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Daniel Dart is the founder of Solo GP fund Rock Yard Ventures.
His…
Daniel Dart is the founder of Solo GP fund Rock Yard Ventures.
His…
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Daniel Dart reposted thisDaniel Dart reposted thisBluevia's AI is live with surgical patients. Pre-op is a clinical workflow. Nurses coordinate it and hand clinical judgement to a doctor. Bluevia now runs that coordination. Frontier models are error prone, which becomes dangerous in clinical settings. Patient: "No heart issues, but my heart's been racing the last few days." Frontier AI: logs "no heart issues". Bluevia: "Tell me more about that," then flags it to anesthesia. So we built a benchmark with top US anesthesiologists, who have 350,000+ pre-op screens between them. Bluevia: 97%. Top frontier model: 71%. Clinical decisions stay with the doctor, always. Built with our incredible clinical team, Peter Pronovost MD, PhD, FCCM, Kristin Washburn, and Vijay Prasad MD, MPH. Comment below to receive the full analysis.
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Daniel Dart shared thisThank you Charlotte Kramon and The Dallas Morning News for taking the time to share a bit about our third annual Rock Yard Roundup. When I first began building Rock Yard Ventures, I envisioned an annual gathering that I hoped would one day have the impact and influence of Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley Conference. But equally important was building it my way, in my spirit, and alongside friends, in the hope that Rock Yard and its friends could be greater than the sum of its parts. I was inspired when I heard that Warren Buffett's first Berkshire meeting was just him in a room chatting with 20 people, with a paper note on the door that read "Meeting in progress." Fifty years later, it has become more than a pilgrimage; it is a tradition. And as audacious as it sounds, I hope to build something in that spirit of my own that even he would be proud of. Last week was its third year, and it truly felt like an inflection point. After a week to reflect, I am beyond proud. Not just because of its trajectory, but because of the amazing and inspiring people who make up the community. It is truly humbling to spend time, share space, and partner with individuals and organizations whom I admire so deeply. I want to thank some of the amazing partners who helped make this year so special: Greg Lippmann (LibreMax Capital), Oleg Nodelman (EcoR1 Capital, LLC), Robert Forsythe (Third Lake Partners, LLC), Laurie Katz (Grayscale Investments), Keri Findley (Tacora Capital), Ryan Eisenman (Arch), Alan Faulkner (Stifel Bank), and Jeff Perry (Carta). It is a privilege to work and partner with you all. I also want to give a massive thank you to all of the wonderful speakers, founders, and friends (new & old) who came out and who make the community so special. It was an absolute honor to host each and every one of you. Thank you for making the time, and I look forward to many more years of building together. And last but not least, for the rebels and the outlaws in all of us, let us remember that the best is yet to come. 📰 Link to story in the comments.
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Daniel Dart reposted thisDaniel Dart reposted thisEvery counterparty in energy ends up asking the same question: what will this system never do? How can I trust it? "The model is well trained" does not answer that. A learned policy produces a proposal. Wire it straight to an asset and that proposal becomes permission by default; not because anyone decided it should, but because nothing downstream is entitled to say "no". Our Chief AI Scientist, David J Klein, and our CTO, Adel Nasiri, make the case for what belongs in that gap: a layer that asks whether a command is inside the limits the operator agreed to, and what to do when it isn't. Declared. Deterministic. Enforced. Sense and Infer are becoming table stakes. Judge is the product. Position paper below. 👇 https://www.joulesai.com/
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Daniel Dart reposted thisDaniel Dart reposted this$10 MILLION. That's how much Revin will drive in net-new bookings this year for Rick Vanden Boomen and his Bath Fitter business. 5 states. Nearly 20 markets. 10,000+ bathrooms remodeled. One of the largest Bath Fitter operations in North America. Next stop: $100M!
