Welcome Gregory Raiz, Co-Founder & General Partner at FoundersEdge on this episode of 🔥The Lantern 🔥
FoundersEdge is a Boston-based pre-seed venture fund built by exited founders, investing in early-stage teams using AI to disrupt traditional industries.
🔍 What is FoundersEdge actually building? 🔎
Greg and his partner Jess Lynch are running a data-first pre-seed fund with a data driven, hands on approach.
They’re scraping signals from across the venture ecosystem to make sharper investment decisions, then turning that same data back into operating insights for the founders they back.
They think there’s a lot of noise in early-stage investing and give founders a real, data-driven edge on Go-To-Market, ICP, and growth.
💡 What kind of Founder is FoundersEdge backing in 2026? 💡
The pattern Greg keeps coming back to: founders with deep operating experience in a target market, often a “boring” one, who are now using AI to disrupt it.
FoundersEdge has the data to show that founders who understand their market best consistently outperform. Domain expertise plus AI-native thinking is the wedge they’re looking for right now.
🤔 What’s it like building a venture fund as a former founder? 🤔
Starting a fund is essentially Founder mode all over again.
Greg has been re-examining everything from first principles. Define your core values, your thesis, your ICP, and your unfair advantage for sourcing and winning deals.
Just like a startup, the best venture funds find their differentiation early and lean into it from day one.
🤝 How can we help FoundersEdge? 🤝
It’s all about Founders helping Founders.
Greg and Jess are building community across Boston & New England, NYC, and SF at dinners & their event series Ditch the Deck.
If you’re a founder, the ask is to lean in: try other founders’ products, give honest feedback, share what you’ve learned.
Go check them out, and give Greg a follow on TikTok while you’re at it!
The Lantern is brought to you by MGMT Boston, Rise73 & Invest Northern Ireland – Americas this month