Laura Fingal-surma
Supercharging urbanist moonshots at Urbanist Ventures
United States
Overview
Work Experience
Founder
2021 - Current
Urbanist Ventures is on a mission to scale urbanism through startups. Follow along or get involved! → https://urbanist.vc Portfolio highlights: Swyft Cities – Unlocking urban growth with modular mass transit (spun out of Google) Stealth – Industrializing American homebuilding Symbium – Instant permits as starting point for computational law (developed at Stanford's AI Lab) LiveNearFriends – Marketplace for living near friends and family (founded by Culdesac cofounder) Treasury – Getty Images for premium digital environments (cofounded with Zaha Hadid Architects) Deepwalk – Automated ADA sidewalk inspection Pacaso – Carpooling for second homes (cofounded by Zillow cofounder) Beltways – Modular, accelerating moving walkways with last mile transit ambitions Blissway – Next gen tolling infrastructure with congestion pricing applications Earthgrid – Plasma drilling tunnels to underground utilities 100x faster and 95% cheaper Want to talk urbanist startups? Async me at https://async.com/laura Open to interesting and impactful advising and fractional cofounder opportunities. LP: Unpopular Ventures, First Check Ventures
Founding Strategy Partner
2022
Swyft Cities is unlocking urban growth with inexpensive modular transit developed at Google.
Transportation System
Scout
2023
Hustle Fund is a venture capital fund that invests in fast-executing teams at the pre-seed and seed stages. TechCrunch dubbed Hustle Fund's Angel Squad "the YC of angel investing." Great founders can look like anyone. - Bring deals within my area of expertise (future of cities, built environment, proptech) to Hustle Fund and its Angel Squad - Among less than 1% of 2000+ Angel Squad members to successfully level up to Scout in first four years of Angel Squad - Selected to judge startup pitches at multiple in-person Hustle Fund events "You are the epitome of 'hustle,' Laura." — founder advisee
Angel Squad Member
2022
Hustle Fund co-investments: Flex, daydream, MedTruly, Charter Space, Phaseshift Technologies, Fortify, Parker, Daily Blends, Vinovest, GroWrk Remote Angel Squad co-investments: Roofer, Trilobio, Falcon, Pressed Roots
Executive Board Member / Treasurer
2023
The Parking Reform Network educates the public about the impact of parking policy on climate change, equity, housing, and traffic. - Advised Executive Director on growth strategy that 10xed nonprofit operating budget in 2 years
Parking Reform Network educates the public about the impact of parking policy on climate change, equity, housing, and traffic.
Committee Member, Stanford Student Impact Fund
2025
SPIRE empowers the Stanford community to innovate within real estate, place making, and the built environment. The Stanford Student Impact Fund supports undergraduate and graduate students pursuing an interest in real estate or the broader built environment.
Emerging Leader, Stanford Alumni Real Estate Council
2023
- Nominated to the inaugural cohort of Emerging Leaders of the Stanford Alumni Real Estate Council
Advisor
2024
Treasury is Getty Images for premium digital environments.
Treasury develops a curated platform that allows metaverse builders to connect directly with architects, designers, and other creators.
Investor
2022
Pacaso is carpooling for second homes. Category-defining global leader in co-ownership. Enriching lives and better utilizing resources.
Founding Owner
2020
- Early adopter and 12th customer of startup that was fastest to unicorn at the time as reported by TechCrunch
Pacaso is a proptech company that modernizes the generations-old practice of co-owning a second home.
Raised $1,467,000,000.00 from Global Founders Capital, Inertia Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Russell Cook, Ryan Croft, Fifth Wall, SoftBank Vision Fund, Crosscut Ventures, Flucas Ventures and Jason Johnson.
Angel Investor
2021
Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs seeks to strengthen Stanford’s startup community by fostering relationships among entrepreneurs and alumni investors.
Angel Fellow (ODA7)
2022 - 2023
On Deck is where top talent comes to accelerate their ideas and build companies, surrounded by a world-class community. - Selected for highly competitive fellowship - Selected for Mastermind leadership
Cofounder & Chief Operating Officer, YIMBY 501(c)(3)
2019 - 2021
YIMBY stands for Yes In My Back Yard, a social and political movement fighting to increase the supply of housing and dense, vibrant, walkable communities. YIMBY popularized the seemingly obvious, but at the time controversial, idea of achieving housing affordability primarily through abundance. The movement's influence extends beyond housing policy to urban planning, transportation, environmental sustainability, and social equity. YIMBY Action, a pioneering 501c4 political nonprofit, was the public-facing brand of the national YIMBY movement — fighting for abundant, affordable housing through organizing, advocacy, and elections. Yes In My Back Yard (YIMBY) was the traditional 501c3 nonprofit arm of the national YIMBY movement — making housing more accessible and affordable by upholding housing law, training housing advocates, mobilizing supporters of new housing, and proposing improvements to housing law.
