Investing In Vertical AI With Alana Mann Of Eleven Wall Ventures

AI is vastly transforming the market landscape, and that includes the venture capital space. Scott Kelly sits down with Alana Mann of Eleven Wall Ventures, a seed fund investing in visionary founders focused on vertical AI and the application layer. Together, they break down the advantage of intentionally investing outside of major hubs to find better valuations and support capital-efficient growth. Alana also shares how they utilize AI tools to improve their investing strategies, as well as what’s in store for the ever-evolving digital world in 2026.

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Investing In Vertical AI With Alana Mann Of Eleven Wall Ventures

In this episode, we have Alana Mann, the General Partner of Eleven Wall Ventures. They’re a seed fund investing in visionary founders who are transforming legacy industries through applied AI and deep domain expertise. She focused on early-stage companies developing transformative technology with market-defining potential outside the traditional venture hubs like San Francisco.

Prior to her work at Eleven Wall, she worked for Latimer Ventures, where she led dynamic fundraising efforts and a robust pipeline of category-leading enterprise SaaS companies. Prior to that, she was a Principal at Cultivation Capital, where she spearheaded high conviction investments in enterprise SaaS companies like Element451, Lionize, Kangarootime, and many others. Let’s tune in, and let’s get her perspective on how AI is transforming traditional industries and how deep technology is happening outside of the major hubs like San Francisco. We’ll be back with my key takeaways.

I’m excited to introduce Alana Mann of Eleven Wall Ventures. Alana, thanks, and welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Alana’s Career Journey Before Eleven Wall Ventures

Before we get into what you’re doing at Eleven Wall Ventures, maybe share a little bit about your background prior to being part of the fund.

I’m originally from New Jersey. I went to boarding school in New Jersey, a place called Lawrenceville. I give it a shout-out because there are quite a few people from my high school in the venture world, the fund side, the investor side, and even the allocator side as well. I went to Vanderbilt for undergrad. Vanderbilt has been trying to catch up in terms of all things entrepreneurship. I was fortunate to have been involved with Vanderbilt as well in terms of their entrepreneurship community.

I took the path of the most resistance, which was the long way to becoming an entrepreneur, which is starting off my career as an operator. I worked in corporate retail for several years at some big names, like ZZAG and Jet.com, a Walmart eCommerce, prior to launching my own venture at the time in fashion. I learned about VC the hard way, which was, as a first-time entrepreneur, trying to figure out all aspects of how I could be the best entrepreneur out there and raise venture funding.

I learned a lot and started seeing venture as an interesting problem. I felt uniquely positioned to solve, having been new to the venture world, and then also having this corporate retail and consumer experience as well. I pivoted into venture full-time during COVID. I started at a Midwest-based fund called Cultivation Capital. Cultivation has been around north of ten-plus years. Their entire thesis is focused on early-stage ventures. They have different verticals, but I spent all my time investing in enterprise software, specifically leading Series A rounds.

At the time, leading those Series A rounds was a $2 million to $3 million check. This is approaching peak 2021, where $2 million to $3 million was easy for any founder to get. Something that you learn investing in companies, being based in a Midwest-based firm, is that valuation matters. That was one of the big takeaways. I remember anytime I bring in a deal, I’d be like, “Could we get the best valuation entry point on it?” When I was on calls with other SF-based or New York-based VCs, they’re like, “Valuation doesn’t matter. Who cares?” I’m pitching to our IC, trying to get a sub $10 million entry point valuation on a Series A company. It was a great experience there.

I moved on to join a firm called Latimer. Latimer’s entire thesis is enterprise software, but a little bit more focused on Black and Latinx founders. Latimer’s thesis has evolved to be more technical, focused on AI, machine learning, DevOps, DevTools, and that kind of thing. I led some great companies in terms of being sourced and investments, as well as Latimer.

