Jade Lockard

I run SeedSprout, a boutique investor relations advisory I founded in 2023 to help venture-backed founders and VC firms turn warm networks into closed capital. Over the past five years I've worked with more than 150 early-stage founders and supported over $50M in capital raised across venture and philanthropic vehicles. Along the way I've managed a $90M fundraising pipeline across two debut funds, built programming that reached over 700 founders, and architected the launch of the country's largest HBCU-focused founder network. My background sits at the operational end of venture, LP pipelines, platform strategy, pre-accelerator design, investor relations, which means I tend to be useful when the question is less "what's our story" and more "who exactly do we call, in what order, and what do we send them." I work most often with emerging managers raising debut funds, founders outside the usual geographies, and institutions building capital-access infrastructure, organizations like Spelman College, UNCF, and Campground Systems, where I've advised on go-to-market, capital access, and ecosystem development. I also sit on the BTC Catalyst Fund advisory board at BlackTech Capital and am a 2026 NAIC Women in Alternatives UP Fellow. I speak internationally on equity in tech and startup ecosystems, and I'm a proud Spelman alumna. If you're mapping an LP list, building a fundraising process from scratch, or trying to figure out why warm intros aren't converting, that's the conversation I'm best at.