Valkyrie Holmes

Valkyrie Holmes made big waves over the past year while also finding increased validation behind growing demand for the proptech firm she co-founded in January 2023 as a teenager.

The 21-year-old Holmes has scaled Faura, an assessment app designed to lower natural disaster home insurance premiums, with nearly a half-million assessments now executed under the platform while also adding more insurance carriers in 2025. To underscore the need for what Faura does, Holmes cited data showing that 52 percent of the U.S. population has reported some form of home renovation over the last two years — with many not reporting the projects to their insurance companies.

“We came up with the idea to partner with insurance companies to give people benefits in exchange for reducing their risk,” Holmes said. “That slowly changed into working with underwriting teams to give them a better sense of what are their more profitable property owners and who is doing this work to make themselves a better risk.”

Faura’s software is now utilized by 15 insurance carriers, including Liberty Mutual, one of the nation’s largest property and casualty insurance companies. Holmes said it has doubled the number of assessments each quarter as awareness of the platform grows. 

Faura expanded beyond insurance carriers and has also begun working with 50 brokerage firms who use the platform for prospecting potential business or risk management tools, including USI Insurance Services and HUB International. The firm got a further boost in October when CB Insights named it one of the top 50 insurtech startups of 2025. 

“We have looked into how we can add more value to policyholders to improve retention with things like discounts and resources and grant opportunities,” Holmes said. “We’re connecting different parts of the ecosystem, and insurance just happens to be the thing that everyone relies on, which is good for us.”