Formation

Formation Research

Investment Thesis

Formation is an early-stage venture capital firm co-founded by Solly Garber and Leeor Mushin, headquartered in New York with presence in San Francisco and Miami. The firm's name reflects its core conviction: the "Formation Stage" is the most important and most overlooked moment in a startup's lifecycle — when a founder is still discovering the idea, building the team, and forming fundamental convictions about the business.

Solly Garber has written about this directly: at the Formation Stage, founders are often "still at their respective employers, or have recently left" and are refining ideas that "could use some refining and connectivity for validation." Formation wants to be there first — not just another check coming into a competitive round, but a true partner who spends weeks to months building authentic relationships before making a commitment.

The firm explicitly rejects the "financialization of the early stage" — a trend they see as misaligning VC incentives from founder outcomes. They position themselves as long-term partners on a "10+ year journey" with each founder, prioritizing relationship quality over deal velocity. This philosophy is rare at the earliest stages and gives them a genuine differentiated identity with founders.

Stage Focus and Check Size

Formation focuses exclusively on pre-seed and seed investments. Their check size ranges from approximately $250,000 to $2,000,000, with the ability to write smaller checks at the very earliest formation stage. They typically lead or co-lead at pre-seed and participate alongside other funds at seed. Both GPs bring strong institutional credentials, allowing them to set terms and lead rounds when appropriate.

Team

Solly Garber — Co-Founder & General Partner

Solly brings a distinctive and non-traditional VC background: he spent years in talent identification at Sony Music and Tribeca Films before moving into venture. He later launched Strada, transforming a single-family office into a seed-stage investing force — which honed his ability to evaluate founders early and build portfolio-wide support systems. His early checks into Headway (mental health platform, now $2.3B valuation), Nourish (nutrition platform, $1B+ valuation), Traba (labor marketplace), Krea (AI creative tools, $500M valuation), and Assured demonstrate a sustained track record of identifying breakout companies at their earliest stages, well before other institutional investors.

Solly is based in New York and is the primary point of contact for the firm's east coast deal flow.

Leeor Mushin — Co-Founder & General Partner

Leeor brings institutional venture experience from Floodgate, one of Silicon Valley's most respected seed funds, where he was a Principal and the first person ever promoted internally at the firm. At Floodgate, he contributed to investments in companies including Twitter, Lyft, Okta, and Twitch. Before Floodgate, while at Stanford GSB, he created the 20|20 Fund — the first student-run VC fund of its kind at Stanford, which has since been replicated by each subsequent class and was written up by TechCrunch and Business Insider. This deep experience in seed-stage pattern recognition and institutional venture practices complements Solly's talent-identification and relationship-building strengths.

Leeor joined Floodgate in June 2020 and left in September 2023 to co-found Formation.

Portfolio Highlights

Formation has built a remarkably strong early portfolio, with several companies already reaching unicorn status:

Breakout Portfolio Companies:

• Headway (headway.co) — The leading mental health platform enabling therapists to accept insurance. Raised $125M Series C at a $1B valuation (Oct 2023) and $100M Series D at $2.3B valuation (Jul 2024). Formation made one of the earliest checks when Headway was still pre-seed.
• Nourish (nourish.com) — Insurance-covered virtual nutrition counseling connecting patients with registered dietitians. Reached $1B+ valuation with $100M Series C (May 2026). Formation was an early seed backer.
• Krea (krea.ai) — AI creative suite for images, video, and 3D generation aimed at non-technical creators. Raised $47M Series B at $500M valuation (Apr 2025). Formation made a pre-seed check.
• Traba (traba.work) — Labor marketplace connecting light industrial businesses with temporary workers. Raised $22M from Founders Fund as Fund VIII's first investment (Oct 2023). Formation was a pre-seed backer.
• Happy Returns — Retail returns management platform. Acquired by PayPal. Formation invested at post-seed.
• Hero — Prescription management app. Acquired by Klarna. Formation invested at seed.

Active Portfolio (Selected):

• Airvet (airvet.com) — Veterinary telehealth and pet care platform. Seed.
• Brighthire (brighthire.com) — AI-powered structured interview platform for talent acquisition. Seed.
• Impart Security — Application security and runtime protection platform. Pre-seed.
• Accrue — Merchant-embedded savings and deferred purchase platform. Seed.
• IYK (iyk.app) — NFC-enabled digital ownership and product authentication platform. Pre-seed.
• Good Dog (gooddog.com) — Responsible dog adoption and breeder marketplace. Formation backed at late stage.
• Seam — Enterprise productivity and data integration platform. Pre-seed.
• Withco — Commercial real estate ownership platform for small businesses. Pre-seed.
• REEF — Tech-enabled parking and urban logistics infrastructure. Series A.
• Olympix — Blockchain smart contract security scanning. Pre-seed.
• Lula — Insurance platform for fleet operators. Post-seed.
• Burnt (getburnt.ai) — AI agents automating food supply chain workflows (ERP automation). Seed, YC S25. September 2025.
• Assured — Insurance technology platform. Pre-seed.
• Oboe — Pre-seed.
• Raeden — Luxury fashion platform. Seed.
• Branded — Restaurant brand and kitchen operations. Seed.

Recent Activity

Formation remained active through 2024-2026, with several notable portfolio milestones:

• September 2025: Participated in Burnt's $3.8M seed round (led by Penny Jar Capital) to build AI agents for food supply chain automation. Solly noted that food distribution is "a $300 billion industry running on legacy systems."
• April 2025: Portfolio company Krea raised $47M Series B at $500M valuation — representing a major win for the firm's pre-seed bet on AI creative tools.
• July 2024: Portfolio company Headway raised $100M Series D at $2.3B valuation, more than doubling its previous valuation.
• May 2026: Portfolio company Nourish raised $100M Series C at $1B+ valuation for its insurance-covered nutrition counseling platform.

Geographic Focus

Formation operates primarily in the United States, with deal sourcing concentrated in New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Miami. Solly is based in New York; the firm has presence in all three cities.

Investment Decision Process

As a two-GP partnership, Formation makes investment decisions collaboratively between Solly Garber and Leeor Mushin. Their approach emphasizes spending significant pre-investment time with founders — often weeks to months — building genuine relationships before committing capital. This intentional pace is core to their formation-stage thesis. They move quickly once conviction is formed.

Founder Preferences

Formation particularly values founders with deep domain expertise and earned insights, rather than trend-chasers. They have shown consistent interest in:

• Founders solving real market inefficiencies (healthcare access, labor markets, supply chains)
• Technical co-founders with strong product instincts
• Diverse founders across gender and background
• Founders willing to build long-term relationships with their investors

They explicitly avoid founders motivated by VC trends or the financialization of startup culture.