Faura CEO Valkyrie Holmes Is Just Starting in Startups

Holmes co-founded Faura in January 2023 after internships at NASA and SpaceX, the latter of which became a full-time position. Her startup uses climate analytics and statistics to support and safeguard homeowners’ properties.

Holmes spoke to PropTech Insider earlier this month about her precocious rise in proptech, how she thinks about her business and climate change, and whether she has a technological or a creative mind.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

PropTech Insider: Not to be rude, but how old are you, Valkyrie?

Valkyrie Holmes: I’m 20 years old right now. I’ll be 21 on Jan. 13.

How did you come to be CEO and founder of Faura at such a young age? What was the moment that got you here?

I’ll be honest — it’s pretty hard to narrow it down to one specific moment. I think it was my initial entrance into climate change, and then a slow realization of what insurance focused on wildfire risk could do. It was very clear that wildfires are impacting a lot of people and we are using very rudimentary methods to fight them. So, where could there be some innovation? That was the entrance into natural disasters in general.

Then as you start to look into the industry you realize there’s a lot of different legacy stakeholders who are benefiting and being harmed by a lot of what’s going on in the industry. Insurance is everywhere — devices we’re calling on, the transportation we take, the homes that we live in. I started to realize that was one of the key points of reference I kept coming back to: this idea that our society was built around a level of comfort and resilience that insurance has allowed us to have. So, let’s try to make more changes where we’re seeing some gaps.

Although ubiquitous, most people, perhaps especially young folks, find insurance boring and low on their scale of concerns. How did you come to be so interested in the subject at such an early age?

I think I have a good amount of self-awareness around what needs to be done to solve a problem. If I believed the solution to solving a lot of the property resilience and insecurity in the property market was in banking, or I believed it was in government, or in some other industry besides insurance, then I would be there. I didn’t get into insurance because I loved insurance,  or that I come from an insurance family. None of that is true. 

I’m in insurance because I think it’s the best avenue to solve the problem. And, I think when you’re married to solving a problem instead of the solution, it can take you anywhere and you have to adapt. I was aware enough to the point where I saw this thing that I really wanted to help out with and I thought I could create value. I just fell into the industry.

Many people don’t go into a serious career until they get their “dream career” out of the way, like being a poet or a musician before entering a less exciting but more stable life. Did you experience anything like that or were you technologically oriented in childhood?

I think I still have that! I’m living what I would consider my dream. I’m living one of my dreams. I have a lot of different things that I want to accomplish in my life. Being an entrepreneur was one of them. And I want to start other companies that are outside of climate and insurance. I have more ideas that are kind of cool things that I think would be fun. This is giving me the foundation to do that. At the end of the day, from a young age I was always pretty creative. I think when I fully retire I want to make short films and write for a living. I think that would probably fuel a lot of that creative energy, because I love writing.

It’s such a Gen Z and young person thing to say that you’re manifesting your dream life. I find a lot of my peers say that, almost in a joking manner, but I really do feel like I willed my dream into existence in a lot of ways, and I definitely try not to take that for granted.

You have gotten to this point in your career basically right out of high school, but by following an unusual learning path. How did that happen?

It’s so funny that you say that, because, up until high school, I was not a crazy, outgoing, entrepreneurial kid. I was definitely smart. I was in advanced classes. I read a lot. I did math and science and all those things. My family has given me that foundation to just love learning. Apart from that, I was not at all confident in any of my abilities to do anything outside of the norm. I was just going through the motions of school. When things got hard, it really frustrated me, and I could not see myself doing anything close to what I’m doing now.

There was a big shift when COVID happened, because all of a sudden I went from being in high school to now being online, being completely virtual, and not having any real avenues to express myself with my peers. So I started taking really long walks and talking to myself and asking myself questions about what I stood for, what I valued, just trying to understand why I was so unhappy. Because there was this fundamental gear out of place in me that I felt I couldn’t put a finger on. Then slowly it started to unravel when I found hackathons and cool engineering projects that I would do online. 

