Platform Perspectives, Edition 4: Stephanie Volk

November 12, 2025

By Rachel Mackey
The Artemis Fund believes technology can create prosperity for all. With offices in New York, Texas, Massachusetts, and Nevada, Artemis leads seed rounds for companies creating resilient families, individuals, and businesses across the US.
This edition of Platform Perspectives features a conversation with Stephanie Volk of Ironspring Ventures, an early-stage, sector focused venture fund specializing in digital industrial innovation. The fund leads and co-leads early stage investments across four core focus areas: construction, manufacturing, transport & logistics, and alternative energy.

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Rachel: How did you first get into venture?
Stephanie: Definitely not on purpose. After graduate school, I joined GE Capital’s sales & marketing program as a way to get grounded in the business world after starting my career in the public sector. When it ended, I looked around for the coolest thing going at the company. At that time, it was GE Ventures, a new effort led by some of the brightest minds at GE in collaboration with veteran Silicon Valley venture investors. This impressive group was charged with investing in leading edge startups to help GE Capital stay at the forefront of innovation. I jumped at the chance to be the second hire on what was then called the “commercial development” team (this was before Platform was “Platform”). I spent three years designing and executing initiatives that connected 100+ portfolio companies to business units across the “big GE” for pilots and commercial opportunities. I also led programs that enabled entrepreneurs to leverage GE’s world class resources and expertise to grow and scale their companies.
After my time at GE Ventures, I found my way to the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). I’ve always been passionate about public policy, and joining NVCA gave me the chance to connect to this interest while taking on a significant leadership role that expanded my relationships and insight into venture. My time at NVCA was spent forging key partnerships and acting as a translator between DC and the VC community, as well as building a team that extended NVCA’s network across the industry to help reach new people and grow as an organization.
I met a ton of great people and gained great perspective on the industry while at NVCA, however, I did feel a step removed from value creation in the venture ecosystem. For my next role, I targeted returning to a fund, where I would be able to work closely with startups doing the real building. The stars aligned for me to reunite with a GE Ventures colleague who had started a new firm, and I became the first Head of Platform at Ironspring Ventures in 2022.
Rachel: What early experiences helped you transition into platform?
Stephanie: My early career exposed me to working across very different stakeholder groups, spanning city agencies and government leaders to senior executives. To be effective, I learned to “speak the language” of each group by understanding their unique perspectives, motivations, and incentives to find alignment and gain trust. Platform sits at the intersection of founders (portfolio and pipeline), LPs (current and prospective), internal stakeholders (GPs and extended team), and a network of external allies. Empathetic communication (i.e., knowing who are you are talking to) and creative problem-solving (i.e., being resourceful and entrepreneurial) are key skills that prepared me for Platform.
Rachel: What does your role look like today? What areas of platform do you focus on most?
Stephanie: I focus on three pillars.
Portfolio support. When I arrived at Ironspring Ventures, I launched programmatic efforts to facilitate knowledge sharing across C-level leaders at our portfolio companies. We also now run targeted engagements to connect specific portfolio companies with curated groups of leading decision makers across our network. It’s been a highly differentiated, high impact way to support Ironspring portfolio companies. Overall, we focus on delivering a select set of core programs that accelerate portfolio company GTM. We aim to go deep as a small team with significant domain expertise in industrial tech.
Firm brand, marketing & communications. Ironspring Ventures is an emerging fund (we celebrated five years as a firm this year!) with a distinct sector-focused mission. I oversee our brand and communications platform to ensure we’re telling a powerful, cohesive story on how our subject matter expertise and deep industry relationships deliver tangible value for founders. Industrial tech (or these days, “physical AI”) is attracting more and more attention and talent to this ecosystem. Through our bi-monthly newsletter, quarterly thought leadership deep dives, Heavy Hitters: The Digital Industrial Podcast (hosted by Ironspring Co-Founder & General Partner Ty Findley, now 110+ episodes strong), and strategic events held across the country, my mandate is furthering the narrative that we’ve been laser focused on digital industrial innovation since day one.
Chief-of-staff. We’re a small team that often feels like a bit of a startup itself. As our only full time non-investing team member, I lead many projects and workflows that help us meet high standards as a team, evolve as an organization, and build a strong culture. These efforts range from overseeing team goal setting and quarterly touchpoints to assess progress, planning team strategy sessions, and tracking deals we may have missed. This work is broadly defined by acting as “air traffic control” for key inbound and outbound activities, and pulling together various tactical threads to forge a unified strategy. I’m often aligning priorities around where our investors should be (and when) to further deal flow and fundraising efforts.
Rachel: What new skills will the next generation of platform professionals need?
Stephanie: As AI automates and enhances workflows, Platform will become more strategic. Those who have domain depth (finance, go-to-market, marketing, ops) plus the ability to adapt and uplevel will rise to the top. I feel strongly that no amount of new technology will change the fact that the best Platform leaders are those who can work effectively with many kinds of people, possess exceptional communication skills, have great instincts, and operate with no ego. These qualities are fundamental to helping form strong relationships (which is what VC is all about), as well as execute on a firm’s north star strategy to break through in a crowded landscape.
Rachel: What do you think platform roles will look like in the next 3–5 years?
Stephanie: This corner of the VC world will continue to grow and professionalize. For example, the maturation of platform and operator communities like VIA and VC Platform — they become larger and more sophisticated every year. This is not peripheral work anymore. For firms who are serious about competing in today’s venture market and building enduring brands, developing and supporting a platform function (with meaningful resources) is not optional.
Rachel: What advice would you give someone breaking into VC platform today?
Stephanie: There is no one way into Platform. There is no one perfect profile that will set you on the path to get here. Most of us in Platform today came to venture from other industries, and found opportunities where we could apply skills developed in other domains. Wherever you are in pre-platform life, challenge yourself to be a self-starter, engage with all kinds of people, create a path where there isn’t one, learn to tell a compelling story, and above all, be a problem-solver. These are the core competencies you’ll need to get in the door in Platform. Also, apply for any job that looks exciting to you, and don’t count yourself out until the hiring manager does. Many firms don’t know entirely what they are looking for when they write a job description for a platform role, and you might be exactly what they need (they just don’t know it yet).
Know a platform professional I should feature? Send me a note on Linkedin.

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