Hi, I'm David.
We're all born with gifts. When they're cultivated and directed, we flourish.
I spent a decade proving the first half of that sentence the hard way. I helped shape $10B+ in opportunities across Asia and America, worked with billion-dollar companies, and raised over $300M in venture capital. From the outside, it looked like flourishing. Up close, it was 150+ hotel nights a year, back-to-back flights, and relentless hustle.
Then everything changed.
On May 27, 2019, a car crash crushed my spine.
Flat on my back for over 6 months, I saw what the hustle had been blinding me to. I had been moving fast, but going nowhere.
During recovery, I gained clarity. My wife and I left California to start fresh across the Pacific, and to rebuild our lives around what actually matters: helping people flourish.
Today, I champion meaningful growth over mindless hustle.
In my 20s and 30s, I chased success without direction. Now, in my 40s, I'm committed to being the guide I wish I'd had. I help ambitious people discover their gifts, develop their talents, and live out their calling with clarity and conviction.
When I'm not investing or writing, I'm mentoring gifted HS scholars alongside my incredible wife. I'm also a scholar at Fuller Theological Seminary and a proud member of Family Future Fund.
Dear Founders is what came out of that second life. One letter a week on the parts of business nobody says out loud.
— David
How these letters help you
Every Sunday evening, before the week begins pulling at you, I’ll send you one candid, unfiltered letter.
No frameworks. No listicles. No recycled growth hacks.
Just what I’ve learned from building, failing, rebuilding, and what I’m seeing now from both sides of the table, as a founder and an investor.
Over time, these letters will help you:
- See what others miss. The hidden costs of ambition, the danger of raising too early, the partners you should never choose, and the signals founders ignore until it is too late.
- Think beyond the next round. Build for durability, not applause; choose capital without surrendering control; and make decisions your future self will not regret.
- Name what building is doing to you. The loneliness, ego, fear, reinvention, and quiet compromises that rarely make it into founder stories.
- Become harder to fool. By investors, by trends, by vanity metrics—and sometimes by your own ambition.
- Remember that the company is not the whole story. Your work matters. So do your faith, family, health, character, and the person you are becoming along the way.
And perhaps most importantly, you will be reminded that you are not carrying all of this alone.
One letter, every Sunday evening.
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