I spun out to launch a new firm called Eleven Wall Ventures. Eleven Wall’s thesis is squarely focused on investing in vertical AI companies. When we say vertical AI, we’re talking about whether there is a deep founder market fit in the form of one of these founders having been in this industry vertical for a decade or so, and they have that deep legacy industry expertise that informs why they’re so unique and equipped to build a category-defining business in that particular vertical.

The verticals we get most excited about are InsureTech, FinTech, Logistics, and HealthTech. We’ve been out of stealth for nearly four months. We’re starting to have great fundraising conversations and moments there. As you know, when you’re fundraising, you can’t share too much. What it comes down to is we’re focused on seed stage investments, more specifically, vertical companies. We have a strong affinity for new geographies that may not have been a traditional tech hub.

We like to invest outside of SF, Boston, and New York, and do a lot of community-building work. We got back from Art Basel in Miami. Our next big event is starting to plan a South by Southwest. We have some great perspectives on the geographies outside SF, New York, and Boston. That’s also very much so what our track record has supported historically as well.

There are a lot of intersections in your intro. I lived in the Northeast. I would drive from Philadelphia through New Jersey and New York many times. You mentioned Vanderbilt. I posted an event in Nashville. We’re going to host a pitch event. We’re having conversations with Vanderbilt about hosting with them. I was at Art Basel. We probably didn’t know each other.

Four Buckets On Choosing The Right Founder

I went to South by Southwest first as the owner of a music record label. The interactive portion has exploded. We both ran into each other in Austin, too. Let’s hone down the thesis a little bit. AI is all kinds of buzz. When you’re talking about AI outside of the technology, maybe share what the attributes of the founders and the people that you’re investing with are. Let’s talk about that a little bit.

For us, we’re big about our investor scorecard. Any time you look at a deal, we bring in an investor scorecard. Each GP brings that to our first partners meeting, talking about that deal. It comes down to four big buckets. The first big bucket is like, “Is this a white space opportunity?” In the world of AI, people say, “There’s now AI for everything.” That is largely true because AI has saturated, but we’re very niche when we say vertical AI.

We’re only talking about application-layered companies. We’re only talking about companies that are building for a very specific industry vertical that they themselves have lived experience in. That also automatically disqualifies the investment banking founder. It disqualifies Jeff Bezos, which is crazy to think. To some extent, not every founder is going to have an investment banking or start an online bookstore sort of experience.

For us, we gravitate towards folks who have that deep industry expertise. We feel like they’re able to hone in on that white space market. What is the niche component of this market that no one else is seeing? What is the differentiated go-to-market strategy? A great example is a company that I invested in back at Cultivation, my past track record, where he was focused on the very low segment of his higher education market. Due to that, no one else was going after that portion of the industry. That becomes their differentiated go-to-market strategy. That becomes their white space. That becomes where they can build a category-defining business and become the category leader in this space.

The second big bucket is that we always say, “Why now? Is there momentum? What are the trends accelerating this industry forward?” When we think about, for example, logistics, InsurTech, FinTech, and HealthTech, we see the opportunity, which is that there’s about 2.5 trillion trapped in manual workflows that are ripe for disruption by AI. Largely, the lion’s share of that disruption will come from enterprises wanting to adopt these solutions. It has to be enterprise-grade, the solutions that founders are building, but that’s the momentum that validates why now.

That third big bucket is why the founders have an unfair advantage. For example, did Jeff Bezos have an unfair advantage? I don’t know. It was about the timing. The best-case scenario is that we can find the four. It’s white space and a differentiated go-to market. The second piece is why now? What’s the momentum? Are the trends working in their favor?

Third is when founders have that unfair advantage. For us, when we see founders with an unfair advantage, do they have deep legacy industry expertise? Have they been in this industry as an operator or as a customer? If so, how does that inform their experience? The one thing that I always come back to is that OpenAI had to hire all these healthcare execs. You see the same happening in financial services. You cannot train the LLMs fast enough to figure out this industry expertise. That’s the third big bucket for us.

