Wellness Fund Boom: Inside Jenny Liu's $5M Venture Play [2025]

The Wellness Funding Gap Nobody's Talking About

Here's something that keeps repeating in venture capital: the best opportunities sit in plain sight, buried under layers of assumption and gatekeeping. Jenny Liu figured this out while running Dogpound, the exclusive Manhattan gym that became a lifestyle destination for celebrities, athletes, and wellness enthusiasts. She wasn't just managing a facility. She was watching founders pitch ideas in the hallway, listening to members obsess over the next big thing in fitness, and realizing something critical: the wellness space had money flowing in from every direction except where it mattered most.

The founders she met, especially women and minorities, couldn't get funding. Not because their ideas were bad. Not because the market didn't exist. But because they lacked the networks, the pedigree, the social proof that typically gets you in front of institutional capital. It's the same pattern that plays out across venture over and over: opportunity meets timing, except timing doesn't work unless you already know the right people.

So Liu did what ambitious operators do when they see an inefficiency. She built a solution. In January 2026, she announced the final close of Crush It Ventures, a $5 million early-stage fund focused exclusively on wellness companies. Not health care. Not medical devices. Wellness. The distinction matters more than most people realize.

This isn't just another fund. It's a signal that the wellness space is finally getting serious about fixing its diversity and access problems. And it's a case study in how one person's network, experience, and frustration can turn into institutional capital.

Why Wellness Funding Looks Nothing Like Tech Funding

Wellness is weird in venture because it doesn't fit neatly into categories. Is a meditation app a health app? Is a CPG beauty company a wellness play? What about a sleep-focused wearable? What about a run club platform that focuses on community?

The confusion matters because it creates blind spots. Traditional health VCs focus on regulatory compliance, clinical endpoints, and FDA paths. Traditional consumer VCs look for unit economics and retention curves. Wellness needs both, but also something else: cultural resonance.

Consider the numbers. A McKinsey study found that the U.S. wellness market exceeds $500 billion annually. That's not a rounding error. That's a category bigger than most industries. But the capital doesn't follow proportionally. Part of that is the definitional problem. Part of it is that wellness has traditionally been undervalued because it touches lifestyle, not disease treatment.

Here's the demographic reality that changes everything: Gen Z represents 36% of the adult U.S. population but accounts for 41% of all wellness spending. They're not just spending more on wellness. They're spending more on different types of wellness. Mental health. Community fitness. Purpose-driven brands. Experiences that connect.

Compare that to adults 58 and older: they make up 35% of the population but only 28% of wellness spending. The money is chasing youth, consciousness, and authenticity. Traditional institutions are slow to move there. That's where funds like Crush It step in.

The Gen Z wellness obsession isn't random either. Gyms became status symbols. Run clubs became social infrastructure. Wellness became identity. This isn't people spending money on health. It's people spending money on belonging, on meaning, on being part of something they believe in. That's a completely different market dynamic from the health care market, and traditional health VCs still haven't figured out how to price for it.

The Dogpound Playbook: How Brand Community Becomes Capital

Jenny Liu spent a decade at Dogpound, the last two years as CEO. During that time, the gym evolved from a physical space into something closer to a cultural institution. That matters because it's not just experience. It's a masterclass in how brand, community, and network create value.

Dogpound works because it solved something fundamental: it made fitness social in a way most gyms never managed. You go to a gym to work out. You go to Dogpound to be part of something. Members know each other. There's an identity attached. The brand became so strong that celebrities and athletes aligned themselves with it not for the equipment but for the association.

Running that operation taught Liu something critical about founders. They showed up at Dogpound. They worked out there. They tested products on a highly engaged community. They were building in real time, often without traditional venture backing, because they were embedded in a network that believed in them.

When Liu decided to start a venture fund, she didn't approach it like a typical first-time GP. She approached it like a brand builder. She talked about creating spaces for shared experiences, for joy, for genuine connection. That language matters because it shows she's not just moving capital around. She's thinking about ecosystems.

The difference shows up in how Crush It evaluates companies. They're not just looking at unit economics (though they care about those). They're looking at whether a company creates community, whether it feels authentic, whether it aligns with the values of the wellness generation that's actually spending the money.

That's the Dogpound playbook: understand culture first, then build infrastructure around it. Understand what your customers believe in, not just what they're buying. That's how you run a sustainable gym. And Liu figured out that's also how you run a sustainable venture fund in an emerging category.

