About
BIO: Daniel Dart is the founder of Solo GP fund Rock Yard Ventures. His journey from homelessness and incarceration to where he is today shows how powerful second chances can be. A leader and advocate for underserved and underprivileged communities, he has worked on the ground, helping build equity and social movements on both a local and global scale. A rare talent, he matriculated to the London School of Economics graduate school without ever having received an undergraduate degree. In addition to being published in Harvard Business Review and the World Economic Forum, he has presented his academic and economic research worldwide, including in Sri Lanka, China, Ireland, Japan, and the United States.Daniel's journey to where he is today is anything but typical. He was born in the Bay Area but spent most of his youth in Southern California. He experienced homelessness on the streets of San Diego and Los Angeles between 1999-2001, a chapter of time that shapes everything he does today.…
Experience
General Partner
Rock Yard Ventures · Austin, Texas, United States
Present
Investing in badass founders who are redefining core industries. Artifact, Hestus, Interface, Permitify, Photonium, Rectangle, Reffie, Revin, Sygaldry, Vallor
Board Observer
Sygaldry Technologies · San Francisco, CA
Present
Founded by quantum veterans Chad Rigetti, Idalia Friedson, and AI scientist Michael Keiser, Sygladry is building quantum-accelerated AI servers to exponentially speed up training and inference.
Young Leaders Circle
Milken Institute · Los Angeles, CA
The YLC is an invite-only group of tomorrow’s global leaders that include intellectually curious, motivated, and philanthropic young professionals. The Milken Institute is an independent economic think tank focusing on cutting-edge research and work that applies market-based principles and financial innovations to social issues in the US and internationally.
Advisory Board Member
Kickstart Global · Greater London
Founded in 2015 and with applicants from over 30 universities, Kickstart is the global hub for entrepreneurial students. We empower ambitious students to build user-obsessed companies. Further info at https://www.kickstartglobal.com/
Venture Partner
Alpaca VC · New York, New York, United States
Alpaca VC is a multi stage venture capital firm. We invest in the people, products and processes that power commerce in the physical and digital world. We believe when you layer technology over daily life, it transforms how the world works.
Advisory Board Member
Village Capital · Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Village Capital is the largest organization in the world supporting impact-driven, seed-stage startups. Since 2009 our team has directly worked with more than 1,100 entrepreneurs in 28 countries, and our affiliated fund, VilCap Investments, has invested in 110 startups that have gone on to raise more than $4 billion in follow-on capital.
Investor-in-Residence
Dynamo Ventures · Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Dynamo invests in supply chain and mobility startups at the pre-seed and seed stages that have enterprise business models.
Head of Growth
Rybit · London, England, United Kingdom
Rybit sustainably transforms the world's urban last mile transportation and delivery industries. Through selling and leasing e-bikes / e-mobility devices with robust IoT + software technology platform to enterprise and retail customers, Rybit currently manages 40,000+ e-mobility devices, 2 million customers and operates in 30+ cities.
Board Member: Trust Property Management
Skid Row Housing Trust · Greater Los Angeles Area
As a member of the Board, I help oversee the Trust Property Management within the organization. Twenty-five years ago, Skid Row Housing Trust started a subsidiary property management company, hiring both experienced managers and residents to work side by side. This approach has proven transformative. Skid Row Housing Trust’s property managers have an average tenure of nine years, more than double the industry average. These property managers not only handle maintenance, janitorial services, and day-to day bookkeeping, they also pay special attention to residents’ struggles and coordinate with case managers to keep residents housed.
Senior Strategy Advisor
Skid Row Housing Trust · Greater Los Angeles Area
Skid Row Housing Trust is one of America’s leading organizations working to tackle homelessness. A nationally-recognized developer and operator of permanent supportive housing, helping hundreds of individuals experiencing homelessness, often struggling with disabling conditions, get off the street each year. Nearly 2,000 people call one of the Trust's 26 buildings, home. - Tasked with helping to create and spearhead a multimillion-dollar fundraising and partnership strategy.
Fellow
Scholarship awardee in the founding cohort of the Newton Venture Program Fellowship (NVP). The NVP Fellowship is a highly competitive, first-of-its-kind investor training program started as a joint venture between London Business School, LocalGlobe and Silicon Valley Bank. The mission is to train the VC investors of the future to back the companies of tomorrow and make the venture landscape more fair, inclusive, and representative of the population it serves. #NVPxLBS01
Education
MIT Sloan School of Management
Executive MBA
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Master of Science - MSc, Theory and History of International Relations
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Master of Science - MSc, Social Business and Entrepreneurship
University of California, Berkeley - School of Law
Executive Education Certificate - VC University, Venture Capital
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