Kat Orekhova

Kat works at the intersection of entrepreneurship, systems design, and principled leadership. As founder of an AI-native financial modeling startup and general partner in an early-stage venture fund, she brings a rare fluency across finance, data, and product. Her career began at Facebook, where she studied how communities scale, providing insights that continue to inform her approach to building lean, high-trust teams.

Guided by first-principles thinking, she has moved beyond conventional startup practices to prioritize clarity, autonomy, and long-term alignment. She hopes to apply this thinking to a future “founder gym”—an intensive model for cultivating entrepreneurial talent through coaching, collaboration, and patient iteration.

Her leadership style integrates intellectual rigor with emotional intelligence. A former academic and immigrant raised with little, she learned early to navigate systems independently. Now, she applies those lessons at home in Boulder, where she and her husband raise three children. Their family life is shaped by responsiveness over routine, particularly in adapting to each child’s unique temperament and abandoning one-size-fits-all ideals.

Whether in startups, parenting, or partnerships, Kat values presence, feedback, and self-awareness. She runs mountain trails, practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu with her kids, and builds toward a future where execution and empathy reinforce one another.