So, starting in my sophomore year, I went on this kind of self-reflection, self-awareness journey, if you will. Then I got into this program called The Knowledge Society. We call it TKS. They don’t advertise it as like startup school, but it’s basically that for high schoolers. You’re with other people who want to learn and want to make change, giving them mentors that are previous startup founders who have worked at high-tech companies. They teach teenagers how to think critically and how to eventually get into either crazy high academia or some kind of startup. It’s a very intense program and very much challenged the way that I thought. 

It got me into 3D printing, which was a big deal for me originally. Then it got me into more general engineering work and electrical engineering. From there I branched outward into sustainability and climate. So there’s a bunch of different pathways that I took in there — a little bit of genetics and engineering stuff that I wanted to do. Eventually, I got deeper into space and received an internship with NASA Seas Institute, working on basically lower-orbit satellites. Then I transitioned into SpaceX right outside of high school, and didn’t go to college. I’ve been on the pathway since then.

So, you were an intern at NASA and at SpaceX?

Yes, I was an intern at SpaceX, and then kind of transitioned into more of a role right before I actually left to do things with sustainability.

You grew up in Las Vegas, right?

Born and raised. My whole family’s there.

Are your parents similarly creative or entrepreneurial?

Honestly, no. My dad is a craps dealer on the Strip. I always tell everyone he’s probably taken money from you before in Vegas. My mom used to be a phlebotomist, and then was a piano teacher, and a substitute teacher. But she was always education-focused raising us.

Given your background and pursuits, how would you characterize your way of thinking about the world? Are you mathematically minded? Do you have an engineering mind, or even a poetic mind? Or are such labels irrelevant to how you have developed?

That’s a good question. I don’t know if I’ve ever thought of myself in any different minds. I think a lot of people with high-intensity brains, it’s not sustainable. I think it’s important to shed light on the fact that that doesn’t have to work for everyone. You don’t have to time-block to do all these different things. It’s whatever works for you is probably best. And that’s what works for me. So, probably engineering.

Where are you now as a young founder and CEO? And where is Faura’s development? Is it fulfilling what you set out to do?

In terms of where the company is right now, we’re gearing up to raise our seed. I think the last time we spoke, we had just raised our pre-seed. So after this summer we’re getting all our ducks in a row to raise that next round. And I think one of the most interesting things about climate risk, and for the people that might not know what Faura does, we’re helping homeowners qualify for better insurance in higher disaster zones. We also help insurance companies actually keep their most profitable customers insurable. A lot of that revolves around streamlining the process for homeowners and making it easier for people to understand insurance, and that it is something that they can maintain for their property and continue to benefit from. Also, actually convincing insurance companies that it’s something that they should be investing in. 

I think we’re achieving a lot of those three buckets right now in terms of the homeowners that we’re servicing. We’re about to hit 10,000 assessments across the country. It’s clear that people are looking at what we’re doing and it is resonating.

What obstacles have you faced regarding people’s perceptions of climate change? Are you frustrated that so many people are still resistant to the idea of it, when the impetus for your company’s creation was because of the reality of increasing massive wildfires?

I was definitely upset. I feel this is true with a lot of people involved in climate. You get into it because you’re mad about the changes, the policy, the regulation and how all of these different stakeholders are seemingly not working together.

When I think about insurance and how the first thing that people will gravitate toward in these higher-risk areas is, “My insurance company pulled out, left us all alone, and now I can’t get insurance, I can’t keep my house, and now I’m homeless.” That’s a line of reasoning that is not too far off from the reality of a resident. We’re having a crazy fire in California right now, and the biggest fire in Texas history. It’s easy to fall down that rabbit hole of “insurance company bad.”

Insurance companies have been functioning the same way for a couple hundred years, because it’s worked. That doesn’t mean that we can’t hold them to a high standard of being able to protect consumers. But these insurers have been using the same climate models for 20-plus years, because it’s what’s made them money and allowed them to keep all these homeowners on their books for so long.