The Capital Crisis in Wellness Entrepreneurship

Let's be direct about the problem Liu identified and is trying to solve. Wellness founders, particularly women and minorities, face a capital gap that's getting worse, not better. The reasons are structural and worth understanding because they reveal how venture capital still works.

First, there's the network problem. Most early-stage capital flows through networks. A founder meets an angel at a conference. That angel knows a partner at a fund. The partner gets warm introduced to the founder's subsequent round. This is how capital actually works, despite what pitch decks suggest. If you're not in those networks, if you didn't go to Stanford and work at Facebook before starting your company, you're starting from behind.

Second, there's the category problem. Wellness sits at the intersection of multiple markets: health, beauty, fitness, hospitality, CPG, software. When a founder pitches wellness, traditional health VCs say, "That's not clinical enough." Consumer VCs say, "That's too health-focused, regulatory risk scares me." Nobody claims it as theirs. The category doesn't have institutional ownership.

Third, there's the image problem. Wellness has been dismissed in venture as fluffy, not serious, not technical enough. That bias persists even though wellness founders are solving genuinely hard problems. A meditation app that actually helps PTSD symptoms is doing neuroscience. A wearable that tracks sleep with novel algorithms is doing hardware engineering. But the wellness label somehow makes investors dismiss the rigor underneath.

This is where Crush It Ventures steps in with a different thesis. Liu said explicitly: the wellness space has become popular because people understand that health isn't just physical. It's mental, emotional, social. As technology automates more of daily life, people are valuing real connection and long-term well-being more, not less. That's not a hobby market. That's a fundamental shift in how humans prioritize spending.

Liu started raising the fund in 2024, during what she described as a cautious market environment. But there was growing interest from limited partners specifically looking for diverse, mission-driven funds. That's important because it suggests institutional capital is finally starting to acknowledge that wellness is underserved and that underrepresented founders have unique insights into what wellness actually needs.

Inside Crush It's Investment Strategy and Thesis

Crush It Ventures isn't trying to be a generalist fund that dabbles in wellness. It's a specialist fund with a specific mandate, specific check sizes, and specific definitions of what counts as a win.

The fund plans to write checks between

So far, Crush It has invested in 18 companies, including Elemind, a wearable technology company focusing on brain health, and Caliwater, a CPG business in the wellness space. These aren't random picks. Elemind represents the hardware-software intersection in wellness. Caliwater represents the consumer packaged goods intersection. Both suggest Liu is thinking across the full spectrum of how wellness gets built and sold.

The thesis covers multiple subsectors:

Mental Health: Not just therapy apps, but technologies and communities that address mental well-being at scale.

Fitness and Sport: Everything from run club platforms to equipment companies to training software.

Beauty: Cosmetics and personal care companies with wellness angles, meaning they're thinking about ingredients, ethics, community, not just aesthetics.

Hospitality: Hotels, resorts, spas, and experiences that center wellness in their design and operations.

That breadth is intentional. It prevents the fund from being too narrow while maintaining clear focus. A founder building a meditation app sees that Crush It invests in apps. A founder building wellness real estate sees that Crush It invests in hospitality. But both understand the fund has a coherent thesis about what wellness means.

Liu's background shaped the investment criteria in specific ways. She worked with founders and celebrities. She learned that brand building isn't about marketing. It's about creating spaces for shared experiences. That's reflected in how Crush It talks about supporting portfolio companies. They want to help founders build their brands and communities as they scale. That's not the language of a typical early-stage fund. That's the language of someone who understands that wellness is ultimately about culture.

Breaking Down the Founder Demographics Problem

The specific gap Liu is trying to close matters. She's focusing on underrepresented founders. In venture capital context, that typically means women, founders of color, founders from non-traditional backgrounds. The data on this is depressing and worth reciting.

According to venture capital tracking data, women-founded companies receive roughly 2-3% of all venture capital, despite representing a significant portion of the founder population. That percentage drops further when you layer in race and ethnicity. The bias compounds. A Black woman founder faces different barriers than a white woman founder. An immigrant founder faces different barriers than a native-born founder. These are structural, not incidental.

