Our mission

I built my first company in my twenties. I had energy, conviction, and an idea I believed in. What I didn't have was anyone who had done it before. My dad helped where he could — but he was an attorney, not an operator. When I faced my first pricing decision, my first key executive hire, my first board conflict, my first acquisition conversation, I was improvising.

I've often thought about what it would have been worth to have had access to my 50-year-old self back then — someone who had been a CEO, a tech entrepreneur; someone who had built, scaled, and sold companies. Not a check-writer. A partner in the work.

I can't go back and be my own mentor. But I can be that for the founders I back.

That's why Dynamite Ventures works the way it does. Since those early days as a first-time founder, I've had the good fortune to serve as CEO, GM, or board member of multiple companies with billions of dollars in aggregate exit value — and the pattern I've seen across the venture industry is consistent: most investor involvement is intense for the first several months, then decays into introductions, board meetings, and a monthly call. That's not a criticism. It's simple arithmetic — a seed partner with forty companies, or a Series A partner with a dozen boards, can't do it any other way.

So we changed the arithmetic. I take on no more than a handful of companies at a time — enough to matter to each of them, few enough that my involvement doesn't fade after the term sheet. When a founder is preparing for a critical negotiation, restructuring a go-to-market motion, developing a channel strategy, or making the hire that will shape the next two years, I'm in the work — not on a call about the work after the fact.

That's also why we're not the right investor for every founder. If you want capital and a quiet cap table, there are excellent firms for that. We partner with founders who genuinely value a seasoned operator available to be in the trenches with them — and who are building something worth that level of commitment from both sides.