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Daniel Dart shared this🚨 New episode alert! 🚨 This week, I got a chance to sit down with the super interesting Matt Kraning from Menlo Ventures. Matt's path into venture capital is an interesting one, and seems to have started almost by accident. Mid-PhD at Stanford, he stepped away to join DARPA and spent two years as a data scientist as part of their first operational program since Vietnam, including a stint overseas in Afghanistan. There, he met the future co-founders of Expanse, which, after bootstrapping, raised a seed from Peter Thiel, became a category-defining business, and sold to Palo Alto Networks for $1.25 billion. In this episode, we get into what that time overseas taught him about building startups, why founders need to be right rather than popular, and why he prefers founders who want to learn fast over those with a chip on their shoulder. We also discuss why most VCs are just a commodity and only a few actually earn the check they write. It was fantastic to record, and I'm really excited to share it. 🎧 Links to listen... Apple: https://lnkd.in/dRb29H6j Spotify: https://lnkd.in/d6EfBgUZ
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Daniel Dart reposted thisWe are excited to be working with Stephen Bartlett and Dominic Williamson on this project to make progress towards a practical self-correcting quantum memory.Daniel Dart reposted thisOur scholarship round is now open! (Closing 8th October) We currently have three exciting research projects on offer. One of them is a project that will be supervised by FLiQC's Director Prof. Stephen Bartlett, and Dr. Dominic Williamson of the University of Sydney node. This project would be ideal for a candidate who is motivated in constructing practical 'self-correcting quantum memories'. Through FLiQC's embedded 12-month industry placement, students gain direct industry experience alongside their research. Partnered with Sygaldry Technologies, the successful candidate will have the opportunity to contribute to innovation at the intersection of quantum computing and AI. If this sounds like a project you are interested in, explore more on the Sydney Quantum Academy's website: https://lnkd.in/gBT2J8zx Think someone in your network would thrive in this project? Share this opportunity with them. #QuantumOpportunity #Quantum #STEMOpportunity
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Daniel Dart shared this🚨 New episode alert! 🚨 Earlier this week, I got to sit down with my good friend, Keri Findley, the founder and CEO of Tacora Capital, one of the most exciting new specialty finance investment firms in the world today. Keri started Tacora five and a half years ago with backing from Peter Thiel, after spending the back half of her career at Third Point cutting credit deals with some of the world's biggest new fintech companies like SoFi, Upstart, and Lending Club. But long before she made her mark on Wall St, she was building discipline as a competitive figure skater training at 5 am. In this episode, we dig into all of it, from the difference between lending against assets and buying them, why she thinks "follow your passion" is bad advice, and what a decade of compounding hard work actually looks like in practice. It was a great conversation, and I'm really excited to share it. Enjoy! 🎧 Links to listen... Apple: https://lnkd.in/gXBSv5T3 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/g6_xDxPZ
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Daniel Dart shared this🚨 New episode alert! Earlier this week, I got to sit down with Ted Schlein, executive chairman and general partner of Ballistic Ventures, and partner at Kleiner Perkins since 1996. Ted has been in the cybersecurity industry really since it began, helping build one of the first major companies in the sector, Symantec. He then joined Kleiner Perkins, where he has been involved for over three decades, during which he founded another cybersecurity darling, Fortify Software. And if that wasn't enough, he recently founded another venture firm, Ballistic Ventures. Very few people have had the staying power and success of Ted, and in this episode we dig into a bit of everything spanning his generational run - which is still going on today. We close by learning a bit about the stories that shape him and the best advice he picked up along the way. It is an absolutely epic conversation, and so excited to share it! 🎧 Links to listen... Apple: https://lnkd.in/g68UFJ8X Spotify: https://lnkd.in/ghAZQWbc
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Daniel Dart reposted thisDaniel Dart reposted thisThe industrial base of the future is not the factory of the past, with humanoid robots. That just doubles OpEx - robots and current manufacturing hardware add complexity, maintenance. The future of manufacturing includes autonomous machines that require few/no operators. Production will be code, and scale horizontally. Similar to a datacenter running kubernetes. Quality drift and failure will be assumed, designed into the system. A new type of physical AI will be necessary, simplifying exceptionally complex material science, physics and thermodynamics. This is what we are building at Autonomous Production. We are manufacturing for the DoW, today, with $xxK in monthly purchase orders. Doubling every 30-45 days. And because we are heavily automated, we manufacture parts with better margins than best-in-class SaaS platforms. We are hiring (PMs, Physical AI engineers, zero to one operators) to scale growth, and support the launch of our standalone factory. Our new Bay Area (Sausalito, reverse commute to SF) office is growing quickly, so please share this post if you know people looking for their next adventure 🚀
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Daniel Dart liked thisDaniel Dart liked thisBluevia's AI is live with surgical patients. Pre-op is a clinical workflow. Nurses coordinate it and hand clinical judgement to a doctor. Bluevia now runs that coordination. Frontier models are error prone, which becomes dangerous in clinical settings. Patient: "No heart issues, but my heart's been racing the last few days." Frontier AI: logs "no heart issues". Bluevia: "Tell me more about that," then flags it to anesthesia. So we built a benchmark with top US anesthesiologists, who have 350,000+ pre-op screens between them. Bluevia: 97%. Top frontier model: 71%. Clinical decisions stay with the doctor, always. Built with our incredible clinical team, Peter Pronovost MD, PhD, FCCM, Kristin Washburn, and Vijay Prasad MD, MPH. Comment below to receive the full analysis.
