Our Investment Thesis
Woodard Investments backs founders from Pre-Seed to Series A across AI, Healthcare, and Defense. We invest $50K–$250K with fast, structured diligence and clear decisions.
Who we are: Operators and investors with practical experience across software, healthcare, and dual-use technologies. We combine early-stage investing judgment with hands-on operating perspective and a clear, founder-aligned decision process.
How we invest: Concentrated, thesis-led, and high-signal. We run a structured diligence process, move quickly, and communicate directly. When we invest, we bring operating perspective, pattern recognition, and thoughtful follow-on planning—stepping in where our experience adds value and stepping back where founders don't need us.
What We Look For
High-Value Problems
Clear, well-scoped problems with measurable value to customers.
Founder Insight
Earned domain understanding and clear articulation of the problem, workflow, and wedge.
Early Proof Points
Evidence of customer pull — workflow embed, paid pilots, LOIs, retention, or early validation.
Defensibility
Proprietary data, workflow lock-in, regulatory advantage, or a technical edge that compounds over time.
Where We Invest
Vertical applied-AI (Primary Focus)
AI applications embedded into real workflows with clear value and defensible advantages.
Enabling AI Infrastructure (Selective)
Infrastructure with strong developer or enterprise pull—supporting inference, evaluation, or workflow automation.
Healthcare Innovation
Technologies improving clinical outcomes, efficiency, or diagnostics, ideally with early validation.
Defense & National Security
Dual-use technologies with credible defense entry points—ISR, sensing, autonomy, or secure communications.
Not a Fit
To respect founders' time, we've outlined areas that typically don't align with our thesis or stage focus:
- •Products easily replicable without defensibility ("me-too" wrappers)
- •Unclear data rights or reliance on brittle supply/licensing
- •Markets too small to scale to venture outcomes
- •Teams without a technical lead or execution ownership
- •Rounds misaligned with stage risk (valuation or use-of-proceeds)
- •Consumer social or lifestyle products without a clear AI-driven workflow or defensible advantage
- •Hard tech without clear near-term commercial validation path
Building something meaningful?
We invest from Pre-Seed to Series A. Share your deck and we'll respond quickly with a clear answer.