Danielle Strachman

Background

Danielle Strachman is the co-founder and General Partner of 1517 Fund, a pre-seed and seed-stage venture capital firm that backs founders without traditional credentials — dropouts, students, and deep-tech scientists ¹. She studied performance music and psychology in college and has a background in neuropsychology and education ².

Before entering venture capital, Strachman founded Innovations Academy in San Diego in 2007, a K-8 charter school serving approximately 350-400 students with a focus on student-led, project-based learning ^{3 4}. She currently sits on the school’s board of directors ³.

In 2010, Strachman joined the founding team of the Thiel Fellowship, where she led the design and operations of the program ¹. Over approximately five years running the fellowship, she worked directly with young founders including Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum), Austin Russell (Luminar Technologies), Ritesh Agarwal (OYO), and Dylan Field (Figma) ^{1 5}. She also created the Thiel Summit series, which has been attended by approximately 2,000 young entrepreneurs ².

In 2015, Strachman and Michael Gibson co-founded 1517 Fund after pitching Peter Thiel at breakfast with a one-page analysis showing hypothetical returns if Thiel Fellowship grants had been structured as investments. Thiel committed $4 million toward the initial $15 million ask ⁵. The fund is named after the year Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to a church door, drawing a parallel between the Reformation’s challenge to the Catholic Church and the fund’s challenge to the modern credentialing system ⁶.

Stated Thesis

Strachman and 1517 Fund publicly describe their focus as backing “dropouts, renegade students, and sci-fi scientists” at the earliest stages ¹. The fund’s website states they invest in “software, hardware with a data play, deep tech/science fiction tech, and biotech” and prioritize “the who” over “the what” ¹.

Strachman has stated: “We’re very unlikely to back people who are like, I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur and I found this business case” ⁷. Instead, she looks for founders with what she calls “dog-on-a-leash energy” — people straining against constraints who need their leash cut ². She has also described seeking “hyper-fluency,” defined as “the ability to geek out with geeks, and still explain your work to your grandma at Thanksgiving” ².

On the fund’s approach to risk at the earliest stages, Strachman has said: “Is this money well spent to find out the answers to these questions? And if the answer is yes, especially on our very early checks, like our 100k check, let’s go” ².

Inferred Thesis

Based on 22 verified portfolio investments below, 1517 Fund under Strachman’s leadership shows the following patterns:

Stage distribution: The fund operates almost exclusively at pre-seed and seed. Their check sizes range from $50,000 at the idea/R&D stage to $1,000,000 for deep-tech seed, with an average pre-seed check of approximately $400,000 ¹. They also make $100,000 early angel checks ⁷. This positions 1517 as a “first check” fund — they were the first institutional investor in Luminar, Loom, Deepgram, and nTopology ^{5 1}.

Sector breakdown (22 verified investments): Deep tech/hardware: 8 of 22 (36%) — Luminar (lidar), Atom Computing (quantum), Zeno Power (nuclear batteries), Rainmaker (cloud seeding), Xona Space (GPS), Eeva (robotics), Mach Industries (defense), Positron. Software/SaaS: 7 of 22 (32%) — Loom (video), Fountain (hiring), Cents (laundromat SaaS), FOSSA (open source), Figma (design). AI/ML: 4 of 22 (18%) — Lambda (deep learning infrastructure), Deepgram (speech recognition), plus others. Biotech/science: 3 of 22 (14%) — Stark Therapeutics, Trilobio (lab robots), nTopology (engineering design).

Founder profile patterns: The strongest signal is non-traditional credentials. Many portfolio founders are Thiel Fellows, college dropouts, or very young founders. Austin Russell (Luminar) dropped out at 17. Dylan Field (Figma) was a Thiel Fellow. The fund explicitly targets founders who are “two standard deviations out on curiosity” ⁷ rather than MBA-holding career entrepreneurs.

Geographic focus: Based in San Francisco, but portfolio companies are geographically distributed — Luminar started in Irvine, CA; Zeno Power emerged from Vanderbilt University research ⁸.