Chief Financial Officer, YIMBY 501(c)(3)
2019 - 2021
President & Chief Operating Officer
2018 - 2021
- Led and rebuilt organization out of sophomore slump, from 1 to 15 employees and edge of insolvency to sustainable $2M+ annual budget across related entities - Championed brand-aligned affiliated entities/M&A strategy to consolidate and scale; cofounded affiliated traditional 501c3 nonprofit in 2019 - Strategically productized learnings and competitive technological advantage into chapter infrastructure enabling new and existing YIMBY groups to level up rapidly - Innovated and iterated to achieve product/market fit and unlock organic national growth - Scaled from one city to 20+ chapters across 7+ states and got flywheel turning with dozens of inbound inquiries about starting or becoming a chapter in final two quarters from 10+ additional states (cadence of 1/week) - Built marketing & digital team capable of organically generating 2M unique impressions in 24 hours - Continuously leveraged technology and optimized organizational structure, management, operations, branding, messaging, and marketing to maximize impact and efficiency - Led orgs through complex strategy, fundraising, conversion, data, and compliance challenges "Laura has been one of the best managers I have ever had. She has empowered me to be innovative, bold, and creative. I have felt safe to speak my mind, experiment, and be vulnerable. She has been one of the biggest reasons why I enjoy working at YIMBY Action." — direct report "If [Laura] offered me a job building nuclear bombs, I would 100% take it." — employee
Founding Board Member
2017 - 2021
YIMBY Action officially incorporated starting in 2017. - Persistently and creatively advocated for building more housing of all kinds - Strategically built the people, narrative, and coalition power to flip unlikely politicians and score legislative wins - Brought increasing structure, order, strategy, and professionalism to grassroots YIMBY movement, its organizations, and the board
Chapter Lead, San Francisco YIMBY
2016 - 2020
SF YIMBY advocated for abundant, affordable housing in San Francisco and became the first chapter of YIMBY Action. - Envisioned and cultivated network of grassroots neighborhood YIMBY groups inspired by Progress Noe Valley - Meticulously documented best practices, iterated, innovated, and productized learnings into what ultimately became chapter infrastructure ("YIMBY in a box") for YIMBY Action chapters
Board Chair
2018 - 2019
- First Board Chair
Founder, Progress Noe Valley
2015 - 2019
Progress Noe Valley was San Francisco's first YIMBY neighborhood group and inspired subsequent development of centralized infrastructure to power YIMBY chapters nationwide. - Organically recruited first 500+ Noe Valley neighbors and advocated for abundant housing and transit on their behalf, countering the prevailing NIMBY (anti-housing, anti-growth) narrative - Earned press coverage from Curbed, Streetsblog, Noe Valley Voice, SPUR, Bay Area Metropolitan Observer - Helped form San Francisco YIMBY and ultimately parent org YIMBY Action to fuel and scale similar pro-housing groups nationwide - Progress Noe Valley became a chapter of YIMBY Action, with a mailing list of 3500+ neighbors as of September 2021 (10% paying recurring membership dues) and successfully lobbying an unlikely local elected official to champion fourplex legislation to begin to dismantle decades of apartment bans that drove up the cost of housing
Chief Financial Officer
2017 - 2018
Advisor & Contributor, various predecessor efforts and campaigns
2015 - 2016
- Supported re-election of then-San Francisco Supervisor and now famed housing legislator Scott Wiener, who had emerged as a voice of reason on housing - Advocated for consolidating, strengthening, and formalizing fragmented pro-housing efforts under a clear and unified brand — YIMBY, which stands for Yes In My Back Yard (the opposite of NIMBY for Not In My Back Yard) - Coauthored first YIMBY platform (now memorialized here: https://www.sfyimby.org/our-platform/) - Helped ignite and name/define a movement
YIMBY Action is a network of pro-housing activists fighting for more inclusive housing policies.