Streetlife Ventures

Investment decisions are led by co-founders and Managing Directors Sonam Velani and Laura Fox. Velani draws on experience financing more than $10 billion in infrastructure at Goldman Sachs and developing New York City's $15 billion Green New Deal. Fox's operating background includes scaling Citi Bike into a $120M ARR business at Lyft, and she currently teaches strategy to MBAs at NYU Stern.

The firm's primary proprietary sourcing channel is Climate Tech Cities, a community platform founded by Velani that aggregates climate tech events, publishes weekly newsletters, and hosts site visits to infrastructure projects. The network connects the firm to founders emerging from municipal pilots, public-sector research consortia, and university climate labs across North America and Europe.

Streetlife targets companies with at least a beta-stage product and a minimum of two completed pilots, most often selling into B2B urban infrastructure buyers. The firm does not back concept-stage or science-project teams; they require operational evidence that a startup can engage municipal or utility procurement cycles.

The firm commits to five urban climate sectors: mobility and logistics, buildings, water and waste, energy, and climate adaptation. Portfolio companies include a rail-freight optimization platform, thermal battery hardware, insurance MGA focused on fortified roofs, and hybrid super-capacitor technology for grid balancing.

The co-founders describe their investment style as hands-on and knee-deep, working side-by-side with founders to navigate municipal policy and operational complexity. Whether they lead financings or consistently claim board seats is not publicly stated, but the operating support model suggests active post-investment involvement.

Both managing directors worked in government before co-founding the firm — Velani at the NYC Mayor's Office and World Bank, Fox at Bloomberg Philanthropies — and Fox currently sits on the board of Governors Island, New York City's climate innovation test-bed. This dual public-private literacy shapes their ability to underwrite companies that need to navigate building codes, utility tariffs, and urban procurement.

Streetlife Ventures is an asset manager structured as a private equity firm, not a family office. It runs a sector-focused venture strategy across multiple portfolio companies rather than managing a single-family balance sheet.