Dan Wertman discusses the hypergrowth of his startup Noetica AI, which led to its acquisition by Thomson Reuters.
Dan Wertman discusses the hypergrowth of his startup Noetica AI, which led to its acquisition by Thomson Reuters. He also touches on securing early investments and finding product-market fit.
If your business is doing well, and customers are really itching for your products, then as a founder, you should always always always trade cash for time. >> [music] >> All righty, hello everyone and welcome to the Deal Maker Show. So, today we have a really spectacular guest, a guest that literally his company got acquired last month, so it's quite recent. And again, you know, that building and scaling, you know, and and financing, we're going to be listening about it, whether is how he made his co-founders, how he went about raising his first round of financing, also how to differentiate yourself in this crazy world of AI and finding product market fit, or even going through the acquisition process and and and why going through that process versus continuing on that hyper growth, you know, path of raising more money and and and doing it on their on their own. So, again,
the conversation today is going to be quite inspiring, so brace yourself for it, and without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Dan Wertman. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Great to be here. So, give us a walk through memory lane. Born in in born in New Jersey. And so, how was life growing up there? Yeah, I mean, it was it was it was can't complain, right? It was I grew up in a middle-class family in town called Montclair, New Jersey. It's kind of a quintessential New Jersey suburb, strip malls, large public high school, you know, block kickball games and the like. I actually come from a family of immigrants. My dad immigrated from Canada, my mother from Australia. Um you know, it's funny, I think reflecting back on my experience growing up, I think there were probably a lot of things about my childhood that could have shown that I would probably become a founder someday. You
know, the first thing is about my upbringing that's kind of interesting, and maybe this would be interesting to folks, is that I grew up with a dad staying at home, right? And and so, uh and my mother actually working. So, my dad did all the stuff that moms were doing at the time. Uh you know, he brought me to school, made my lunch, came to the soccer games, led the carpools. And I think like when you're growing up in the '80s and '90s, and less than 1% of dads are doing that, it was kind of the first time I kind of experienced that feeling of doing something different, you know, bucking the trend, standing out, paving a new path. And uh there's something about your lifestyle being different when you're a kid, probably seeded an entrepreneurial spirit, and began my journey down this path. So, um that was something about my childhood that was quite interesting. And I know you see, you
know, one thing that the I'm sure that shaped you up was seeing losing your mother as a kid. You know, I'm sure that, you know, typically in those moments of adversity is where you're able to really shape yourself up as a human being, and and I'm sure that for you that was that was a pivotal moment, too. Yeah, it's it's kind of an interesting thing. When you dig into founders' backgrounds, it's probably not uncommon to find that there was some sort of tragedy in their lives. And I don't know why that is. Perhaps it's kind of the type of resilience that you find experiencing something really awful that lends itself to starting something successful. And my story is no exception. So, you know, when I was still a kid, well before I was a teenager, my mother died in an accident. And you know, when that happens to you as a kid, your world is kind of shaken, and it can go one of two ways in in
many experiences. One is you dive into something productive, you kind of distract yourself from everything, and you gain that chip on your shoulder. Or it could go the other way, and you you know, you can become very insular. I chose the former. So, I dove into everything I could learn about any topic. I felt like, you know, this wasn't going to define me, and I was going to push through any obstacle and make sure that, you know, myself and those around me succeeded. How old were you when that happened? Just a kid, probably about 10 or 11. Yeah. Wow. So, as you were saying, you know, like you got into learning about everything, and one of the interests that you got was a government, which got you into Penn. But funny enough, you didn't really pursue that, because you ended up landing at BlackRock. So, that's quite the um the the the sequence of events there. Yeah, I mean, you know, Penn
is a great program, and they have a school of arts and sciences that allows you to explore a lot of different types of studies. I was so interested in government that I really thought for a minute about going to the Hill. And then I started this amazing, you know, memory of I I sat down to read Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker, and I became an incredibly enamored with finance and the world of markets. And so, I actually ended up taking a summer internship at BlackRock and joining as a full-time analyst. My role at BlackRock was actually really really interesting. I was in a group responsible for coming up with the new financial products in credit markets. So, we were developing these new and innovative financial products, um in particular in fixed income markets, and it really taught me two big things. You know, one is I learned how to innovate and validate new products, right? Obviously,
these are security products, but transferable to really any type of product. Um distilling product feedback, you know, understanding fast iteration, and that became incredibly valuable for my work at Noetica. Uh two is I learned deeply about the capital markets and how they operate, and who were the players and why they function the way they do. Uh and that obviously became super interesting to me, uh and it's part of the reason why I started Noetica many years later. >> [snorts] >> So, in your case, you go to BlackRock, then after BlackRock, law school. Now, obviously law school, um and then going to Wachtell, which is one of the top law firms, I'm sure that they, you know, really planted the seed for what they, you know, would become Noetica, but law school. I mean, it's incredible how you go from excited about government to then, you know, you're going to BlackRock, you
know, and are doing financial products to another detour into into law school. So, it's like those crazy swings, you know, that are taking place, where I think that to a certain degree it also gives you an advantage, because now you have knowledge transfer, where you're able to apply stuff that is completely unrelated into whatever you have in front of you. So, I guess, how does that help you, you know, as well as a as a founder, and what were the sequence of events, you know, leading for you to really become an entrepreneur? Yeah, it's a really good question. So, I mean, working at BlackRock, I was working with obviously highly regulated products, right? So, I actually became super interested in financial regulation, policy that was coming out of the Treasury. Uh and so, I actually I very much thought about doing the JD/MBA when I was going back to school. And then, you know, it turned
out that was an extra year, and you know, maybe I didn't need the MBA. So, I actually decided to just go back and do uh the law degree. Um I was lucky enough to to get into HLS at Harvard, and so I was there for a number of years. Um and that was kind of really where my thirst for entrepreneurship, um you know, really I think really took off. Um I remember when I was in law school, I think I broke the record for the amount of credits I could take outside of the law school at all the other schools uh in that area, at MIT Sloan and HBS. Uh and you know, I I I remember very specifically I took um my mentor and later investor's class, uh Jeff Bussgang, uh who runs Flagship Capitals, uh launching technology ventures, and a bunch of classes like that, to really understand how it worked to go from zero to one, and the mistakes maybe others made that, you know, if I ever decided to do it someday
that I could avoid. So, out of law school, I joined Wachtell Lipton, as you said. Wachtell is known as one of the best transactional firms in existence. Um Wachtell itself is actually a very entrepreneurial place. It's it it people sometimes like think about the legal industry as this industry that's pretty antiquated, um or maybe stuck in the past. Wachtell is actually like quite the opposite of that. It's famous for inventing what's called the poison pill, which famously upended how corporate law is practiced today, and ultimately changed an entire corporate legal industry. So, it was really a place where I learned something very specific, which is that meritocracy of ideas um really wins. And that's something I really appreciated. Um I remember as a first year there, uh we were working on this crazy complicated spin-off, and I came to a partner, uh you know, with a new idea for how it
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