Before
Commercial lending at a bank in Michigan, then three and a half years managing a nonprofit endowment. No startup experience, no Bay Area network.
The move
He published investment theses on Twitter with dates attached and consequences if wrong: bullish on Snapchat when sentiment was against it, an early call on TikTok, and a public portfolio of mock checks into real startups. When a founder with a large following called one of them the best analysis of his company he had seen, the writing started functioning as a track record. In parallel he cold-messaged constantly and paid his own way to San Francisco for meetings.
The turn
He convinced Afore Capital to take him on as a remote intern, an arrangement the industry did not make at the time. He sold his house and a rental property to afford the reduced pay. That relationship led to co-founding Gelt VC in 2019, writing real checks off a balance sheet, and to Banana Capital in 2021.
Timeline
- 2018 public writing begins
- 2019 remote internship at Afore, then co-founds Gelt VC
- 2021 Banana Capital Fund I at roughly 10 million dollars
- 2022 Fund II at roughly 20 million dollars
- 2024 onward, Fund III deploying
What this route asks
Public predictions you can be judged on, and the means to subsidize your own apprenticeship. The second half is the part most retellings leave out.