Dan Beldy

Partner, Airwing Ventures

Dan is a Partner at Airwing Ventures and Powerplant Ventures. Most recently, he was the founder and CEO of 11X. Previously, he was a General Partner of Steamboat Ventures. Dan has spent the last 20 years in technology and finance as an investor, entrepreneur and operator. Dan currently has board roles at Freewheel, Baynote, Vobile, Fanzter, and Passenger. Dan’s prior investments include Playdom, acquired by The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS), MoveNetworks, acquired by EchoStar Corp. (NASDAQ: SATS), and Greystripe, acquired by ValueClick (NASDAQ: VCLK). Prior to Steamboat, Dan was a co-founder and managing director of Plainview Capital, an innovative family of fundamental value investment funds that leverage a proprietary software platform, Plainview Analytics™. Before Plainview, Dan was an associate and partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Focusing on early stage software investments, Dan was involved with several successful, growing companies as an investor/advisor/board member including Employease, acquired by ADP (NASDAQ: ADP), Technorati, Starmine, acquired by Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI), and Method Home. Early in his career Dan was an officer and an F/A-18 Hornet jet instructor pilot for the U.S. Navy, completing over 275 aircraft carrier landings in tours of duty with the Atlantic Fleet. Dan received a BS in computer science as a distinguished graduate of the US Naval Academy in 1986, and received an MBA in finance from The Wharton School in 1998.

Articles by Dan Beldy

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....

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

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

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

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,...