Co-investor patterns: 1517 frequently co-invests with other early-stage and unconventional funds. As a first-check fund, they precede larger institutional rounds. Notable co-investors include Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Y Combinator in later rounds of portfolio companies ^{9 10}.

Notable gap vs. stated thesis: While the fund emphasizes backing dropouts and non-traditional founders, several portfolio companies (Deepgram, nTopology) were founded by people with advanced degrees doing research-based work. The “dropout” framing may be more marketing emphasis than strict requirement — the real pattern is founders with deep technical obsession regardless of formal credential status.

Portfolio

This table represents approximately 22 of ~105 known investments (about 21%). The fund has invested across four flagship funds and 15+ SPVs ¹.

Notable exits: - Luminar Technologies: IPO December 2020 ($3.4B valuation), returned 4X to Fund I investors ^{5 11} - Loom: Acquired by Atlassian for ~$1B in December 2023, returned 1X to Fund I investors ⁵ - Figma: IPO in 2024, valued at $20B+ ⁵ - Lambda: Reached unicorn status in 2024 ¹² - Fund I DPI: 4.5X with more expected ⁵

In Their Own Words

“We look for people who are two standard deviations out on curiosity.” — Danielle Strachman, First Funders podcast ⁷

“You have to be willing to die on your sword for what you’re doing… you have to have that amount of passion about it.” — Danielle Strachman, First Funders podcast ⁷

“We have to truly believe that every single team we back could be a fund multiplying company… the most likely thing to happen is that it all goes to zero.” — Danielle Strachman, First Funders podcast ⁷

“Crazy, crazy awesome — we can’t tell if they’re insane or brilliant, and it’ll take years to find out.” — Danielle Strachman, Eric Jorgenson podcast ²

“We just want to talk to wily weirdos who want to be around other wily weirdos.” — Danielle Strachman, Eric Jorgenson podcast ²

“In the future, I want to be funding 11-year-olds. The world won’t be ready, but I will be.” — Danielle Strachman, Eric Jorgenson podcast ²

“We’re homeschooling CEOs. Instead of it being child led, it’s like, the founders we’re working with are gonna guide us as far as what sort of support they need.” — Danielle Strachman, The Knowledge Project podcast ¹³

“An education should liberate you, it should offer up more opportunities and open doors that previously weren’t there. It shouldn’t saddle you with something, whether it’s a path, or debt, or a notion of who you are as a human being.” — Danielle Strachman, podcast interview ¹⁴

“No one should be guarding knowledge and saying you have to pay a lot of money to be able to get into this echelon of people.” — Danielle Strachman, Lisa Betts-LaCroix podcast ¹⁴

“We saw a gap where young people weren’t being taken seriously by investors.” — Danielle Strachman, Lisa Betts-LaCroix podcast ¹⁴

What Founders Say

Joe Thomas, co-founder and CEO of Loom, described 1517 as their earliest believers: they “met with us weekly, gave us feedback, and wired us money before the deal docs were done as our pre-seed lead so that we wouldn’t run out of money 48hrs later.” Thomas stated: “Can’t honestly say Loom would be a company if it hadn’t been for their belief” ¹.

Stephen Balaban, founder and CEO of Lambda, said that Strachman and Gibson “recognize the emotional component of starting a company that a lot of people neglect — the emotional rollercoaster that is very draining” and that “they were really good at making sure that everyone had support networks for when you are, in Elon Musk’s apt description, staring into the abyss and chewing on glass” ⁶. Balaban also stated: “1517 believed in me first” ¹.

On the Deepgram investment, Strachman has described how she initially discouraged the founder, but he later wrote her a handwritten letter saying: “it was that meeting that I knew I had to do it” ⁷.

Connections

• Co-founder, Thiel Fellowship (2010-2015) — alongside Peter Thiel and Michael Gibson ^{1 5}
• Board member, Innovations Academy (2015-present) — K-8 charter school she co-founded in San Diego ³
• Runs 1517 Medici Project — $1,000 grants to teens for research and development projects ¹⁵
• Frequent co-investor with Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, Compound ^{10 9}

Sources