The fourth big bucket is what are the exits in the space? Is a lot of M&A happening in the space? If so, what do the actual multiples look like for this to be a sizable outcome? The name of the game in venture is power law. We want to make sure we’re underwriting investment to be top tier, better than the last investment that we did, so that we’re constantly not only evolving and getting smarter, but constantly pushing ourselves to do the best investments that we can.

Is this an actual scorecard? Is there a checkbox? If you don’t mind, I’d like to learn a little bit more about what the scorecard is. We’ve got two groups of readers. We have entrepreneurs, but we also have a lot of LPs, family offices, and others tuning in. For entrepreneurs, how do you get a good scorecard with you?

This is where I always tell people, “Don’t fake the fun. If you don’t have something, be transparent and be honest because that’s the one thing that matters most when you’re building trust.” Anytime I’m fundraising, either from LPs or if I’m chatting with a founder and trying to learn about their business, the most important thing is whether we can both trust each other and if there is mutual trust here.

I have a long and short answer. Number one, always be honest and always be transparent. Two, a white space opportunity should be part of how you narrowed in on this business from the start. That’s not something that you can fake. To me, that’s understanding not just the broader market opportunity, but what is niche about your business.

One of the legendary VCs said this a while back. Most businesses in their earliest days were niche and very narrow. Those businesses, because they were able to build such deep loyalty with that core group of early customers by being so narrow and so focused, are able to eventually become mainstream. Everyone sees the appeal and is as loyal as that initial group. You have to start with that narrow set. That narrow opportunity set does come from finding a white space in a larger TAM.

Everyone talks about the large TAM, but no one talks about the white space as much. I find the founders who are thinking about go-to-market and thinking about how to build repeatable motions on the go-to-market side know who those people are and where to find them. That’s the first bucket. It’s not just, “I know what this very unique niche group of customers looks like.” It’s also, “I know how to find them in a way no one else does. This is why they’re only going to come to me.” That creates defensible modes at scale because distribution is one thing that no one can steal from you once it’s done right.

Another lesson learned from Jeff Bezos is from selling books and nothing but books for a while.

It’s true. You hate to say, but exactly. He was very good at selling books. The second piece of that is in terms of advice to founders when it comes to, like, “What’s the momentum and the trends working in their favor?” The proof is in the pudding. You should be able to assess why you are building this business now and why building this business now outranks the possibility of success in 10 years, 20 years, etc. You should assess, “Why, if I invest now, I’m going to be able to generate outsized returns for my investors relative to ten years from now?” For founders, that should be the table stakes bare minimum.

Being able to speak to your background and your founder market fit is the most inevitable and important piece. Most founders are good at that. What most founders forget sometimes is that loyalty comes in lots of different flavors. A lot of times, people say, “This is my first time being a founder,” but they have a newsletter with 100,000 people. I’m like, “That counts for something.”

That’s not saying that’s a business. Perhaps it is. Perhaps they monetize that newsletter. I don’t know. To some degree, they still have loyal fans. That kind of leadership and thought leadership does typically translate into early customers, early people on the wait list, early pilots, or maybe even someone who becomes an advocate at a larger enterprise to get you guys in the door.

A lot of times, founders downplay what their unfair advantage is. I see lots of founders who have been creators, or maybe they’ve been on LinkedIn since day one. They have these very loyal fan bases. Maybe they’ve written a book, whatever it is. That creates an affinity group. Those affinity groups typically turn into early customers in one shape or form. Sometimes, they will even participate as an Angel investor. A lot of times, people downplay the unfair advantage piece. In terms of knowing the exits and recent M&A, most founders spend a lot of time trying to familiarize themselves with that. That’s an easy one, too.

Three Buckets On Ranking And Assessing Ecosystems

Let’s touch on geography. Much like you, I agree. I spent fifteen years in Silicon Valley. I started my career in New York and worked in all the big markets. I found great entrepreneurs at great valuations in the places that people don’t go to all the time. Touch on some of the markets that you’re intrigued by. Where are you looking geographically?

