Pre-seed · Seed venture capital

Strom Ventures backs founders building agentic AI for the industries we've worked inside: law, construction, and transportation.

We invest in the workflows that still run on paper, fax, and gut instinct.

01 · Thesis

What we look for.

Our primary focus is agentic AI applied to legal, construction, and transportation. We've operated inside these industries; we know where the friction is, and we know what real adoption looks like.

We also invest in software and AI tools for other underserved or outdated industries. Anywhere founders are bringing real change to workflows that have been ignored.

And we keep an open door for exceptional founders in any space. The best founders sometimes come out of places no one predicted.

Stage Pre-seed, Seed
Check size $25K – $250K
Geography United States
Decision 5 business days · 2 meetings max
02 · Team

The team.

Pete Strom headshot
Partner · Founder

Pete Strom

Pete Strom has spent four decades practicing law in South Carolina, where he built a firm by being early to almost everything, from case management software to digital marketing to AI-assisted research, usually years before the rest of the bar caught up. That habit gave him a permanent edge in a slow-moving industry, and a permanent suspicion that most industries are like law: full of brilliant operators using tools that are a generation behind.

Pete served on the board of the USC/Columbia Technology Incubator, which connected him to dozens of early founders trying to solve real problems in regulated, traditional markets. He's been an active angel investor in startups he believes in, and Strom Ventures is the natural next step: more capital, more focus, and a partner, Preston, who can carry the technical conversation as far as it needs to go.

What Pete brings to a portfolio founder is hard to find anywhere else: four decades of pattern recognition on how regulated industries actually buy, hire, and adopt new tools; a working knowledge of the legal and regulatory questions early-stage companies trip over; and a network across the Southeast that most coastal VCs don't have.

Preston Holt headshot
Partner

Preston Holt

Preston Holt is a civil engineer turned software developer who spent his first two years out of school designing roads, then joined a mid-size construction company in the Southeast that installs fence and guardrail. When he walked in the door, the bidding process was on printed paper, project updates moved by fax and mail, and the lucky workflows lived in Excel. He'd been teaching himself to program since age 13, and he saw what to do.

Instead of buying off-the-shelf software and forcing everyone to adapt to it, Preston sat with one person at a time: estimators, project managers, field crews. He watched how they actually worked and built custom software tailored to each role. The result was tools people actually enjoyed using, which meant they actually got used. Over a few years he digitized every workflow in the company: bidding, estimating, project management, field logistics. More recently, he's layered AI agents on top of that foundation, like agents that handle bid-takeoff directly from PDFs, or reasoning about complex scheduling requirements, and watched the leverage compound.

What Preston brings to a portfolio founder is the rare combination of an engineer's discipline, a programmer's instincts, and boots-on-the-ground experience deploying AI into a business that didn't ask for it and didn't know what it wanted until they saw it working. He's a founder's natural sparring partner on product, technical architecture, and the question every operator-focused startup eventually faces: how do you get a skeptical industry to actually adopt the thing you built?

03 · Beyond the check

What we offer.

i

Domain feedback

Pete on legal and regulated industries. Preston on construction, software architecture, and AI deployment in operational businesses. We've worked inside these markets. We won't waste your time with surface-level reactions.

ii

Legal & regulatory perspective

Pete will help you think through the legal questions early-stage companies trip over, and tell you honestly when you need real counsel rather than a friend's perspective.

iii

Idea-stage brainstorming

Sometimes the most useful thing an investor can do is sit with you for an hour and pressure-test the next move. We do this.

iv

A network in the Southeast & inside our verticals

Smaller and more specific than what a coastal VC would offer. But if you're trying to land your first GC, your first construction GM, or your first fleet operator as a customer, we probably know someone.

04 · Process

What to expect.

Send us your deck. We read every email. You'll hear back within five business days, even if it's a no.

If we're interested, two meetings is usually enough to decide. If we're in, we wire the same week.

Step 01

Email your deck

No form. No portal. No referral required.

Step 02

Response in 5 days

Yes or no. Either way, you hear back.

Step 03

Two meetings, max

Founder + product, then a follow-up. Usually enough.

Step 04

Wired same week

No committee. No politics. No theatre.

No ghosting No NDA No waiting on a lead No committee No politics No theatre
05 · Contact

Send us your deck.

hello@stromventures.vc

We read every email. Five business days, even if it's a no.