In the wellness space specifically, the problem might be even more acute. Wellness has attracted a lot of female entrepreneurs because the category makes sense to them: it's about health, community, social good. But the funding hasn't followed the participation. Women build the companies. Men fund them. That's the dynamic.

Liu's approach is to flip that. She's explicitly building a fund with a mandate to back underrepresented founders. That's not charity. That's strategic thesis. Underrepresented founders often have deeper insight into underserved markets. A woman who's struggled with reproductive health understands the market for femtech differently than a man who hasn't experienced it. A Black founder understands the market for culturally resonant wellness differently than a white founder who sees wellness as generic.

This ties back to the network problem. Liu has the network to reach these founders because she's been in the ecosystem. She ran a gym. She worked with founders. She has the trust and credibility to get meetings, to hear ideas early, to move fast when something clicks. That's her advantage over a generalist fund manager trying to learn wellness from scratch.

The Funding Landscape: Why Now?

Timing matters in venture. A fund needs market tailwinds, LP interest, founder momentum, and category awareness to work. Crush It Ventures hits all those conditions in 2025-2026, which is why the fund closed and why Liu expects to deploy capital quickly.

The wellness market has been growing consistently. Gyms, fitness apps, meditation platforms, wellness communities: all seeing user growth and engagement. COVID accelerated interest in health and wellness. Remote work accelerated interest in mental health and community. Gen Z's openness about wellness as a lifestyle priority created a market that didn't exist a decade ago.

LP interest in mission-driven funds is rising. Limited partners, especially newer institutions, newer wealth, family offices, and impact-focused investors, are looking for funds that do more than chase returns. They want funds that align with their values, that address underserved markets, that back underrepresented founders. That's not purely altruism. Diverse teams often outperform homogeneous teams. Underserved markets often have less competition. That's good business.

Founder momentum in wellness is real. More people are starting companies in this space. More are finding early success. More are getting acquired (though M&A data in wellness is fragmented). That creates a founder-friendly dynamic where funds need to move fast and bring value beyond just capital.

Category awareness is finally mattering. Wellness is no longer dismissed as frivolous. It's understood as a legitimate category with real revenue, real customers, real problems to solve. That shifts how institutional capital thinks about it.

Liu navigated a challenging fund-raising environment as a first-time GP. Most capital flows to established firms. For a solo female GP raising a specialized fund in an emerging category, that's not easy. But she leveraged the only thing that matters at that stage: network and conviction. She had relationships. She had a thesis. She had evidence that the market was real.

What Makes Crush It Different: The Operator Advantage

There are hundreds of venture funds in the United States. What separates a successful one from an unsuccessful one isn't usually the capital or the returns, at least not initially. It's the operator advantage.

Liu brings operator advantage specifically because she's run something. She was a CEO. She understands what founders actually need, not what investors think they need. That's a massive difference.

When a founder pitches Liu, she's not just evaluating the idea and market. She's evaluating whether the founder can actually build something sustainable. She's worked with founders. She knows the red flags. A founder who's scattered in conversation? Probably scattered in execution. A founder who can articulate their community but not their business model? Probably confused about their own company.

The second operator advantage is brand-building knowledge. Liu spent a decade building Dogpound into a brand that commanded premium pricing and cultural relevance. That's not luck. That's skill. She understands how to turn commodities into culture. That's directly applicable to how she advises wellness founders.

The third operator advantage is community access. Liu knows people in wellness. She ran a space where founders, athletes, celebrities, and members all intersected. She can make introductions that matter. She can validate companies with her credibility. She can move capital faster than someone without that network because she doesn't need to do discovery. She's already seen the terrain.

The fourth operator advantage is risk assessment. Liu has watched fitness and wellness companies work and fail. She understands unit economics because she had to manage them. She understands retention because she had to drive it. She understands pricing power because she had to set it. That's knowledge you can't teach. You have to live through it.

That's why first-time GPs with real operator experience often outperform traditional VCs who've only raised capital. They see things differently. They ask different questions. They evaluate risk through a different lens.

The Gender Dynamics of First-Time Fund Managers

It's worth pausing here to acknowledge that Liu's journey is statistically unusual. Female first-time GPs are rare. The venture capital industry is still overwhelmingly male. The numbers are brutal: somewhere around 15-20% of venture capital partners are women, and that hasn't meaningfully changed in years.

