She Built Thousands of Homes. Now She's Funding Millions More. | Alexandria Lafci
What does housing instability do to a child? To a family? To a community? Alexandria Lafci knows firsthand — and she's spent her entire career trying to answer those questions through action.
Alexandria is the Managing Partner of Home Team Ventures, an early-stage venture fund investing in construction technology. Before Home Team, she co-founded New Story, a nonprofit that built thousands of homes across Haiti, El Salvador, Mexico, and Bolivia — and partnered with ICON to print the first-ever 3D printed community of homes. New Story went through Y Combinator in 2015. Alexandria is a Kauffman Fellow.
In this episode, we cover:
- Growing up in Section 8 housing and what that experience shaped
- Teaching sixth grade in Southeast DC and watching housing instability derail her students in real time
- How her mother's death became the unexpected turning point in her career path
- The accidental social entrepreneur meetup in Atlanta where New Story was born
- What Y Combinator actually teaches founders — and the story of the architects that reset her bar forever
- Why she walked away from the nonprofit she loved to start a venture fund
- The origin of Icon and how New Story funded the world's first 3D printed homes
- What makes construction technology a genuinely compelling investment thesis
- The burden and opportunity of being an emerging manager in a non-obvious space
- What it would mean to bring construction costs down by 20%
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction to Alexandria Lafsey and her mission to build impactful housing solutions
02:15 - Growing up in Section 8 housing and how it shaped her social impact convictions
03:16 - Teach for America experience in Southeast DC and observing student homelessness
04:00 - The personal and systemic importance of affordable housing solutions
05:16 - Post-Teach path: from law school aspirations to founding News Story
06:03 - Personal tragedy and assuming caregiving responsibilities—impact on her career focus
07:26 - Lessons learned from McMaster Carr and company culture building
08:50 - The importance of culture in social impact organizations and News Story’s values
09:36 - Purposeful work and integrating purpose with profit in social entrepreneurship
10:11 - Community work and the importance of resources for people close to the issues
11:02 - The serendipitous night that led to founding News Story
12:05 - The Haiti earthquake and the motivation to create scalable housing models
14:08 - Early stage funding, YC experience, and rapid community impact
15:16 - How News Story’s model evolved to scale impact through land, credit, and finance
16:48 - Impact of transparency, stories, and participatory design on donor engagement
18:36 - The challenge of scalability in housing and innovating through land and collateral
20:22 - The influence of Y Combinator: access to networks and the peer community
21:44 - The importance of high standards, ambition, and the pursuit of alpha in venture investing
24:52 - The transition from nonprofit to venture capital: motivation and vision
26:16 - The potential of construction technology to solve housing affordability at scale
27:33 - How technology, like Icon, accelerates progress in building faster, cheaper, more sustainable homes
30:20 - Building a portfolio of startups in construction tech and their societal impact
33:28 - How Alexandria’s emerging fund is carving a dedicated space in construction and impact investing
36:04 - Overcoming education barriers and the importance of positioning in an underserved yet vital industry
39:15 - Alexandria’s entrepreneurial spirit rooted in audacity and vision from childhood
41:16 - Reflecting on her early dreams and the role of mentorship and self-belief
42:19 - Legacy ambitions: what Alexandria hopes Home Team Ventures will be known for
44:15 - The fundamental belief that housing is a human right and societal foundation
46:03 - Addressing societal normalization of homelessness and systemic inequities
47:12 - The importance of incremental progress and a community of changemakers
48:15 - Closing thoughts: building a better world through purpose-driven work
Resources & Links:
- Home Team Ventures: https://hometeam.vc
- New Story: https://newstorycharity.org
- ICON (3D printed homes): https://iconbuild.com
- Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com
- Kauffman Fellows: https://kauffmanfellows.org
Connect with Alexandria:
- LinkedIn: [Alexandria Lafci on LinkedIn]
- Home Team Ventures on LinkedIn and Twitter/X
Connect with Ebony:
- Benevolent Advisors: [website]
- LinkedIn: [Ebony Brown LinkedIn]
- Instagram: @ebonybrown / @principlesofbenevolence
- Subscribe to SEEDs Newsletter: [link]
