Daniel Dart is the Founder and General Partner of Rock Yard Ventures. He is also the founder of the Future Titans summit, an amazing event he recently hosted in Austin for emerging managers and the LPs who back them. Daniel is a collaborative, Seed-focused investor focused on backing founders who are refunding core industries. We talked about Future Titans, ambition, authenticity, and the pursuit of Tier One status. We also explored:

Why Future Titans exists: Daniel built the Emerging Manager Summit as the room he wished existed—relationship-first, practical, and designed for funds I–III (not a conference-business play). He’s focused on creating the right environment vs. chasing early vanity metrics.

Anti-status design (no name tags / no pitch decks): He argues most events incentivize social stack-ranking and transactional behavior; removing those cues forces human-first conversations and lowers the “pitch” energy.

Core philosophy: “find believers, don’t convince skeptics.” Trust is his upstream variable for everything—LP relationships, founder support, community building. His “patron/believer” framing is about compounding a small set of true supporters over time.

Founder support system (real operator cadence): He shares a concrete post-check rhythm—every-other-week check-ins early, then monthly—aimed at building trust and creating a safe place for founders to think clearly when things get messy.

Building “tier-one” access via a “Voltron” network: Rather than pretending he can see everything, he wants a trusted brain-trust where high-signal peers effectively extend his coverage; Future Titans is partly a compounding mechanism for that.

Investing in Startups is hosted by Joe Magyer, founder and managing partner of Seaplane Ventures.