For a woman to raise a first-time fund, she needs something extra. Capital requirements are higher. LP interest is often lower (though that's changing). The assumption is always that she's less experienced, less proven, despite evidence suggesting women allocators actually produce comparable or better returns.

Liu's background as a CEO helped her break through that bias. LPs are more willing to back a first-time fund when the founder has proven operator success. She wasn't just pitching a thesis. She was bringing execution credibility. That matters disproportionately for female managers because they have to clear higher bars.

This is one of the ways that Crush It Ventures becomes interesting beyond just the fund itself. It's proof that the thesis works, that LP appetite for diverse managers is real when the operator has credibility, and that specialist funds with clear angles can break through the crowded market.

Portfolio Company Deep Dives: Elemind and Caliwater

Looking at Crush It's first investments reveals what the fund is actually looking for beneath the thesis language.

Elemind focuses on brain health through wearable technology. That's a specific bet. The company is building hardware that measures brain activity and software that interprets it. That's technically complex. That requires capital. That requires iteration. But the market is clear: people care about brain health, and current solutions are either invasive or ineffective. Elemind represents the high-tech end of the wellness spectrum. It requires engineering talent, regulatory knowledge, and scale capital later. But early-stage, it's exactly the kind of company that needs a supportive early investor who understands the space.

Caliwater is at the other end of the spectrum. It's a CPG company, which means it's about product, distribution, brand, and repeat purchase. CPG is brutal because margins are thin and competition is fierce. But Caliwater is positioning around wellness values: hydration in a way that aligns with wellness thinking. That's different from just being another bottled water company. It's about brand positioning, community resonance, and capturing the wellness consumer who'll pay a premium for alignment with their values.

These two companies represent the breadth of Crush It's thesis. High-tech hardware on one end. CPG with community focus on the other. Everything in between. Both required capital to get to proof points. Both benefit from an investor who understands how to build brand and community, not just how to optimize metrics.

Market Sizing: Is Wellness Actually Big Enough?

This is the skeptic question: Is wellness actually a big enough category to justify a specialized fund?

The data says yes, emphatically. A $500 billion annual U.S. market is bigger than the entire automotive aftermarket, bigger than the entire telecommunications equipment market, comparable to the financial services market. That's not a niche. That's a major category.

But here's the nuance. Wellness isn't a single market. It's an ecosystem of markets. Mental health apps. Wearable devices. Fitness platforms. CPG products. Hospitality experiences. Beauty products. Community platforms. Some of these are software (high margin, scalable). Some are hardware (margin challenges, capital intensive). Some are physical (real estate intensive). Some are CPG (distribution intensive).

For a fund to work, it doesn't need the entire wellness market to succeed. It needs a subset of companies within wellness to find product-market fit and scale. A

A meditation or mental health app can reach millions of users and generate significant revenue through subscriptions. A wearable can scale if the technology works and the market believes in it. A wellness CPG can scale if the brand resonates and the distribution works. A community platform can scale if the engagement is real and the monetization model works.

The market is also fragmented, which is good for a specialist fund. There's no dominant player that's locked up all the value. Unlike social media, where Facebook dominated for years, or search, where Google dominated, wellness is still wide open. That creates opportunity for multiple companies to find success.

The Investment Thesis: Why Wellness Founders Are Underrepresented

Let's get specific about why the gap exists and why it matters that someone like Liu is trying to close it.

Wellness doesn't have the institutional gravitas of health care. Health care has NIH funding, FDA approval, clinical trials, established regulatory paths. That creates barriers to entry for some founders but also creates funding patterns. There's public funding. There's established relationships with pharma. There's understood exit paths (acquisition by pharma, IPO after approval).

Wellness has none of that infrastructure. It has consumer demand, but it doesn't have institutional frameworks. That means traditional investors often don't know how to evaluate it. A health care fund sees wellness as outside their mandate. A consumer fund sees regulatory risk. A tech fund sees distribution challenges. Nobody claims it.

That's where the founder diversity problem gets acute. Founders from underrepresented backgrounds often don't have access to the institutional health care networks OR the consumer VCs because they're not in those social circles. They're trying to pitch to people who don't know the category, don't understand it, and have no framework for evaluating it.

Liu's fund solves this by creating institutional framework specifically for wellness. She's saying explicitly: we know this category. We know how to evaluate it. We know the market. We know what success looks like. That confidence matters because it lets underrepresented founders actually get heard instead of dismissed.

