Daniel Dart

@tmrohan Facts on facts

The VC partner LPs trust and the VC partner founders trust are rarely the same person.

The truest thing here is how he explains that so much is dictated my LPs who have dogmatic approaches to how funds should construct, even if historic data says otherwise. The market is dynamic, so must we be.

@dropalltables Absolutely.

This is what venture should look like.

I just sat down with one of the great investing legends of our time and he said something amazing: “I think you should be intensely selfish about two things: 1. The people you spend your time with. 2. What you spend your time on.” Something wonderfully purifying about this.

@bilalfarooqui You forgot the 🐐 @dougleone

vc goats: - arthur rock - don valentine - john doerr - michael moritz - bill draper - tom perkins - eugene kleiner - marc andreessen - ben horowitz - paul graham - peter thiel who am i missing?

Long Austin, Texas 🤘🏼

@IbrahimAjami 100%. But worst part is most people never face real adversity, so not only do they never gain real clarity. They also don’t develop true empathy.

I believe you need to fail hard or be faced with some serious adversity before you find that clarity

@oanaolt Thank you! So cool!

Tonight I went to two events The first one frankly was depressing (at least for me it was) Emerging managers(lots) and LP (few) mixer This is what the room looked like

@oanaolt Let’s see the zine!

The second event I went to was a designer only event with a much smaller group of participants but with a sense of ✨wonder and whimsy✨ I left home with a zine and many cool contacts of founding designers at stealth startups or designers turned founders, I absolutely loved it While not a designer, I did design my website and I’m proud of it. I often get asked by other VCs for the contact of the people who did my website motiveforce.ai Designers rock!

@Besvinick Second this

Yes, exactly…

I got to sit down this week with the inimitable @pitdesi from @btv_vc to talk all things venture... and Zoom dating... and Taco Bell... and microfinance in India... and what his dad would hope for you... and... He did not disappoint. Links to listen in comments.

@mamoonha Heck yeah, proud of you brother!!

It was a privilege to join a small group of leaders with His Majesty King Charles III to discuss the AI transformation and venture capital - particularly the responsibility that comes with shaping technologies that will define the future.

Bay Area VCs will say they want to invest in American Dynamism, yet somehow refuse to invest in 48/50 States

@mamoonha 🔥

To make history, you have to honor it. In 2004, long before I joined Kleiner Perkins, I sat at the iconic table at KP as a young business school student visiting Sand Hill Road for the first time. It was a dream to just be in that room, let alone become a partner at Kleiner Perkins one day. I couldn't have known how much that moment — and this place — would shape my own journey. This short film reflects on the people, partnerships, and defining moments that built this firm, and the principles that still guide how we back founders today.

Excited to share my conversation with @itsdanieldart on Future Titans, authenticity, and systems thinking. Here are the key takeaways and from the conversation: Authenticity is a real competitive advantage, not just a personality trait. Daniel’s view is that in venture, authenticity builds trust, trust compounds over time, and that becomes a durable edge with founders, LPs, and peers. He draws a hard line between honest feedback and performative bluntness, arguing that the best investors pair candor with empathy. The best networks are discovered, not manufactured. One of the strongest ideas in the episode is Daniel’s belief that you should spend time finding believers rather than trying to convince skeptics. His “no name tags, no pitch tags” approach at Future Titans reflects a broader philosophy: the highest-quality relationships usually come from shared values and trust, not forced transactionality. Good investing starts with good systems. Daniel comes back repeatedly to being input-focused rather than outcome-obsessed. Whether he’s talking about building a conference, supporting founders, or constructing a fund, his core idea is that strong systems, repeated over time, create the conditions for strong outcomes. Founder support is not “value-add theater”; it is trust-building. His post-investment cadence with founders reflects a bigger belief that company-building is lonely and that investors earn the right to matter by being consistently useful, reliable, and emotionally steady. The insight is that being hands-on is less about control and more about becoming a trusted source of truth. Tier 1 ambition is really about relevance, not branding. Daniel is very open about wanting to build @RockYardVC into a top-tier firm, but he frames that ambition operationally: can he become someone who is consistently in the conversation for the best deals in his areas of focus? The takeaway is that elite status should be earned through repeated market relevance, not borrowed prestige. Venture works best when you invest for upside, not survival. A memorable throughline is Daniel’s rejection of playing defense just to preserve optics. He argues that venture is an upside-capture business, and that emerging managers can get trapped by trying too hard to avoid failure instead of underwriting for asymmetric returns. In frontier markets, proximity beats false certainty. On AI and quantum, Daniel’s stance is not “I can predict the future perfectly,” but rather “I want to get close to the smartest builders and learn from them.” The deeper point is that an investor’s edge often comes less from pretending to know and more from developing informed conviction through proximity to exceptional people. Long-term thinking expands what’s possible. Daniel repeatedly frames decisions on a 5-, 10-, and 15-year basis, arguing that a longer horizon raises your tolerance for short-term imperfection and makes room for ambitious bets, deeper relationships, and better firm-building decisions. Tactical questions often reveal more than abstract advice. His favorite question to ask experienced investors — what they would want him to do in the first 90 days if they were backing Rock Yard — captures the episode’s broader mindset: learning should translate into concrete actions, not vague inspiration. Please enjoy!

🚨 New episode alert!🚨 @EthanChoi7, Partner at @khoslaventures, has one of the most unlikely paths to Sand Hill Road you'll ever hear. His father was abandoned at a train station in post-war Korea at six. He eventually made it to Sydney, where Ethan grew up, served a church mission, and bought a one-way ticket to the US with no network. He rose to Partner at Accel, and now Khosla. We get into: - Why robotics is having its GPT-3 moment right now - The flip from 80% metrics to 90% founder - How faith shaped the way he invests - The real answer to building tier-one relationships Links to listen below. Enjoy!