Rapha Danilo / Darkmode Ventures

Rapha Danilo is a Co-Founder and GP at Darkmode Ventures, an early stage fund investing in early-stage B2B SaaS, DevTools, and infrastructure startups.

Rapha’s story starts in the suburbs of Paris, where he dreamed of becoming a professional soccer player. After moving to Los Angeles, his perspective shifted toward entrepreneurship. While still in college, he co-founded a company that was later acquired by Gong.

As Rapha and his partners (Kat at Vareto, Amir in the DevTools space) navigated their careers as former founders turned operators, they kept encountering undiscovered talent that deserved backing. That led to Evening Fund (literally working on the fund in the evenings!), which would soon become Darkmode Ventures.

Our conversation gets into what makes Darkmode different: the partners aren’t full-time VCs. They remain active in their operating roles while investing in early startups. This hybrid model gives them real-time industry insights and networks.

Darkmode also reinvests management fees back into the portfolio. No office, no assistant, no chief of staff. Just the three of them. “We don’t care about getting paid a salary out of the fund today. We’re playing the long game and we think the returns are going to be so much higher from recycling the capital.”

The team provides tactical support from their operator experience: talent recruitment, product development, customer acquisition strategies. They understand the challenges of scaling a startup firsthand.

Full episode below, or on Spotify / Apple Podcasts