Happy New Year Rock Yard people!

We hope you got all your year-end work done and that you spent some time with friends and family.

We had another busy month:

This Month’s Headlines:

• Year in Review: Rock Yard’s Inaugural Year - What Went Right, What We Learned, and What is to Come! 

• New Year’s Resolution: How we’re getting better in 2025!

• Ugly Sweaters: Two cities, two sets of AirPods, and lots of ugly sweaters.

• Team Travel & Events:

• January 3-11 / San Francisco, CA

  • Daniel will be in San Francisco, so if you’re in the Bay Area and want to meet/catch up, let us know!

• January 25-30 / Miami, FL

  • Speaking: Daniel will be speaking at Global Alts at the Miami Convention Center.

    • Ryan will be there too! (If you are around, hit us up!)

With the New Year, we also want to do a better job collaborating with you, the subscribers, and creating connections across the community. That’s why we’re launching the Notice Board, our monthly bulletin on opportunities across our network — collaboration opportunities, events, jobs, helpful or thought-provoking reads, and more. This month will be pretty quiet, but we promise it’ll get busy — FAST.

🚨If you have something you want featured next month — let us know!

Rock Yard Year in Review

With 2024 coming to an end, we took some time to reflect on the firm’s first year. We did a lot right but made some mistakes along the way — but every mistake is an opportunity to learn and improve.

First the highlights…

• We got the opportunity to partner with four amazing companies - with a fifth to be announced soon!: Reffie, Rectangle, Revin, and Hestus — stay tuned for the fifth!

• We moved to Austin, TX — America’s fastest-growing tech hub!

• We hosted our 1st Annual Rock Yard Roundup, bringing together more than 40 exceptional people from the Rock Yard universe — representing nearly half a trillion dollars in combined AUM and market cap!

• We got to host a ton of great people — hosting more than 20 events with more than 1,000 attendees in 6 cities, AND we launched our Rock Yard Roundtables and Industrial Tech Night series!

• Expanded the team. We hired our first MBA Associate and — at year end — brought on our first full-time team member, Ryan, to support Daniel.

• And Daniel sent more than 450 Rock Yard postcards (iykyk)

But like any firm, there were things we wish we did better too. We see every shortcoming as an opportunity to learn and improve. Here are some lessons:

• Like any small firm, we were often faced with tradeoffs. Do we allocate time toward this? Who is managing that? Is everything getting done? Sometimes we made the right decisions, sometimes we didn’t. Sometimes we missed deadlines set by ourselves and others. That said, we’ve already made a lot of progress, systematizing our processes and focusing on what matters. No more waste in 2025. (Or, at least as little as possible!)

• Banking issues were a major snag for us. Finding the right banking partner is hard enough for a first fund. We faced an added (and unjustified) barrier due to Daniel’s history, which scuttled a banking partnership before it could begin. Fast forward, we’ve found great partners in Stifel. Lesson learned: work with your believers and move on quickly from rejection.

• We had a ton of success with events this year, but we know we missed out on a lot of opportunities to meet more great people. This year we will be better, getting the word out earlier and working with great people to improve on our events.

• We need to improve our expertise and research sharing. We received a ton of feedback from investors and founders alike — we don’t do a good job of showing how well we know the sectors in which we invest. That’ll change this year.

That said, we’re already hard at work improving existing processes and rolling out new stuff in 2025. A few things to stay tuned for:

• New Podcast — The Dart Board: join Daniel as he goes deep with industry leaders on subjects across tech, venture, and innovation - this is the bleeding edge. From top investors and VCs to c-suite business leaders and world-class athletes and musicians. This podcast is for anyone who wants to build something great and push the boundaries of what the future looks like.

• An Emerging Manager Summit: Stay tuned for updates!

• More Events: We’ll expand our scope, geography, and frequency.

• A Book: Target release Q3 2025!

Thank you for everyone who was a part of the journey so far! Every year (and day!) is an opportunity to improve, and we’re excited to keep the ball rolling in the New Year!

Rock Yard New Year’s Resolutions

This year we’re committed to leaning into our strengths and improving on our weaknesses. We’ve learned a ton over 2024, and we’re sure we’ll do the same in 2025. Here’s some New Year’s resolutions from the team on how they aim to improve in 2025:

December Recap: Ugly Sweaters!

We kept the ball rolling with events in December, hosting another couple Industrial Tech Nights — but this time with a fun holiday wrinkle.

Attendees dusted off their ugliest sweaters for a chance at a prize — a new pair of AirPods to the person with the ugliest sweater.

Huge shoutout to our two winners:

• Houston: event co-host and RocketNetwork founder Oleg Lysiak!

• San Francisco: Founder and CEO of Charter, Yuk Chi Chan!

Stay tuned for more events in the New Year! We’re working on giving you earlier heads-ups so you can plan ahead and join us for the next one.

Where You Can Find Us

Here’s the latest info on events and where the team will be traveling in the coming months.

• January 3-11 / San Francisco, CA

  • Daniel will be in San Francisco, so if you’re in the Bay Area and want to meet/catch up, let us know!

• January 25-30 / Miami, FL

  • Speaking: Daniel will be speaking on the main stage at Global Alts at the Miami Convention Center.

    • Ryan will be there too!

Reach out to Daniel, Ryan, or Lavina - we’d love to chat!

That’s it for now! ‘til next time.

- Rock Yard