Something about us as a team is interesting and compelling. We did a ton of research on each ecosystem and ranked it on a myriad of factors. For us, the biggest piece is what is the existing talent pool? To some extent, that talent pool is usually largely influenced by what Fortune 500s are there and what large enterprises are there. That can contribute to spin-outs, founders who are trying to solve that exact problem they experienced as an operator or customer.

On the flip side of that, what is the actual gap in terms of the funding mechanisms in place? In SF, New York, and Boston, there’s no funding gap for founders. Being able to assess what this funding gap looks like on a very strategic level was a big piece in how we ranked each ecosystem. Talent is a huge piece of it, but also, there has to be the opportunity to course correct in terms of either capital there or capital that we can bring there. That’s the second big piece.

The third piece is we have what’s called a venture partner program. For us, we’re big on having boots on the ground in these ecosystems. Typically, that looks like a great example of someone who’s a super connector. Maybe they’re an operator. Maybe they’re working at the big, coolest startup in town. They do a lot of ecosystem building organically. They’re already hosting LP dinners or hosting Founder Happy Hours.

They’re already doing all these things, and it’s equipping them with the tool set and the resources of our fund to optimize and scale that up. Those three main buckets are how we rank and assess which ecosystem. The targets ended up being Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Texas, and then we’re talking about either Nevada or Arizona. A lot of that will come from who we find in terms of our boots on the ground in terms of a potential venture partner there.

Success Stories At Eleven Wall Ventures

As a resident of Florida, I heavily endorse Florida. That’s great. I appreciate that. You hear a couple of success stories to the extent you feel comfortable, either from your previous work in previous firms or what you’re doing now. Any names that you’re excited about? Everyone doesn’t want to point out one of their children, but maybe there’s a special child who has done well, is a great story, or is a great story to come.

I’ll give one example, but I won’t say the name of the company. This is a company that we invested in when I was at Cultivation. The founder is outside of SF, New York, and Boston. That company is super capital-efficient. Essentially, the initial check was about $2 million into the Series A, $500,000 into the Series B, and then they raised $175 million in a Series C in December. You can see the trajectory of the company. He sticks to growth, not in terms of valuation, but in terms of revenue and how they built a sizable and sustainable business.

What stood out to me about that success story is that the founder has always been super capital-efficient. Two, a lot of times, when people think about different industries, and this is an EdTech company, they always want to sell into the top end of the industry. Sometimes, the top end will mean the largest enterprises. Sometimes, if you can sell into the bottom-tier schools, community colleges, etc., that can be your niche that you own because everyone else is so focused on these top twenty schools. Specifically, this company sells into admissions offices. They’re able to carve out a sizable niche and also have a differentiated go-to-market.

That founder also had deep founder market fit in the sense that they had the lived experience of being in higher education, having built a consulting business to understand this problem firsthand, and working for those early customers. They converted those early customers to the tech solution and then built a sizable, successful business as well. I would say that’s the biggest success story. When I think about that timeline, that’s from 2021 to 2024, so that’s amazing.

How AI Plays Into The Operations Of Eleven Wall Ventures

You have a focus on investing in AI. That’s a big part of your thesis. How does AI play into the operations of running your firm?

It’s interesting. Many people say, “We use AI for sourcing.” I know a lot of people are talking about Boardy. I don’t know if you’ve ever done one of the Boardy calls. I feel like Boardy will always be trying to send me a deal flow. It’s a little annoying. For us, we don’t see AI as being a sourcing layer, but we see AI sometimes as you think of the role of an analyst in terms of helping with the early stages of diligence.

That being said, we have some tools that we use for that model out of the early stages of diligence, but this is all still under the premise and focus of our investor scorecard. Forcing AI to course rank relative to our needs and how we differentiate in terms of our diligence process is still top of mind. I do anticipate that at one point, we probably will look at some of those AI tools out there that can help scale up in terms of the future layer, which is portfolio monitoring. There are some solutions out there that we’ve started looking at, but we haven’t necessarily moved forward with anything yet.

