Jakob Diepenbrock / Discipulus Ventures

Jakob Diepenbrock (Discipulus Ventures) is the front door to the young talent building hard tech in El Segundo. The exclusive Demo Days he runs are hard to get into for both investors and founders. Now with more than 1,000+ applications per cohort, they’re bringing together the youngest technical talent in hard tech and the investors backing companies of American interest.

He landed in the Gundo before any GP had set up shop, after noticing the gap between the builders already there and the early-stage capital that had not followed them into town. He started building the community, which became cohorts of young engineers building for the American interest.

That convening became a nonprofit. The nonprofit became a $9M Fund I. Fund I became an oversubscribed $30M Fund II. What has not changed is Jakob’s discipline around getting in extremely early, and the early pricing is a byproduct of spotting talent before anyone else is in the room.

Jakob writes $175K checks across 13 companies per cohort.

Full episode below, or on Spotify / Apple Podcasts