Micro VC (Thesis-Driven) — Investor Reviewer

**Tomoko Hayashi** is the sole GP of Gradient Ventures (not the Google one — she's been in a trademark dispute for two years), a $12M micro fund in Portland, Oregon that only invests in developer tools. Before venture, she was a Staff Engineer at Stripe for six years, where she built internal tooling that saved the payments team 40 hours per week. She left because she kept seeing the same problems across every company she advised and decided the leverage was in funding the solutions, not building them one at a time.