Eleven Wall Ventures’ Fund And Investors

Let’s talk to potential investors tuning in. The reason why we launched this show is to honestly get recognition for the non-monolithic funds, the folks that are grinding it out and providing better returns, better focus, and more founder support. I’ll start with a leading question, and then we’ll dive into it. First of all, what’s the makeup of the fund? Who are your investors? We’ll then talk about who the potential investors might be.

For us, when we think about our ICP on the LP side, it’s typically family offices. I’ve heard people say that’s everyone’s ICP. What has been interesting for us is that we’ve also been getting a lot of interest from international folks, which is cool. It’s not just US-based family offices, but family offices internationally as well. I’d say Europe. We’ve seen some in Asia as well. Outside of that, it typically comes down to they’ll have almost like a next generation that’s managing their venture strategy. They’ve had some exposure to venture. They like venture, and they want to double down on venture.

What we find, and I’m sure most people on this show would agree, is that if someone spent their entire career making money in commercial real estate, they’re probably not your ICP for your early-stage venture fund. We don’t spend too much time with folks who have not done a venture. We like to spend time with folks who have passion, have existing exposure, and have someone who’s next-gen in seed who can be that internal advocate for us.

I saw somewhere online that said with the best LPs, you have two to three internal advocates. I was like, “That’s pretty cool.” With our ICP, we’ve been starting to see that. We may know the son. We may know the wife. How do we find that third internal advocate as well? These are still managed by the principals as opposed to going through the traditional consultant or OCIO route because what most emerging managers will say is that it can be an arduous process in itself.

Why Choose Eleven Wall Ventures Right Now

There are 3,200 venture capital funds at the end of 2025. The vast majority of the LP capital went to the top half of 1%. A very small portion of that. To those tuning in who are looking to be involved in venture and have invested in some of the more prominent names, why your fund, and why now?

The main piece that I always typically will say is, for us, it comes down to two buckets. When you’re assessing a manager, the biggest bucket should be the track record. It’s like, “What have we done? How does that track record inform our go-forward strategy?” Fortunately, for us, we have a phenomenal track record. We have all been institutional investors before.

It’s not as cool as some of the Angel investors spinning out of Anduril to launch a fund, but we’re pretty cool in the sense that we have the institutional investing experience that comes with that. The biggest piece of that is track record. We each had amazing institutional LPs in the past. Some of the big names amongst our team of previous LPs include HarbourVest, Canada Pension Plan, and Walmart, to name a few. Outside of that, when you think about track record, it’s also about what we have done in terms of accomplishments.

Sid, one of our general partners, his prior experience is he’s had an exit as a founder, same with Seth, who has had an exit as a founder, both in this vertical AI space. Seth is the prototype of the type of founders we like to back. His background was investment banking, but specifically on the HR side of the house at a large corporation. As a consequence of that, he was on their investment committee, trying to figure out which HR tools they could implement into that organization, as well as potentially invest in through their venture arm. He spun out. He launched his own HR company, specifically leveraging AI, and had an exit in that space.

Typically, the founders we like to back have that decade of experience deep in the industry, ideally at a large corporation. They have those early customers and early advocates, and then that typically does get them to that earlier exit. Sid’s background is very similar in terms of an exited founder in the vertical AI space. My background is that I’ve been investing in vertical AI since around 2020. I’m fortunate to have some great markups and great exits in this space.

In terms of the second bucket, obviously, it’s what we’ve done, but also where we’re going and what we’re building. In terms of our vision and our mission, it’s to do venture differently. That lands with a lot of people. A lot of people have felt historically left out of venture because they’re not in SF, New York, or Boston. Sid is a great example. He moved from Toronto to SF to be a founder because at the time, it felt like that was what you had to do.

