Valkyrie Holmes

“Wunderkind” is not a word one hears much anymore in technology, but perhaps Valkyrie Holmes will render it more common.

At 20 years old, the co-founder and top executive of Manhattan-based Faura, an assessment app designed to lower natural disaster home insurance premiums, is hoping that youth — discernibly talented youth — will be served in proptech entrepreneurialism.

Founded in January 2023, Faura in the last year has gone from a startup with no insurance experience to one whose software is now being used by Liberty Mutual, one of the country’s biggest property and casualty insurance companies. In addition, State Farm Insurance highlighted the company in its pitch competition in Las Vegas in October 2023. And, this very October, Faura will be demoing at ITC Insurance Tech Connect Vegas, the world’s largest insurance innovation conference.

“Essentially, we are becoming a part of an ecosystem that is already actively supporting a lot of carriers, which helps us directly plug into their solution, as opposed to going through a whole sales cycle,” said Holmes.

Following internships at NASA and SpaceX, the latter of which turned into a full-time position, Holmes set out to channel her experiences studying climate change into a proptech business that uses climate analytics and statistics to support and safeguard home-owners’ properties.

Faura this fall plans to raise a seed round, while increasing insurance industry and customer awareness.

“I think one of the most interesting things about climate risk, and for the people that might not know what Faura does, is that we’re helping homeowners qualify for better insurance in higher disaster zones,” Holmes said in a Commercial Observer interview in July. “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.”