Martina Welkhoff

Cofounder & Managing Partner, WXR Fund

Seattle

Martina is the Co-founder and Managing Partner at the WXR Fund, an early-stage venture fund investing in women-led spatial computing (AR/VR/AI) companies. Prior to launching the fund, WXR hosted an accelerator from which 26 companies have graduated.

Before shifting her full time focus to investing, Martina was an entrepreneur who founded her first company, Zealyst, in 2010. Zealyst was a corporate gaming platform that strategically helped employees to build their professional network and in turn collected data for their employer on culture, morale, and engagement. After 6 years of building Zealyst, Martina founded a virtual reality company called ConveneVR that was focused on pushing the boundaries of social VR. She was inspired to transition into the VR industry after recognizing the unique opportunity the creation of a new computing platform provided for women and underrepresented minorities.

Martina is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper, a member of the Young Entrepreneurs Council, and an advisor to the Center for Leadership & Strategic Thinking at the Foster School of Business. From 2013-2017, she served as the board president of Seattle Women in Tech before transitioning the nonprofit to a for-profit company that is scaling the model globally. In 2018, Martina won a Lumiere Award for Distinguished Leadership from the Advanced Imaging Society. She received a BA in English with a minor in Chemistry from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.