Building Community at Scale: The Founder Network Effect

One of Liu's explicit goals is to build stronger founder networks. That's not generic value-add language. That's specific strategy.

Wellness founders, especially those outside traditional networks, benefit enormously from being able to talk to other wellness founders. What's working? What's not? How do you think about retention? How do you recruit? How do you think about brand? These conversations happen constantly in health care VC (established networks). They don't happen in wellness because the founders are isolated.

Crush It can create that network by design. By investing in 20-25 companies, the fund creates a cohort. That cohort can meet regularly. They can share challenges. They can collaborate on things like shared distribution or shared suppliers. They can validate each other's thinking.

That network effect is particularly powerful for underrepresented founders because it's a support system they might not otherwise access. If you're a woman building a fitness app, being able to talk to other women building in wellness, hearing how they navigate fundraising, learning from their mistakes, seeing their wins: that's invaluable.

Liu understands this because she created it at Dogpound. She didn't just run a gym. She created a community. Crush It is doing the same thing at the founder level. It's creating infrastructure for a community that didn't have it.

The Path to Exit: How Do Wellness Companies Get Acquired?

Here's a practical question that matters for fund economics: how do wellness companies get acquired?

The answer is: lots of ways, and the paths are getting clearer.

Large consumer companies (Nestlé, Unilever, Procter & Gamble) are buying wellness CPG brands to diversify portfolios away from traditional products. They're paying premiums for brands with community and cultural resonance.

Large health care companies (United Health, Anthem, CVS) are buying wellness and mental health companies to move upstream into prevention and keep people healthy rather than just treating disease.

Large tech companies (Apple, Amazon, Google) are buying wellness companies to expand their health and fitness ecosystems. Apple Health has become an acquisition target environment. Amazon is building health care. Google is buying health data companies.

Fitness companies get acquired by media and entertainment companies. Peloton-type trajectories exist where fitness becomes a lifestyle brand with media components.

Mental health companies get acquired by both health care and tech companies, and increasingly by each other as consolidation happens.

All of this means there are multiple exit paths for wellness founders. That matters because it means the exits don't depend on IPO or high-multiple-times revenue acquisition. They can be strategic acquisitions at reasonable multiples. A

For a

Regulatory Challenges in Wellness: What Could Go Wrong

It's worth acknowledging risks because they're real and they matter for fund returns.

Wellness companies sometimes bump into health care regulation. A meditation app that claims it treats anxiety might trigger FDA jurisdiction. A wearable that claims it diagnoses something gets into medical device territory. That's expensive. That requires capital. That can kill companies.

Climate and supply chain risks matter for CPG wellness companies. If you're sourcing ingredients globally, climate disruption affects you. Tariffs affect you. Labor cost changes affect you.

Competition from large players is real. When Apple adds a feature, small startups copying that feature lose. When Amazon enters a space, the economics change. When Nestlé acquires a competitor, the landscape shifts.

Cultural backlash is possible. Wellness has been hit with skepticism. Some wellness claims are questionable. Some investors have been burned. That affects fund sentiment.

Liu's fund can't eliminate these risks. But specialist investors with relevant experience can navigate them better. They know which regulatory paths are viable. They know which team structures work. They know which product claims are defensible.

The Bigger Picture: Why Wellness Funding Matters

Beyond the immediate fund returns, there's a bigger picture story here.

Wellness is where consumer priorities are shifting. People are voting with money. They care about health. They care about community. They care about values alignment. That's not a trend. That's a fundamental shift in what people prioritize.

For a long time, the assumption was that health and wellness were nice-to-haves. You'd worry about them once you had enough money. That assumption is flipped now, especially for younger generations. Wellness comes first. Everything else comes after.

That shift in priorities should translate to capital. If people are spending $500 billion annually on wellness, capital should be flowing to companies that serve that demand. But it hasn't, because of the structural barriers Liu identified: lack of institutional understanding, lack of founder networks, lack of category clarity.

Crush It Ventures is one attempt to fix that structural problem. There will be others. As the market matures, more specialist funds will emerge. Some will succeed. Some will fail. But the thesis is sound: there's real money in wellness, real problems to solve, and underrepresented founders with the insights to solve them.