We exist now so that founders don’t have to make that same paradox of choice. Instead, they can stay where they are, stay close to customers, and stay close to those early advocates. Studies also show that when these early-stage companies are specifically closer to these corporate and strategic partners, it typically results in a 3X to 4X increase in the valuation multiple at exit. It is great when they do stay. We want more founders to have that same trajectory.

That’s our mission, our vision, and our values as it relates back to how we want to see venture differently. Our main differentiation is the geography, and that we’re so focused on vertical AI and the application layer. There are a ton of people who are still so focused on horizontal tools or AI infrastructure. Our niche of geography and also vertical-specific application-layered companies makes us pretty differentiated.

What’s In Store For The Venture Space In 2026

Any final thoughts you want to share with our audience?

In terms of final thoughts, I’d say probably two things. One, I think there’s so much optimism as we all are heading into 2026, specifically around what’s next in venture. We’ve seen historically slow deployment years. As a result of that, it feels like, for lack of a better word, almost an emotional drain on all parties involved. It feels slow for the LPs and the GPs. It feels like we’re wading in the water, for lack of a better word.

2026 is going to be different in the sense that people have dry powder on the LP side and the GP side. The one thing that we’ve seen is that we still have to allocate, and we still have to move. Even as we’re navigating this slower climate, there are still great companies being built. The pace of adoption on the enterprise side for these vertical-specific tools is what grounds us and makes us excited.

A lot of people think back to enterprise SaaS, and they’ll compare AI to SaaS. The main piece that people are starting to acknowledge and adopt is that AI tooling has already outpaced SaaS in terms of the growth and adoption curve. It’s a quicker timeframe for those businesses to grow in terms of sales and revenue. We’re seeing something that’s completely different, and it is a reason for optimism in what’s been historically a slow year back to back.

Get In Touch With Alana And Eleven Wall Ventures

I love the optimism. Where can people learn more about Eleven Wall and how they can contact you?

You can hold me to this, but going forward, I’m going to try to post once a day on LinkedIn, so find me on LinkedIn. From there, I am always happy to chat with folks either through LinkedIn or email. My email is on my LinkedIn. I try to pride myself on being one of the more accessible people in venture. Historically, it used to be that you needed a warm intro to talk to a VC. I’m pretty anti-warm intros, so find me online. I’m chronically online most of the time on either LinkedIn or TikTok. Let’s chat more.

For all of the readers, I encourage you to like, follow, comment, and share this great interview. Alana, thanks again for being on the show.

Thanks so much.

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Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words

Welcome back. When I was speaking to Alana from Eleven Wall Ventures, we got to understand a little about her fund’s focus and the thesis that is squarely focused on investing in vertical AI companies at the seed stage, concentrating on the application layer and how AI is applying itself to legacy and traditional industries. She has a non-traditional geographic focus. She intentionally invests outside of San Francisco, Boston, and New York, targeting areas like Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Texas, and the Southwest, where the valuation can be more attractive.

The fund seeks to de-reference itself through that geography by targeting founders that can achieve a 2X to 3X increase on the valuation exit by staying close to corporates and strategic partners. From a funder standpoint, she wants founders who are in a niche that has that white space opportunity in the market. These founders need to have an unfair advantage, which includes thought leadership, a loyal fan base, a newsletter with many subscribers, or an affinity group that can translate to early customers or Angel investors. She encourages founders not to shy away from those non-revenue income-based traction items because they can provide an unfair advantage.

At the end of the day, she wants founders to explain why now. I think she has an interesting perspective. I spent decades in Silicon Valley, but I found great opportunities in these hidden markets, the markets that are between the coasts. Alana and the Eleven Wall have taken advantage of that. I encourage you to read this episode, like, comment, follow, and share. Make sure you come back next time for another episode. I’ll see you next time.

Important Links

• Eleven Wall Ventures
• Alana Mann on LinkedIn
• Alana Mann on TikTok