Wildcard (n.) –
a card that can become any card;
a person or thing that is difficult to predict
a person or thing that is difficult to predict
I started Wildcard to do the thing that’s always given me the most energy: backing great people, often before the world realizes how exceptional they are.
I’ve been doing a version of this my whole career. At 21, knowing next to nothing about investing, I cold emailed Brad Gerstner and talked my way into an internship at Altimeter - then a little-known, travel-focused hedge fund. I drove across the country to help open the Menlo office and spent four years going from the front desk to Brad’s Chief of Staff to Analyst.
After that I co-founded Macro, a workflow automation company backed by Index, SV Angel, and South Park Commons, with Peter Zakin.
Most recently, I honed the craft of backing pre-seed founders at Afore Capital alongside Anamitra Banerji, Gaurav Jain, and the team.
Along the way, I’ve been lucky to invest early in companies like Retool, Ollama, LangChain, Datacurve, Accordance, and others - often before they had found the idea that would ultimately work.
derrick@wildcardfund.com
I’ve been doing a version of this my whole career. At 21, knowing next to nothing about investing, I cold emailed Brad Gerstner and talked my way into an internship at Altimeter - then a little-known, travel-focused hedge fund. I drove across the country to help open the Menlo office and spent four years going from the front desk to Brad’s Chief of Staff to Analyst.
After that I co-founded Macro, a workflow automation company backed by Index, SV Angel, and South Park Commons, with Peter Zakin.
Most recently, I honed the craft of backing pre-seed founders at Afore Capital alongside Anamitra Banerji, Gaurav Jain, and the team.
Along the way, I’ve been lucky to invest early in companies like Retool, Ollama, LangChain, Datacurve, Accordance, and others - often before they had found the idea that would ultimately work.
derrick@wildcardfund.com
Every great founder starts as a Wildcard.
The world can’t see it yet.
We do.
We write first checks to inevitable founders before the company looks inevitable.