For founders, having this fund exist means there's now one more place that will take them seriously. It means the odds of getting funded just marginally improved. That's not nothing. That's meaningful.

What Success Looks Like for Crush It Ventures

Funding a first-time fund is risky. How would we measure whether Crush It succeeds?

Short term: the fund needs to deploy capital into quality companies, support those companies through growth phases, and maintain good investor relations with LPs. That's table stakes.

Medium term: the fund's portfolio companies need to hit milestones. Revenue growth. User growth. Product expansion. Capital raises. These are the early signals of whether the thesis is working.

Long term: the fund needs to generate returns. Multiple on invested capital. IRR. Cash returns. That's how you know if the investment thesis actually worked.

But there's a secondary measure: did the fund actually expand access? Did underrepresented founders in wellness get capital who otherwise wouldn't have? Did the founder network become real and valuable? Did the fund become a brand that matters in wellness?

Liu will need both measures. The financial returns prove the thesis works. The impact measures prove the mission works. For a fund that's explicitly mission-driven, impact matters to LPs and to the founder community.

The Competitive Landscape: Other Wellness Funds

Crush It isn't the first wellness fund. But it might be the first dedicated to underrepresented founders in wellness with a solo GP structure.

There are health care-focused VCs that dabble in wellness. There are consumer VCs that have wellness portfolios. There are impact funds that invest in wellness. But Crush It has a specific angle: founder diversity plus wellness focus plus active portfolio support.

That angle matters because it's underserved. Most investors either focus on founder diversity broadly (across all categories) or focus on wellness broadly (across all founder types). Combining both is relatively new.

That also means the fund has runway before the space gets crowded. If Crush It's thesis works and returns look good, more funds will follow. That's good for the ecosystem. It's good for founders. It increases capital availability.

For Liu, it means there's a window where she can build brand, build the portfolio, build founder relationships. Later entrants will have to compete on those dimensions. She has the advantage of being first with her specific thesis.

How Founders Should Think About Crush It

If you're a wellness founder, especially an underrepresented founder, what does Crush It's existence change?

First, it changes the cap table options. You now have one more potential investor explicitly interested in your space, comfortable with your founder profile, and capable of writing meaningful check sizes at your stage.

Second, it signals to the market that wellness is serious. When institutional capital explicitly backs wellness, it shifts how the broader market thinks about it. That affects press. That affects recruiting. That affects customer trust.

Third, it creates network opportunity. Being part of Crush It's cohort means access to other founders, to Liu's knowledge, to potential customers and partners in the network.

Fourth, it creates a validation signal. If Crush It invested in you, other investors will take you more seriously. The signal is, "Someone who knows this space has done diligence and likes this company." That accelerates subsequent fundraising.

For founders, that matters. Capital is still the constraint for most wellness companies. Having more capital sources available, with less friction, changes the calculus.

The Broader Venture Capital Trend: Specialization

Crush It fits into a broader trend in venture capital: increasing specialization.

Twenty years ago, the model was generalist VCs who invested in anything that looked like it could be big. Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, all the established firms are still generalist. But the fund creation trend has shifted.

Today, successful new funds are almost always specialists. They focus on a category (AI, climate, fintech, biotech), a region (India, Southeast Asia, Latin America), a founder profile (first-generation, women, minorities), or a combination.

Specialization works because it's hard for generalists to maintain edge. A generalist partner trying to understand wellness, fintech, AI, and climate all at once is doing superficial diligence on everything. A specialist partner doing deep diligence on one category has real advantage.

Specialization also works because it builds community. Founders in a category know each other. They read the same publications. They care about the same problems. A specialist fund can become a hub for that community. Generalist funds can't because they're fighting for attention across too many categories.

For LPs, specialization works because it's easier to understand risk and thesis. A $5 million wellness fund with clear thesis and focused portfolio is easier to evaluate than a generalist fund trying to do too much.

Liu's fund is part of this trend. As venture capital matures, the winners will increasingly be specialists with deep expertise, strong networks, and clear theses. Generalists will still exist, but the real innovation happens at the edges, in specialized funds.

The Future of Wellness as a Capital Category

Looking forward, several things are likely to happen.

Capital will keep flowing into wellness because the demand is real. Gen Z will age into higher incomes and keep spending on wellness. That creates a compounding tailwind.

