Ty Danco, Fintech + Olympics

Angel Invest Boston

Sponsors:

• Purdue University Entrepreneurship
• Peter Fasse, patent attorney at Fish & Richardson
• Sal's Syndicate: Click to Join

Ty Danco is an outlier in a population of outliers. His interests are varied and pursued passionately. He’s founded two fintech companies, he’s invested in a gazillion startups and he’s been a hugely generous advisor to companies, in fact the chief advisor at Techstars. Oh, I forgot to mention he’s an Olympian and also deeply involved with crypto-currencies. In this really meaty interview, Ty and I covered a wide range of topics. He explained his ideas in his affably quirky way. This was a super fun conversation.

Quotes:

"Danco, why are you here? You're a marketing guy." And I said that I was here to see Lever Brothers and he goes, "You idiot, you signed up for Lehman Brothers."

“So, I took a leave of absence from school, and Wharton let me make up my remaining credits over the summer, and so I tried doing all three things at the same time. It was a success on paper, I did make the 84 [Olympic] team, I did complete the MBA, I did work at Lehman Brothers, but in truth I was overwhelmed, I did everything badly.

I ended up breaking my heel and didn't compete in Sarajevo. I learned nothing in my last classes at school and I was just lost and floundering my first year on Wall Street. So, there's a pretty obvious lesson there about the need to focus and my inability to multi-task. That's maybe why they say focus on one metric that matters, don't try to do five balls in the air at once.”

Topics covered include:

• Ty Danco’s Bio
• How Ty Danco Stated His Career – Lehman Brothers vs. Lever Brothers – Olympic Team
• "Danco, why are you here? You're a marketing guy." And I said that I was here to see Lever Brothers and he goes, "You idiot, you signed up for Lehman Brothers."
• Ty Danco Doing Too Much
• Ty Danco and the Importance of Focus
• Ty Danco on the Cover of Sports Illustrated
• Ty Danco Moves from New York City to Burlington, Vermont
• Ty Danco Discovers that, Thanks to Michael Bloomberg, It Was Possible to Do Investing in Vermont
• Ty Danco Founds His First Startup - eSecLending
• Ty Danco Recalls Wall Street Misogyny of the Past – Women Found a Haven in Hugely Complex CMO Deals
• Ty Danco’s Company is Hit by the Crash of 2008
• Sal Daher Asks for you to Review the Podcast on iTunes – It Really Helps!
• Why Ty Danco’s Second Startup Failed
• Ty Danco’s Angel Investments
• Ty Danco Thinks Crypto-currencies Are Worthy Alternative Investments
• Ty Danco Believes One Can Eliminate Many Losers - But at a Cost
• Ty Danco’s Philosophy of Angel Investing
• Why Mass Medical Angels Is the Only Angel Group Ty Danco Attends
• Why Ty Danco Does Not Invest Based on Cold Calls
• Ty Danco Reveals the Secret of Getting into Techstars
• Ty Danco Likes VCs Involved in Every Deal, Why?
• “Virtually all of my deals, 99% of the deals come not from me directly stumbling over something, but from a lead from my network.”
• Boston Angel Pantheon: Michael Mark, Joe Caruso and Jean Hammond
• What Are ICOs and Why should VCs be Scared of Them?
• Some of Ty Danco’s Favorite Startups
• Ty Danco’s Categorization of Mentoring Styles
• What Sets Accelerators Apart in Ty Danco’s Estimation
• Ty Danco Takes a Page from Manu Kumar in Starting His Next Venture

Topics: fintech, crypto, angel investing strategies, techstars