Dan Lynn
CO-FOUNDER AND PARTNER

Dan co-founded Starting Point Ventures in 2007 to help aspiring entrepreneurs achieve their dreams through access to capital and advisory services.

Over the past 20 years, Dan started, grew, and sold several award-winning digital technology and solutions companies.

In 1999, Dan founded DigitalGrit, a leading, award-winning Web1 interactive direct response company. Under Dan's leadership, DigitalGrit was recognized as the #1 Best Place to Work in New Jersey, one of America's Top 25 Best Places to Work for Small to Mid-sized Businesses, and one of New Jersey's Fastest Growing Technology Companies (Deloitte).

In 2005, Dan founded RelevantNoise, one of the first Web2 social media mining technology companies and an early adopter of AI to determine sentiment from unstructured data. DigitalGrit and RelevantNoise were both acquired in 2007 by one of the world's largest private equity companies.

In 2008, Dan co-founded Again Interactive, a Web2 social media marketing company.

In 2013, Dan founded Zaptitude, an innovative referral-marketing technology company. Its technology, Good Influence, was the backbone social referral engine for the famous Ice Bucket Challenge, the largest and most impactful social fundraising phenomena in history.  Good Influence amplified donations to the ALS Association by over $1,300,000.

Following the sale of Again Interactive in 2018, Dan was exposed to Bitcoin and the incredible possibilities of digital assets and the creator economy. Since then he has focused significant time and resources on the possibilities of the crypto/Web3 space and the innovative decentralized applications and exciting digital assets emerging from it.

Dan is currently a founding partner at Vertical Shift, a Web 3 company dedicated to investing in exciting AI and Web3 companies with dynamic leaders and innovative ideas.

Prior to his entrepreneurial endeavors, Dan held various senior roles at AT&T and ADP in Strategy, Marketing, Sales, and Finance. While at AT&T, Dan spent several years within the company's venerable Bell Labs organization. 

Dan holds an MBA from Rutgers University.