.
Accelerator-as-a-Service
Fractional accelerator leadership and centralized programming for underserved startup ecosystems — helping local partners build founder-support infrastructure using proven curriculum, mentorship, partnerships, and programming without having to create everything from scratch.
Community & Content
A growing network of founders, mentors, investors, and ecosystem builders united around helping talented founders succeed regardless of geography. Community creates relationships. Relationships create access. Access creates opportunity.
02 / Our perspective
The best founders don'talways raise inSilicon Valley.
Exceptional founders are building companies in Memphis, Cleveland, Boise, and hundreds of other communities where capital and connections are scarcer, but the caliber of work is not.
VBF's strategy is built around trusted relationships with accelerators and venture studios that develop founders before they reach the broader venture market.
Those relationships provide something more valuable than another source of applications:
Works at the intersection of
Venture Builders Fund believes finding more exceptional founders starts with strengthening the ecosystems where those founders are already building.
03 / Meet the founder
Jillian Friot
Jillian Friot has spent more than a decade building founder communities and startup-support organizations across the United States.
Before co-founding Venture Builders Fund, she served as CEO of the Global Venture Network, a global venture community spanning six continents with more than 300 ecosystem leaders supporting over 5,500 startups per year.
Across that work, one question has consistently shaped her thinking:
“Great founders should not be overlooked because of where they choose to build.”
Her experience includes leadership and advisory work with the SOLIDWORKS for Startups program, SparkCharge, Rhodes College Entrepreneurship Program, Fierce Foundry, and SXSW.
Jillian brings deep relationships across founder, accelerator, investor, and startup ecosystems together with firsthand experience building the infrastructure those communities need to thrive.
04 / Part of Evolv-X
Enterprise innovation needsentrepreneurial execution.
Venture Builders Fund is a founding partner of Evolv-X, the Enterprise Innovation Exchange, alongside J. Ferrara Consulting Solutions and Funded House.
VBF brings the venture building and entrepreneurial ecosystems perspective to Evolv-X.
VBF brings the venture-building and entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective to Evolv-X.
Its network of founders, accelerators, venture studios, investors, and ecosystem partners helps Evolv-X reach beyond traditional innovation channels to identify entrepreneurs and emerging companies capable of solving meaningful enterprise challenges.
Enterprise Challenges → Founders → Venture Building → Capital
Together, the Evolv-X partners combine enterprise transformation expertise, entrepreneurial talent, venture development, startup assessment, and capital access to move innovation from challenge to implementation.
05 / Contact
What needs to be built?
Some enterprise challenges can be solved by technology that already exists. Others require someone to build what doesn't. Venture Builders Fund brings the founder networks, venture-building infrastructure, and entrepreneurial ecosystem required to find or develop the people capable of doing it.
Bring usa challenge.→