Rock Yard Ventures founder Daniel Dart and Washington University in St. Louis Chief Investment Officer Scott Wilson engage in a fireside chat at the Rock Yard Roundup gathering in Forth Worth.
Annie Kim/Rock Yard Ventures
An Austin-based venture capitalist put a cowboy-themed twist on his third annual gathering of investors and CEOs he said represented close to $1 trillion in assets under management.
Rock Yard Roundup usually takes place in Austin. For its third event, Rock Yard Ventures founder Daniel Dart chose Fort Worth.
About 100 institutional investors, public and private company CEOs, sports executives, academics and other influential people from all over the country convened at the Stockyards last week for a series of discussions on the nation’s financial and technology sectors.
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They also networked while watching bull rides and getting fitted for custom-made cowboy hats.
This years’ event was co-hosted by Greg Lippmann, the founder and CIO of New York-based hedge fund LibreMax Capital; Oleg Nodelman, San Francisco-based founder of biotech-focused investment firm EcoR1 Capital; and Robert Forsythe, co-founder and CEO of Tampa-based family office investment firm Third Lake Capital.
Although attendees got into the weeds on topics from biotechnology regulation to co-investing, Dart’s goal for the conference has always been to build camaraderie that pierces through the buttoned-up facades of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and even Dallas’ Y’all Street.
Rock Yard Roundup attendees pose for a photo at the Cowtown Coliseum in Fort Worth.
Ray Jacobson/Rock Yard Ventures
Many attendees hadn’t seen Fort Worth before. The choice was intentional on Dart’s part — he wanted Rock Yard Roundup to be somewhere “unpretentious.”
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“There’s something about Fort Worth that has a timeless spirit,” Dart, who is originally from Los Angeles, said. “It’s the original Cow Town.”
Investing beyond the coasts
John Moncrief, partner at Moncrief Properties, the commercial real estate company tied to his prominent Fort Worth oil family, said the unstructured elements of the conference left him with new relationships and impactful conversations to reflect on.
“The speakers and attendees weren’t cookie-cutter tech founders or finance professionals,” Moncrief said in an email. “They were independent thinkers willing to challenge conventional wisdom.”
It was also meaningful to share Fort Worth’s Western culture, Moncrief said.
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The San Francisco Bay Area may still be the preeminent place to fund companies, said Chad Rigetti, CEO and co-founder of Sygaldry Technologies, but Rock Yard Roundup showed that promising companies can attract venture funding from places outside the Northern California hub.
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“You had investment managers and fund managers and investors representing an enormous amount of capital at this very small event. It’s a very casual but hyper competent vibe,” Rigetti said, whose Ann Arbor-based company builds quantum accelerated AI servers.
Chad Rigetti, the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based CEO and co-founder of Sygaldry Technologies, gives a talk at the Stockyards at the Rock Yard Roundup event in Fort Worth.
Annie Kim/Rock Yard Ventures
At one panel, Chad Blankenship, president and general manager of the Ariat Texas Rattlers, told the story of the 20 cowboys who founded Fort Worth-based Professional Bull Riders in 1992.
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Each cowboy invested $1,000 in the company, which was acquired by Spire Capital in 2007. Later, it was sold to Endeavor Group, and in 2025, Professional Bull Riders, ON Location and IMG were acquired by sports and entertainment company TKO Group Holdings. The transaction was valued at $3.25 billion.
“The participants there are really high grade and successful investors and business people from family offices and institutional investors and otherwise, and they were really interested in meeting an authentic cowboy and hearing about a wildly successful cowboy business,” Blankenship said.
Drawing inspiration
Dart said he was in and out of jail and prison growing up in California. He said he got caught up in street life before getting two master’s degrees from the London School of Economics and later attending the MIT Sloan School of Management for an MBA.
While he said he was glad to escape street life, it gave him something he believes is undervalued in the U.S. today — community. His drive to build a sense of community among the country’s sprawling set of moneymakers in part led him to start Rock Yard Roundup.
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Today, Dart lives in Austin. Some of the country’s most prominent investors — including Houston’s John Arnold and Dallas-based Canyon Partners founder Josh Friedman — helped mentor him when he first launched Rock Yard Ventures.
Austin-based venture capitalist Daniel Dart welcomes investors and CEO’s to Rock Yard Roundup in Fort Worth.
Annie Kim/Rock Yard Ventures
An invitation to this year’s event said it was inspired by the “lineage of the rebel and the outlaw,” citing examples for Freemasons and unions.
Dart added he’s watched a national pivot among investors toward focusing on manufacturing and industries within the U.S.
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“People are starting to look at, ‘How do we build at home?’” Dart said. “Fort Worth captured that more so than in New York or San Francisco.”