Consolidation will happen. There are hundreds of small wellness companies. Larger companies will acquire them. Wellness will become less fragmented. That actually creates opportunity for funds: earlier companies will exit into acquirers, returning capital.

Regulation will probably increase. As wellness gets bigger and claims get questioned, governments will care more about oversight. That creates barriers to entry (good for incumbents) but also opportunities (companies that navigate regulation well will have advantages).

Wellness will get more personalized. AI and data will let companies tailor wellness to individuals. That's a massive market opportunity that's only starting.

Wellness will get more integrated into health care. The boundary between wellness and health care is blurring. Companies that can work in both spaces will have advantages.

All of this means the fund that gets invested in early, that builds relationships, that has conviction about category direction, can capture significant value. Liu's timing is good. The market is accelerating. The capital is becoming available. The founder talent is increasing.

Lessons for Other First-Time Fund Managers

If you're thinking about starting a fund, Liu's path offers specific lessons.

First: build operational credibility first. Don't try to be a venture partner and then start a fund. Build something real first. Run something. Prove you can execute. That's what gives you credibility with LPs.

Second: find an underserved category or community. Don't compete with established funds in crowded spaces. Find something they're ignoring. Liu found underrepresented founders in wellness. That's specific. That's defensible.

Third: leverage your network relentlessly. You don't have the brand of an established fund. Your network is your advantage. Use it.

Fourth: be clear about thesis and stick to it. Don't be everything to everyone. Be specific about what you invest in and why. That focus matters.

Fifth: plan to add real value beyond capital. In a crowded fund market, capital alone is commoditized. You have to offer something else: expertise, network, introductions, ongoing support. What's your value?

Sixth: think about your fund as a long-term business, not a quick return. Build brand. Build relationships. Make good investments. Do right by founders. That builds the foundation for future funds.

Liu's doing all of these things. That's why the fund is likely to succeed.

The Role of Gym Culture in Wellness Entrepreneurship

Here's something worth examining: why did a gym CEO start a wellness fund, and what does that tell us?

Gyms are community nodes. They're places where people connect around shared values. They're where fitness culture thrives. They're where people experiment with products and ideas.

A gym, especially an exclusive gym like Dogpound, becomes a network hub. You get celebrity athletes, entrepreneurs, health-conscious professionals, founders. They talk to each other. They test things. They share ideas.

Running a gym gives you insight into what people actually care about. Not what they claim to care about, but what they spend money on, what they stick with, what builds real community.

Liu learned that lesson over a decade. She saw what worked. She saw what failed. She saw what created authentic community versus what was marketing. That knowledge is invaluable when evaluating wellness companies because so much of wellness is about community and authenticity.

This is why founder-investor alignment matters. Liu isn't a professional venture capitalist doing wellness as a category. She's a wellness operator becoming a venture capitalist. That's different. She's not learning wellness. She already knows it.

Conclusion: The Signal and the Opportunity

Jenny Liu's announcement of Crush It Ventures is significant for reasons beyond the fund itself.

It signals that wellness is finally getting institutional attention. It signals that underrepresented founder funding is mattering enough to raise dedicated capital. It signals that operator-investors with real domain expertise can raise capital even in a tough environment.

For wellness founders, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, it's a win. There's one more place that will take them seriously. There's institutional acknowledgment that the category is real and matters.

For the venture capital industry, it's a data point in the specialization trend. Focused funds with clear thesis and founder alignment outperform generalists. That's the direction the industry is moving.

For the wellness market, it's infrastructure. Founders need capital. They need networks. They need community. They need mentorship. Crush It provides all of that. As the fund grows and returns capital, it creates proof that the thesis works. That attracts other capital, other investors, other funds.

The opportunity in wellness is still vast. Five hundred billion dollar annual market. Changing consumer priorities. Gen Z leadership. New problems to solve. New communities to build. There's enough room for multiple successful funds, multiple successful companies, and multiple successful outcomes.

Liu's fund is one attempt at capturing that opportunity. Based on her background, network, thesis clarity, and the market tailwinds she's riding, it's likely to work. That's good for her, good for founders, good for wellness ecosystem. And it's a lesson for what's coming next: more specialized funds, more diverse founders getting capital, more categories getting institutional attention.

That's how venture capital changes. Not through revolution. Through iteration, specialization, and people with real expertise deciding to put capital to work in ways that make sense to them.