Meet Dan Moskowitz, Partner at Third Point Ventures

Dan Moskowitz is a Partner at Third Point Ventures, the venture capital arm of the New York-based hedge fund, Third Point. Dan grew up in New York. For all the glory of being a finance man nowadays, Dan is a tech nerd at heart. Growing up, he was that technical brainiac in school who competed in Science Olympiads and robotics competitions, who got his fix of fun playing strategy boardgames and immersed in the virtual nirvanas of videogames. After he graduated Cornell University with a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Dan joined Lockheed Martin as one of the few invited to join the company’s rotation program for high-potential engineers. For the first three rotations of the program, Dan delved into the technical side of Lockheed’s business, learning skills such as writing machine learning software and developing simulations for large-scale radar units. It wasn’t until his last rotation at Lockheed’s strategy group when Dan got his first taste of the business side of things and saw how their corporate venture team worked. That experience motivated Dan to explore venture capital further. When he received his acceptance letter to attend Harvard Business School, he quit his job to take a pre-MBA internship at a small but growing venture firm called Touchdown Ventures. Very soon after that though, he was off to Harvard, in a mode of open exploration via internships. For some time, he explored product management at the gaming engine company Unity. Upon graduation, he went into corporate development at Cisco. Finally, in 2020, with a breadth of experiences under his belt, he settled on venture capital as his committed career. After speaking with a number of firms, he resonated with the team at Third Point Ventures and took the plunge into venture capital.  Nowadays, as the father of a one-year-old child, Dan has less time for playing the boardgames from his vast collection though he still codes, a relic of his former days as an engineer. He’s living proof that the best tech nerds don’t just build--they invest in the builders of tomorrow.  

Sam: What are the big topics keeping you occupied these days as an early-stage enterprise tech investor?

Dan: It’s no surprise—AI is a big one.

We think about it in two layers: applications and infrastructure. On the application side, AI is lowering barriers to entry. Small teams can build world-class products faster, but that raises questions about sustainability. How do you build a moat around an AI-powered application if you don’t own the core AI infrastructure?

On the infrastructure side, there’s room for innovation to make AI more secure and efficient. Training models is still expensive, and inference isn’t cheap. There’s potential for specialized hardware or software to lower costs, but it’s also possible that providers like OpenAI make their models so efficient that it becomes less of an investable space.  Securing this new attack surface is complicated and essential since AI and corporate data are now lifeblood.

Sam: There are different types of VC personas. You're the guy with the technical background. Do you think that's essential? Has it helped you in your career?

Dan: It helps in so far as the type of investing we do at Third Point Ventures tends to be very technology forward. We invest in companies with some form of a technology moat. A lot of what we focus on includes areas like cybersecurity, enterprise automation, data, and IT infrastructure. These sectors often have very technical teams and founders, so having a technical background has been an important differentiation. That said, I don’t think a technical background is a requirement for being a successful investor, but for the kinds of investments we make, it’s quite invaluable.

Sam: What would you say are the skills you need to be a good VC?

Dan:  The job of a VC revolves around three main things. First, company picking. You need an analytical mindset to understand market nuances—identifying the fastest-growing, most sustainable, or most valuable markets and, within those, the best companies.

Second, deal-making. This comes with practice and involves structuring financings that work for all parties involved and in particular balance risk and reward for investors.

Third, guiding portfolio companies to success. This means being a trusted advisor to CEOs and management teams, helping them navigate challenges. Many investors bring these skills from prior careers, but they can also be developed over time through exposure to boards and company dynamics.

Sam: What's your favorite part of the job?

Dan: It's definitely the breadth of the role. I think a lot of technical people face an early decision point: do you go really deep into one thing and build a career as a principal technologist, or do you go broad and learn a lot about a lot of things? For me, the latter was more exciting.

Venture is the career that offers the most breadth. Every day is different—you’re working with your companies, exploring new markets, figuring out where to invest next. The scope is always changing, and the variety of technologies and founders you get to engage with is unparalleled.

Sam: What's your least favorite part of the job?

Dan: That’s the flip side of having a technical background: your hand isn’t on the steering wheel. When you’re building products, you can jump into the codebase or the product and fix things yourself. It feels good to fix things.

In VC, you influence the team, but you’re not the one getting your hands dirty. If a company has a great team and market but the product has issues, you have to trust the team to fix it—you’re investing in them to make it better, not doing it yourself. That lack of control can be hard to get used to.

Sam: Any advice you’d share about what new VCs should avoid doing?

Dan:  One big mistake is rushing into the industry before you have the knowledge, experience, and readiness to be a good investor. There’s so much hype around VC these days that some people want to jump in right after undergrad, but I think that does a disservice to their long-term potential. It’s important to take the time to build a strong foundation first.

Another mistake I see is new investors rushing to do their first deal as soon as they start. There’s often a lot of pressure to prove yourself, but VC is a long game. You need to be patient and wait for a deal you truly believe in—something you’d put your own money behind. The people who succeed in this industry are the ones who take their time and don’t rush into things.  Discipline, discipline, discipline.

Sam: What’s a signature Dan deal?

Dan: A classic signature Dan deal is one with a strong technology core. The founder doesn’t have to be a technologist themselves, but they should understand what they’re building and the market they’re playing in. Bonus points if we can geek out a bit about the tech.  Hopefully the deal is one where not every investor can see the size of the opportunity because the required domain expertise is a bit less common.

Sam: Where do you see yourself in a decade or two?

Dan: I’ll still be investing. I’ve done enough different things—engineering, corp/biz dev, strategy, product management—to know that nothing else satisfies me intellectually as much as investing does.