About
A pursuit of the absurd and truthful
Tech banking at Piper Jaffray led to the buy-side at StepStone, then to Mousse Partners, a family office, where I invested in venture funds and companies. Privateer, an investment I led at Mousse, recruited me to lead strategic finance and complete a spectrum of public and private market transactions. I brought Delta Emerald, a data science-powered VC firm, onto the cap table through a fundraise, and later joined to lead internal research.
I became a father in November 2024 and took an extended break to spend time with my son. No other adventure has been as beautiful or absurd. Writing about it at heirlloom.substack.com.
More on my work below. Get in touch.
Piper Jaffray | TMT Investment Banking Analyst | NYC | 2010 – 2012. Fortuitous timing as Internet 2.0 and social media 1.0 ramped. Found that I wanted to work with early-stage companies in a partnership rather than a transactional model.
Representative deals
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| Deal type | IPO | Merger | Series B | Secondary |
| Amount raised | $16B | N/A | $40M | $134M |
| Valuation | $104B | $1.4B | $200M | $940M |
StepStone Group | Analyst | NYC | 2012 – 2015. I met with hundreds of managers and entrepreneurs. Exceptional talent came through the door, but we couldn't match them with an LP because they weren't yet at a fund IV. I wanted to partner with emerging managers at fund I.
Mousse Partners | Associate | NYC | 2015 – 2018. One of a two-person team managing a $1B portfolio of venture fund and direct investments. The strategy: back idiosyncratic managers at inception and provide capital at scale to their breakout companies. I was recruited to a portfolio company, operating in one of the largest known but unproven consumer markets in the world.
Select early fund commitments:
Select directs:
*investments represent gains of $390M as of February 2026
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| Year | 2015 | 2016 | 2016 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 |
| Round | Series D | Series C | Secondary | Pre-IPO Note | Series C | Series E |
Privateer Holdings | Principal | Seattle | 2019 – 2022. $60B of annual cannabis spend transitioned from the illicit market to the legal. The complex patchwork of new markets presented an ideal environment for purpose-built tech. Privateer had a portfolio of operating subsidiaries, across which I negotiated three mergers and raised over $100M. I spent most of my time with Leafly, Privateer's three-sided marketplace. I led the finance and data teams and redesigned the monetization strategy, resulting in a 380% lift in GMV and 52% growth in monetized accounts.
Delta Emerald Ventures | Director | NYC | 2022 – 2024. The firm’s intelligence platform ingested $3B in annual transaction data and powered both my research and marketing initiatives. I uncovered a $127B opportunity for legal cannabis, a $30B opportunity for tech, and a consumer migration from alcohol to THC drinks, steering the firm's investment strategy further into software and THC drinks.
Dad | NYC | 2025 – Present. Delta Emerald wound down shortly after my son was born. I took an extended break to care for him. It's been the greatest adventure. A few months into it, I started heirlloom, a collection of essays and guides that have helped hundreds of new dads.
Get in touch: adam@acld.xyz