Insurance is based on the idea that they will make money as companies if they’re insuring events that are small or rare. But natural disasters now have formed this pattern of not being that. They do not represent these small and infrequent risks that we are used to taking on and have the climate models to support, which is exactly what Faura helps out with. Every property, or at least the majority of properties in the U.S., are in some kind of disaster zone. So, as a startup, you can get into these companies and make changes right away, or as quickly as possible.

You have begun to get buy-in from homeowners, but what’s the reaction from the real estate insurance industry and from investors?

For insurers, we are a company that serves both policyholders and insurance companies. So for insurance companies, it’s OK they’re pulling out of markets and leaving hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars on the table, because they don’t understand the risk in those areas and which properties to insure anymore. That’s also something that we’re servicing — insurance companies that can no longer exist in these markets with their current systems. We’re giving them a new system to operate under. I haven’t seen any pushback from insurers in terms of being worried about us. If anything, it’s that we were created to help and increase transparency for both parties, because that’s where the industry is headed.

For investors, it’s a little bit of a different story. I think there’s definitely insurtech investors and people in fintech that are familiar with insurtech. A big problem that I ran into when we raised our pre-seed was how do I explain the gravity of the situation? It’s already hard enough to explain to homeowners who are losing their homes left and right that these are the things you have to do on property to keep insurance and this is the way the process is going to move from now on. Explaining all that to investors that are more generalist or that don’t have an insurance background is definitely tough. That’s not to say that they don’t believe in it. It’s just harder to understand. It falls on the founder — aka me — to be able to explain that in a way that investors can get behind and believe in enough to put their money behind.

Do proptech investors get it?

Definitely more so because they’re getting burned by insurance regulations and by insurers pulling out almost as much as the average homeowner — in some cases more, if they have pretty high capacity in these disaster zones. Proptech and insurtech are relatively adjacent. Same thing with fintech. If I’m talking to a fintech investor, I can assume they have a little bit of background on insurance. Proptech, I’m assuming a lot of their portfolio companies are getting slammed by insurance regulation, especially on the West Coast, but on the coastlines in general.

You have grown a lot as an individual and as a business person in a short time. Has that growth led to you and others having too large expectations and making you afraid of failing?

I don’t think I’ve ever truly been afraid of failure. I think the closest I ever came to that was during our pre-seed round of funding. No one really tells you how hard fundraising is, especially in this market, so you have to go through it. Especially, being a woman in tech, not having an insurance background originally, it definitely paints a picture of not investing. I’m certain that whatever I’m doing, though, even if it doesn’t work out in one aspect or the other, there will be another avenue that I can pivot into, like with sustainability.

I started in wildfire suppression, creating a drone tech company, and that just didn’t work out. That was a small blip in what will eventually be my overall career. From that, I pivoted and was able to find something that actually impacted more people on a grander scale, and it taught me a lot. So I try to remind myself that whatever I’m doing that’s hard I’m doing it because ultimately it will lead to something that I enjoy. I used to be a lot more afraid of failure, and now I take things as they go and know that I’ll figure them out as I continue to move on.

What’s been the harder challenge for you: being a woman or being a young person in insurance?

It’s being young. Because actually in insurance there’s quite a bit of women. I would definitely love to see more women in positions of power at these carriers. But I meet so many wonderful, powerful women at these events, way more than I have in a lot of other industries, which is super interesting. Insurance is extremely diverse, but being young makes it seem like you don’t have any experience in the industry. It’s a very tenure-focused field.

Here is a closing interview question that I’ve hated since I was your age: Where do you see yourself five years from now?

I hope to have impacted at least a million people by then — help a million people either get better insurance, or qualify for insurance, or mitigate their properties. Hopefully that number can get to 10 million by five years. I always wanted my first real company to be something that impacted a lot of people in a positive way.

Philip Russo can be reached at prusso@commercialobserver.com.