Dan Chen

Managing Director, CEC Capital

Dan Chen is currently a Managing Director at CEC Capital. He was previously a Managing Director at Siemer & Associates with 15 years of investment banking, private equity and corporate development experience and completed transactions totaling over $5 billion in value. Before Siemer & Associates, Mr. Chen was Managing Director of Corporate Development at a Los Angeles-based holding company where he evaluated and executed on a wide variety of new investment and partnership opportunities in multiple industries, including healthcare IT, software & services and the energy sector. Prior to that, Mr. Chen was Vice President in the media practice at Montgomery & Co., where he provided M&A and capital raising advisory services to companies in the software, digital media and Internet services space. Key transactions completed include Disney’s $700 million acquisition of Club Penguin, HBK Investments’ $165 million LBO of CoCreate Holding GmbH (now part of Parametric Technology Corp.), and late stage financings for companies such as Vantage Media and WildTangent. Before joining Montgomery & Co., Mr. Chen was an Investment Associate at TPG Capital. At TPG, he handled all aspects of deal sourcing and transaction execution for TPG’s cross-border private equity and venture investments in the U.S. and Asia. He participated in the investment activities of Newbridge Asia III, LP ($724 million) and Newbridge Asia II, LP ($392 million), and he monitored several portfolio companies in the Internet services space within those funds. Dan graduated from Yale University with a B.A in Economics.

Articles by Dan Chen

How Shaun Merritt Vibe-Coded Karrot.ai As A Solo Builder

I recently had the opportunity to chat with Shaun Merritt, cofounder and CTO of Karrot.ai, a LinkedIn ABM tool. Shaun was kind enough to share a comprehensive breakdown of how...

7 Steps to Build a Product That Sells Itself

Learn the 7 steps to product-led growth (PLG) to build a product that sells itself. Drive activation, boost conversions, and scale efficiently with Wes Bush from ProductLed....
Balancing self-care and startup pressure as a founder

The Founder’s Mental Health Playbook: What I Learned After Nearly Burning Out

A hard-won guide to staying mentally healthy while building a startup I founded Stitcher, the podcast platform, in 2007 and ran it for seven years until we sold in 2014....

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) for Early Stage Companies

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) for Early Stage Companies

In our latest session from the Mucker Growth Series featuring Ethan Smith from Graphite, we explored AEO, a significant new approach for optimizing visibility in AI-driven search, particularly relevant as...

Startup Guide to AI Visibility Be the Brand ChatGPT Recommends

Startup Guide to AI Visibility: Be the Brand ChatGPT Recommends

Introduction Today, users aren’t just searching on Google. They’re asking ChatGPT, Claude, Google’s Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI systems for advice. AI visibility is the new frontier of brand awareness....

Practical Uses of AI Automation for Startup Operations

Practical Uses of AI & Automation for Startup Operations

In a recent Mucker Growth Series session, we invited Rock Vitale, Founder & CEO of Easie, to share how he’s helped early-stage teams move from manual, fragmented workflows to streamlined,...

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