Daniel Darling

Managing Partner, focal

Daniel has built a career specializing in the intersection of new technology innovation and business strategy. Over the last decade, he has founded companies, grown startups to acquisition and led product innovation at public technology corporations. He has experience working in diverse geographies from the United States to Australia and Japan. Daniel started his career in digital advertising developing technology adoption strategies for leading brands before opening his own specialist agency. He was on the founding U.S. team of Mobile Interactive Group which enabled Fortune 500 companies to go mobile first and exited to Velti (NASDAQ: VELT) for $60M. At Velti, Daniel led efforts in product development and corporate innovation alongside engineering teams, launching the industry's first pure-play mobile performance marketing solution. In 2013, he put his founder hat back on to launch Darling Ventures, which then grew and evolved to become Focal. Focal leads pre-seed rounds in software startups throughout the US and Canada. Daniel has a degree in Economics and Social Sciences from The University of Sydney as well as executive education from the business schools of Stanford, Berkeley and Harvard.