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Daniel Dart liked thisI'm excited to sit down with Matt Murphy of Menlo Ventures next week at Tech Insider: Growth Mode in San Francisco to talk about his early investment in Anthropic and what he's focusing on now. Katie Roof will also interview Lime CEO Wayne Ting, and we will lead a town hall discussion with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP partner Heidi Mayon and Nasdaq's SVP Jack Cassel. We have a few slots left if you're interested in joining. https://lnkd.in/gdZMG7QA
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Daniel Dart liked thisDaniel Dart liked thisI’m a believer that plasma physics is genuinely ready for AI, and that using AI & ML to predict and control plasma will have massive impacts to advancing critical infrastructure including energy and fabrication of next-gen semiconductor chips. But doing it right requires rich, specialized data in extreme physics…not just more compute. That’s the idea behind Zenithon AI, and why SOSV HAX is excited to back its $10M Seed round alongside BACKED VC, Lunar Ventures, Seraphim Space, MMC Ventures, and others. ⚛️What they do: Zenithon is building world models for extreme physics, starting with plasma, the fourth state of matter and a critical tech for fusion energy, advanced semiconductor manufacturing, aerospace, and more. 🚀Why it matters: Today, developing this tech still relies on slow, expensive simulation and experimentation. Zenithon’s models can run 1,000,000x faster than existing simulations on a single GPU. 🔥Why SOSV HAX: This investment is a natural extension of our work at the HAX Plasma Forge and our partnership with Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), where we’re focused on accelerating innovation in applications of plasma technologies. Read more about why we invested in Zenithon and why we’re proud to support co-founders Alex Higginbottom & Abetharan A.: https://lnkd.in/gZeim_pSSOSV HAX Backs Zenithon to Build World Models for Plasma PhysicsSOSV HAX Backs Zenithon to Build World Models for Plasma Physics
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Daniel Dart liked thisDaniel Dart liked thisLast week, Veridical Ventures hosted an "intimate-ish" event at Wally’s in Santa Monica. Thank you to the 75+ of you who showed out on a Wednesday! One of my favorite things about the room was that almost everyone there fell into one of three buckets. They were either a Founder, they were a VC, or they were part of a Family Office. That was intentional. It's undeniable just how interconnected these three worlds have become. In fact, right before the event, I was on an hour-long call with one of our Family Office LPs and a portfolio company founder. The LP had introduced our founder directly to the President of one of their operating companies to explore a customer relationship. You can't ask for a much warmer introduction than that! It’s a small example of a much broader trend. Family Offices are becoming an increasingly important part of the venture ecosystem. And not just as investors, but as true partners, customers, and connectors. And there’s a lot of untapped value in bringing these communities closer together. That was truly the spirit behind the evening. Bring tier-1 Founders, VCs, and Family Offices into the same room and let relationships manifest organically. A big shoutout to my co-host for the evening, Beverly Pacific, LLC and a huge thank you to our sponsors Stifel Bank, Punch Financial, and Gunderson Dettmer for helping make it all possible. Already looking forward to the next one! 🥂
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Daniel Dart liked thisDaniel Dart liked thisCalvin Chen and I met back in June 2024 - as he was navigating the early innings of building and potentially selling a company. We sat in an apartment I was subletting in San Francisco and talked about our roots. About where ambition and motivation comes from, and why there is no other way to live other than pursuing your own ideas on your own terms - relentlessly. That laid the foundation for our relationship... and I had a feeling we would have the chance to partner in the near future. Surely enough - it wasn't too long after that he and the crew (Justus Mattern) began to lay the groundwork for what is today Proximal. These early days kicked off the opportunity to be able to work together. 100 strategy calls and countless South Park walks later - the work crystallized and the team began to build the infrastructure that enables AI to improve from real-world experience. Having partnered with this team since day zero and witness their incredible pace of work - hitting $200M run rate revenue in a mere 10 months - is a function of how they operate. Relentlessly. Huge congrats to them with the announcement of their seed, welcoming good friends from the likes of General Catalyst, Diede V., Kristina Shen and more. It is certainly just the start.
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Daniel Dart liked thisDaniel Dart liked thisCongratulations to Workera and Kian Katanforoosh! Thank you for the opportunity to be part of this journey with you from the very beginning! https://lnkd.in/p/gMzZNhpH
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Daniel Dart liked thisDaniel Dart liked thisThere are a lot of amazing things about working at Checkr and our sabbatical program is at the top of the list. It’s available to every Checkr employee and this summer I got to experience it firsthand. For the first time in my career, I fully unplugged. I stepped away to spend time with my wife, our kids, and our extended family, and it was one of the most meaningful stretches of time I can remember. We traveled, connected, slowed down, and got to be present in a way the normal pace of life rarely allows. These are memories we'll cherish as a family forever. I'm grateful to work at a company that doesn't just talk about sustainable careers but builds them into how we operate. I've come back with more energy, clarity, and focus than I've had in years, and it's been so rewarding to dig back in with the amazing Checkr, Inc. team.
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