By: Vicki Zhou and Kristin Tomasik, General Partners of FundNV
Las Vegas is known for a lot of things. But building technology and startups?
Short answer: yes.
Las Vegas has always been a city of builders. In a world where most cities evolve gradually, Las Vegas transforms itself constantly. It’s like watching an evolution on fast-forward.
What’s fascinating isn’t just what Las Vegas builds—like a 366-foot-high glowing sphere for immersive experiences or a new guitar shaped hotel/casino on the Las Vegas Strip —but how it builds.
Las Vegas doesn’t wait for permission. It sees an empty desert and thinks “you know what we could build here? Something incredible.”
This builder mentality is now creating something unexpected: a quiet but powerful tech movement. And before you think “Oh, another Silicon Valley” piece, let me tell you why this one’s different.
If you followed the last decade of tech headlines, you might think Las Vegas tech innovation started with Tony Hsieh bringing Zappos here. But the real story can be traced back to 1978 when CES first came to town. That year, Atari showed off their 8-bit computers, and a young Bill Gates made his first appearance. Las Vegas was already embracing tech before tech was cool —we just had better lighting.
The past decade is when things got interesting. While other cities were being talked about, Las Vegas was busy building and investing. The Vegas Tech Fund, part of Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project, invested $50 million into tech startups. Battle Born Venture, the state of Nevada’s venture capital program, began to invest in high potential Nevada startups. And successful entrepreneurs founded StartUpNV to create a comprehensive startup ecosystem in Nevada with education, mentorship, community, and capital.
It Takes a Village
Any successful entrepreneur knows that building technology and companies is really hard – it takes a village. It takes a community of people who’ve done it before (and are excited to do it again), who can help and mentor others, who can introduce founders to the right people, who can write checks to help companies scale. Silicon Valley didn’t become Silicon Valley because of good weather (though it helps) or tax policies (though they matter). It became Silicon Valley because of the ecosystem.
That’s what’s happening in Las Vegas right now. FundNV, an early-stage venture fund, raised $1 million and invested in 20 Nevada companies between 2021-2024, all matched by Nevada’s State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI). Now we’re raising $2 million for the second round of FundNV investments that will support another 20 Nevada companies in the next 24-36 months. That money will again be matched by SSBCI funds, so that’s actually $4 million in startup fuel.
And we are ahead of schedule in meeting our $2 million goal thanks to the groundbreaking intrastate Nevada Certified Investors (NCI) law. Investing in startups was previously limited to a small group of Nevadans. Now with the NCI law, about one-third of Nevadans can qualify to evaluate and invest in private companies at lower minimum investment levels. NCI is democratizing access to the startup economy.
And it’s working. The money FundNV is raising is going straight into companies like BuildQ, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform simplifying the development, financing, and sale of large-scale infrastructure projects. BuildQ was the first investment from the second round of FundNV because of its incredible potential to leverage AI in solving America’s unprecedented energy needs.
Community Supporting Community
As former founders and operators, we are proud of how we support the companies we invest in. As BuildQ’s CEO Maryssa Barron described, “FundNV has offered us so much more than capital. The leaders of FundNV are true partners, offering feedback, advice, and support based on their own startup experiences, which we find just as valuable.”
As natives who’ve spent a better part of the last decade building and selling a fintech company here, we’ve watched Las Vegas evolve from “a world-class entertainment destination” to “a world-class innovation epicenter.” The next decade won’t be just about building the most amazing hotels or brightest lights. It’ll be about building the future.
The beauty of Las Vegas has always been that it’s a place where anyone can make it. You don’t need the right accent, the right degree, or the right connections. You just need to be willing to build. And now, with FundNV and the new NCI law, even more people can be a part of building that future.
Want to be part of building what’s next? Whether you’re looking to invest or you’re building something of your own, visit FundNV.com. Because what happens in Vegas… might just be the future.
Written by Vicki Zhou and Kristin Tomasik, who went from being Las Vegas natives to startup founders and operators to fund managers alongside Jeff Saling, executive director of StartUpNV, and still can’t believe they get to help build the future of their hometown.
